If you are a student
and want help getting and staying motivated enough to plan, write and edit a grade-raising essay or paper you feel good about—you’ve come to the right place.
If you are a teacher
or professor and want to help your students get more motivated to plan, write and edit a grade-raising essay they feel good about—you’ve come to the right place.
If you are the parent
of a high school or college kid and you want to help them get more motivated and plan, write and edit a grade-raising essay they feel good about—guess what?…Yeah, you’ve come to the right place too.
Welcome to the blog that ‘s going to take the stress and struggle out of planning, writing and editing essays and papers. And do it quickly while getting you better results (better grades) and building your writing confidence.
If you don’t think it’s possible to quickly and easily write a persuasive grade-raising essay and feel good about it, it is.
In fact, I’ve been helping kids just like you do it for about a year now.
This intro page will explain who I am and how this blog will help you
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My Name is Rick Goldman.
I’m a Writer. And a Teacher.
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The fact that I’m both is the key to my being able to help you.
“What kind of writer are you?”
1. Playwright. I’ve written 7 produced plays and musicals. That means 7 plays and musicals that have been performed by real actors and seen by real audiences. Most of my shows are written for young actors (5th-12th) graders to perform and their peers, parents and families to watch.
2. How-To Book Writer. I’ve written and self published four.
- “How to Write Stories That Work Everytime”
- “How to Direct Kids in Plays and Stay Sane”
- “The Second Biggest Success Secret of Them All For Teenagers, College Students and Their Parents” (book and audio CD)
- “How To Find and Use Your Own Ideas For Essays, Papers and Projects (without worrying what other people will say or getting all stressed out!)”
3. “How-To Mini- Systems” Author. A mini-system is something that helps you do something you want or have to do—simply by answering a few easy questions and taking little action steps. My two mini-systems are:
- “The Grade-Raising Essay Writing System”
- “The Super Simple Stepmaker (How to Set and Reach Short Term Goals and Big Time Dreams”
4. Direct Response Marketing Writer. This means I write the copy (the words that have to persuade people to buy stuff) for print ads, sales letters, brochures, e-mails, special reports and web sites. Done that for 7 years. Helped sell hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of products and services.
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I’m Also a Drama and Writing Teacher.
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Been one on and off for 32 years. In Southern California and now Savannah, GA.
- I’ve taught zillions of story and play writing classes (helped 2500 kids write new stories and plays)
- I’ve directed 40 plays and musicals with elementary, middle and high school kid
- I currently direct 2 or 3 plays a year at St. Vincent’s Academy, an all-girls Catholic High School in Savannah. As I write this, we’re working on Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” (with the entire senior class of 80 girls) and a smaller group of 6 is doing “Michael Meets His Dream Team” by that famous playwright you’ve never heard of…me.
For the past two years, I’ve also been
an Undercover Essay Writing Detective
Putting together new ways to help teenagers and college students write faster, easier and better without being so stressed.
After 71% of the 11th graders who spent 1 hour with me planning an essay raised their writing grades last fall, some by as many as 20 points—I decided “The Grade-Raising Essay Writing System” was ready for the big time.
Or at least for anyone smart enough to look for essay writing help on the web. And that of course, is you.
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Here’s the True Story of How
This Grade-Raising Essay Writing System
Was Created With Kids and Teachers
Just Like You
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Three years ago, I started directing plays at St. Vincent’s Academy in Savannah. And began hearing from teachers and students about how much trouble the kids were having and how stressed out they get when they had to write essays.
Having taught over 2,500 students how to write stories and plays, I knew writing essays shouldn’t be this hard or stressful. So I started doing surveys to pinpoint what the kids and teachers believed were their biggest essay writing problems.
The kid’s survey answers shocked me because…
- 77.2% said they weren’t motivated enough to try and write a successful essay
- 82.6% said they think writing and the subject they have to write about are boring
- 85.7% said they think writing papers about certain subjects is pointless because they don’t see how it has anything to do with what they want to do in the future
- 65.2% said they didn’t know how to find the proof details to put in their paper so they could prove their position.
- 58.7% didn’t know how to take a position
- 78.2% said that because they’ve been trained to find and use only “the right answer” when they have to find and use their own ideas they feel uncertain, struggle and get stressed.
- 78.2% also said they have trouble taking the ideas they get in their head and putting them on paper
- 84.8% said they wait until the last minute to start, which makes it harder to get ideas and makes them even more stressed
These answers told me that their real problem
was a combination of:
- A Lack of Motivation
- A Lack of Skills, Tools and Experience and
- A Lack of Confidence.
So the question is…
Are you struggling with any of the same issues when it comes to planning and writing your essays and papers?
If you are, you can see from the survey results that you’re perfectly normal. So don’t worry about it. Just keep reading. Help is here.
