What does teachers’ lack of training mean for our children? A lack of instruction in our classrooms, where formal handwriting time has decreased in the past 30 years and often peters out by the end of third grade, according to Graham. When 220 randomly selected first-, second-, and third-grader teachers from across America were asked, “Do you feel prepared to teach handwriting?” an overwhelming number – nearly 90% – answered no, reports Steve Graham, a professor of special education at the University of Maryland in College Park, who conducted the survey last year and has been studying children’s handwriting and its instruction for more than 20 years. Lipten’s experience is not unfamiliar in today’s classrooms. It’s one of those things you have to figure out on your own.” And so she did, using tactics she picked up from occupational therapists who help children learn to grip a pencil correctly and form letters legibly. But she admits, “They don’t teach you handwriting. Lipten got her graduate degree in education 10 years ago from the Bank Street College of Education, also in New York City, with a major in reading and literacy. There are so many things to teach, and it’s tricky trying to break bad habits.” But, says Lipten, “I work only on lowercase letters because that’s all I have time for.
Some of her students at the Bank Street School for Children in New York City come into class with bad habits, like forming their uppercase letters from bottom to top or holding their pencil the wrong way.
But some weeks, Lipten uses the paper only for general classwork because she can’t fit handwriting into the schedule.
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Danette Lipten talks excitedly about the great lined paper – it has clouds on the top line and flowers on the bottom – she found for teaching her first-graders how to form their letters.
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