Do more by doing less wrote:
Ouch! This does not sound right. One of the goals of teaching writing is to cure writer's block.
It might help to remember what Annie Lamott tells her students: "There is no such thing as a first draft. There are only shitty first drafts." The idea is very simple: You get writer's block when you try to be creative and stylish in your first draft. Instead, you need to use your first draft to be creative, to get your ideas down. Style comes later, as you go through your ideas, pick the good ones and polish them.
What books are you using? And what sort of assignments do you have? You might get help from "Free/Style" by Chris Anderson. The first 3 or 4 chapters are very good in explaining how to write a first shitty first draft.
Thanks for the book recommendation! I am not familiar with that one.
I wonder if the OP is a product of the unfortunate high school writing system. I teach DE writing classes at a high school & the variations of No Child Left Behind are now forcing us to only teach argumentative & persuasion. We really don't have time to teach all the various modes anymore. Sigh.
I use the Bedford Reader & have my kids read the "Writers on Writing" after each selection. After a few pieces (during the writing process & close reading skills seminars), I have my students write a How I Write or Why I Write essay. This gets them thinking differently about writing from something they do for class to something they do for themselves.