Am I a Heretic?

"How do I organize my writing?" a colleague asked me one day. This simple, but rather mind-boggling question, sent me on a mental journey through my history as a writer. The nugget of truth I found made me realize this question has more to do with my life as a thinker. So I did just that. I thought and I thought, then I wrote a little. Then I thought some more. Here are some of my findings of my pondering: I realize by some standards I am digressing here, and I should really state my three main points, and save this information for the support part of my body paragraphs, but understanding directions has not always been a strength of mine! Phew... that's one long run-on sentence, now ain't it?!

What process do I naturally go through to organize my thoughts?
Are there common characteristics to this process?
Can this process be captured and standardized?
Or does it need to remain individualized?

I felt trapped by my questions and feelings of incompetency, but instead of bowing to my questions and fears, I marched forward, and found the source of my insecurities.

I believe on some level that as a seasoned teacher of English and social studies that I should be better suited and better able to teach you how to organize your writing; however, the prescribed way of organizing my thoughts into an outline or the pattern of a five-paragraph essay, seems very unnatural to me as evident by this essay. Wow, that was a very, very long topic sentence, but it seems to work, doesn't it? It tends to limit the ways I express my ideas to varying degrees. Yet, outlining and the "five-paragraph" essay were two of the only ways I was taught as a student as a valid method of organizing thoughts. As a new teacher, I shied away from these more traditional, sacred modes and began using clustering and webs, venn diagrams, and other flow charts to teach you, and myself, different ways to organize our thoughts. Still yet, I found it unnatural, and not all that different, because these had become the standard modes of organization to your generation of learners. I also felt like I was not touching the heart of the matter: developing critical thinking skills.

Now if I were writing a classic five paragraph essay, I really shouldn't introduce this point because I didn't mention it explicitly in my introduction. Speaking of my introduction, did I have a strong, clear thesis statement? Maybe so, maybe not. Either way, I think I'm getting my point across. My apologies to anyone I've offended... or then again, maybe not.

I'm left pondering how to develop your critical thinking skills en masse. These skills develop often through unique and abstract ways, and not through concrete and sequential events as some educational guru's would lead me to believe. Once you discover the mode, the manner, and the style in which you organize your own thoughts before you speak, we can use those identified processes to help you learn how to organize your writing. This task is not simple, and requires much innovation in thought in regards to how I as a teacher approach teaching writing.

Here, I should finish off with a solid conclusion that drives my point home to you, my reader, by restating my three main points. But I'll let you draw your own conclusion instead. After all, it leaves the reader with something to ponder... maybe this way you too will further develop your own critical thinking skills.

Do I sound like a heretic or what?