Aha! This quote from Bostonian's link leaves me convinced that my child's rigid, awful teacher had been expertly trained in this very method... sure explains a lot... Can't imagine why my Dysgraphic child was having severe anxiety attacks every morning since this wonderful writing program was how his class started each day. Also explains the philosophy as to why he had recess taken away when he complained that his hand hurt and did not "complete his work" by drawing AND coloring a picture with his writing. Wouldn't want to let him "get away" with not doing it.
Here's the quote:
In her later work, however, Calkins’s notion of the writer’s notebook is prescriptive, even rigid. She instructs teachers as well as parents to make sure children “never miss a day” of writing in their notebooks, because “if you allow kids to get off the hook once, they’ll try to get off it all the time.” In Raising Lifelong Learners (1998), she describes how she needs to stand over her son while he writes down his thoughts after returning from a play date. The earlier “jotting” and “bits of life” sensibility seems to be gone, as she complains that her sons, then six and four years old, “often say non-sequiturs,” and how she, and all parents and teachers, should confront “sidetracks,” and prohibit any “detours.”