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Based on all this, I decided to create something
that would solve all these problems at once
and make essay writing easier and more fun.
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So for a year and a half I put ideas together, tested them in my own summer writing class, refined and tested them again in SVA History classes.
I wrote a 60 page how-to book about it and after doing some private coaching in the summer of ‘08—took out my editor’s knife, cut the essence into the 10 question “How To Plan the Writing of A Grade-Raising Essay Booklet” and tested the 10 questions with two of Grover Crosby’s 11th grade English classes.
The Results:
- 71.4% of the kids Improved their writing grades after only one hour.
- 55.8% said they felt more Motivated to write. 32.6% said they “sorta” did.
- 81% said they felt more Confident about writing future essays.
If you’re having trouble believing they did this well, Here’s what their teacher Mr. Crosby said about the experience.
“What I like best about Rick’s program it is that it focuses the student’s attention on what they need to know and need to do right now. It’s basically what I teach over a longer period of time but he’s cut out all the fat and gotten it down to a lean 10 questions they can use and refer back to. The improvement in both the AP and low level student’s grades the first time Rick took them through it proves how well it works (71% raised their grades) I recommend it for both middle and high school students.”
— Grover Crosby, 11th Grade English Teacher,St. Vincent’s Academy, Savannah GA
If you’re wondering why the other 29%
didn’t raise their grades…
Most didn’t improve because they did a bad job of Editing. (Many, especially the AP kids, didn’t even edit their papers.)
So I wrote another booklet called “The 17 Point Grade-Saving Essay Editor’s Checklist” to help the kids become instant editors and be even more successful.
And because this all started when the original group of seniors told me how stressed out they get when they had to write essays, I put together another booklet, “7 Stress- Reducing, Motivation-Maximizing, Confidence-Boosting Writing Secrets” to help them relax and build their confidence as they worked. Some kids think this is the most helpful part of the whole deal.
Finally, after seeing how many people were looking for essay topics on the internet (296,000 Google searches for essay topics in Nov. 08), I wrote one more booklet, “The Essay Topic Idea Generator.”
This one helps you find a topic fast, especially when your teacher says, “You’ve got to write an essay about ______” and doesn’t give you a prompt or question to answer and you have to start from scratch.
The four booklets together make up the “Grade-Raising Essay Writing System”
And this blog is going to offer you bits and pieces of the system in each blog post.
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Here’s Why This Blog Will Help
Both Students and Teachers
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Because it’s not going to be like anything anyone’s ever taught you about writing.
“Why?”
Because I’m not like any writing teacher you’ve ever had. I’m a writer first, and a teacher second. And I teach writing the way successful writer’s teach writing to other writers.
“How do writers teach writers?”
By paying attention to the feelings that come up when you plan, write, edit and put your finished product in front of the public as well as the practical how to write stuff.
“How do you know that’s how they do it?”
Because I’ve sat in rooms, workshops and meetings with some of the most successful playwrights and screen writers (many Oscar and Tony Award Winners) and some of the most successful marketing writers on the planet and learned from them. And I’ve been experiencing it myself for over 30 years.
“Why is it so critical to pay attention to the feeling stuff?”
Because that’s the part of writing will slow you down or stop you altogether. So it’s actually more important than the practical stuff. Especially when you don’t have much writing experience which most high school and college kids don’t have.
“Why don’t most teachers teach this way?”
Because they’re not writers and were not taught to teach writing this way. Not only that, they are under intense pressure to cover lots of material no matter how any of their students feel. So it’s really not their fault.
Which means if you’re a teacher—this will help speed things up and reduce your stress too—as soon you start applying the simple ideas you’ll learn here.
Most importantly, I’m not going to rehash all the boring essay writing stuff you’ve been taught all your life that’s made writing so unpleasant and finding and using your own ideas so scary and stressful. Because it obviously hasn’t worked for so many student writers all across the country.
So it makes more sense to try new way that works for the best writers in the world, right?
Bottom line: This is going to be new, different, fun, and because you probably have to write your paper and turn it in soon, the ideas will be easy to apply right now.
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2 Easy Ways To Remember
This Blog Is Here
and Can Help You
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- Bookmark it or add it to your Favorites List. Then come back. Often.
- Ask me a question in the Comment Section at the end of each post. You may have to click on the comment link to get the comment box to appear. I’ll look over your question and answer it. (Note: I review all of the comments before I make them public. So if you don’t want me to answer publicly, just let me know and I’ll answer by e-mail.)
That’s the plan. We’ll see how it goes.
Until next time, know that help is here and you know where to find it.
If you like what you’ve found here, please tell your friends, your students, your fellow educators and the other parents you know.
And keep coming back.
Rick Goldman, The Grade-Raising Essay Writing Coach
