A good essay starts with a good idea. It’s really that simple. Thus, much of my “writing instruction” doesn’t even involve writing. Instead, it consists of Socratic discussions and disputations based on the great books in our Literature studies or the rich content of our History lessons.

And that’s the special something that makes essays in a classical classroom turn out so nicely. They are not one-off assignments or formulaic gobbley gook from a pre-packaged writing program.

Certainly students can write wonderful essays drawn from fairly typical prompts like, “Who is your favorite athlete?” In my first few years of teaching, I sampled some of those prompts, and the essays were okay at best. They generally read like the students didn’t care all that much about what they were saying, almost like they felt the prompts were beneath them. Frankly, they were.

Students are capable of much deeper thinking beyond what Derek Jeter or even Babe Ruth can elicit. They need a chance to engage the “big questions” and to develop and write out their own opinions on ideas related to life and death, love and romance, wisdom and foolishness, to name a few.

At least in my classroom, essays drawn from King Arthur or The Marriage Set have students on the edge of their seats. Likewise, an essay to evaluate the justice of the Crusades in the Middle Ages sparks an impassioned response. And the reason students engage those essays with such passion is because they had ample time to develop and defend their ideas during a unit. They already have skin in the game, so to speak.

What’s more, students enjoy defining their own essay topics because they have so many ideas to work with. I think John Steinbeck was right when he said,

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”

In a classical classroom, students get to “pet” dozens and dozens of “bunnies” before they raise one into an essay. All that experience builds confidence in students and helps the chosen “bunnies” thrive.

For example, when we read Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, we spend a lot of time dealing with the concept of “construction of memoir.” From those discussions, one student might write an essay on whether or not Mark Twain was “telling the truth” about Joan’s life. Another might write about the type of military leader Joan was and another about how she handled herself during her trial and condemnation. Each of those essays reflects discussions we had in class, albeit with additional ideas unique to individual students.

While my approach to writing instruction is fluid enough to draw from almost anything we discuss, it is also deliberate in its planning and implementation. My goal is for all of my students to learn the writing process and be able to apply it to three essay formats: the simple essay, the classical essay, and the personal essay. I will breakdown what this entails in subsequent posts. 

Image courtesy of The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.