7th Grade

I interviewed a 7th grade humanities teacher, who said that the way a person writes has a huge influence on that person's impact. She said that grammar and general writing skills such as spelling are a huge problem nowadays, becaue much of our communication is verbal. Even email sometimes has a negative effect on writing skills. She compared poor writing skills with poor hygiene. It is very quickly noticable and creates a bad first impression that can very likely distract from a person's genius.
With student writing, she is most impressed by maturity of thought combined with a sense of humor. Evidence of "voice" is also important. As a teacher, it is important for her to have strong writing skills, because she has to model things for the students, and she must model correctly. Spelling is especially difficult. The style of her writing varies from concise and direct for the students, to more discriptive and elevated/ flowery language when writing to parents or grant proposals. It's all about audience.