Christian Mundorf, 18, a freshman at Valparaiso University, gets some strange glances when others notice he's writing with a traditional fountain pen rather than today's usual disposable ink pens.
"Writing and penmanship is much better using a fountain pen," said Mundorf, who is from Saline, Mich., and studying to be a teacher in secondary education.
"I began using a fountain pen in high school because my French teacher encouraged it. One of the reasons the writing and signatures are so much better with a fountain pen is because unlike today's ink pens, a fountain pen requires that it be held properly for it to work."
Early archive photos show Valparaiso University offered courses in proper penmanship starting as far back as 1902.
It's a stark contrast to today's growing trend that now reduces penmanship to a fading highlight, even as a beginning basic elementary school classroom experience.
The list of expanding teaching requirements for elementary school classrooms, as intended to prepare students for both college and life skill needs, has penmanship and cursive handwriting feeling a pinch. As technology shifts the emphasis to typing and computer compatibility, producing students who have the simple ability to print letters has now become the new accepted standard in many schools rather than what used to be the "letter-perfect" approach.
Many teachers and administrators say the reason classroom time devoted to handwriting lessons has fallen out of favor in recent years is because of the Common Core State Standards. Introduced in 2010 and adopted by 43 states and the District of Columbia, the initiative includes a requirement for "keyboarding skills," but no mention of cursive writing, which has many schools limiting detail and attention to the importance of handwriting instruction.
A recent survey from school supplies company Really Good Stuff asked 612 kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers from 48 states whether they teach cursive in their classrooms and found 41 percent no longer incorporate cursive writing lessons into their curriculum.
But according to the same survey, teacher sentiment about this subject is changing in recent years. About two-thirds of all the teachers in the survey said they planned to teach cursive in the future, describing cursive writing as "important" or "very important" for students to learn. Also, about 70 percent of respondents said that "no longer teaching cursive would have long-term negative consequences."
Elementary teacher Luanne Grisafi, of Munster, has taught second-graders for 33 years, including her current position of the past 12 years at Our Lady of Grace Catholic School in Highland.
Grisafi, 62, remains among the growing ranks of educators who continue to devote classroom time dedicated to not only learning cursive writing, but also enforcing the importance of proper penmanship.
"It's been within the last five or six years that I've started to hear from teachers at other schools about the growing trend of not including handwriting lessons and cursive writing as part of the classroom curriculum," Grisafi said.
"That's never even been a consideration for my classroom. Just spending the needed 10 to 15 minutes during a class to work on handwriting requires so very little time, but the result is so important and impacts so many other areas of how students learn the importance of detail and self-discipline. Our signature reflects so much about who we are."
Grisafi attended elementary school through eighth grade at St. Andrew's Catholic School in Calumet City and then Elizabeth Seton High School in South Holland before earning her bachelor's and master's degrees from Purdue.
"My own concentration for proper handwriting and penmanship came from when I was growing up in Calumet City and my parents made sure I took my time and did my best when I wrote my thank you notes for birthday gifts and other special occasions," she said.
"Now as a teacher, I've read enough studies and after three decades in the classroom, and I've seen the difference placing an importance on handwriting and penmanship can make in students. There is a definite connection between devoting time to proper handwriting and how young minds retain information for learning, as opposed to typing that same information. I've seen in published studies that students who learn to print and write properly at an early age, even before reading, do better academically, have better memory and retention and even show greater creativity."
Grisafi doesn't de-emphasize the need for technology and importance of classroom computer time. She has found both technology and traditional handwriting and penmanship lessons can still co-exist in today's classroom with successful results.
She uses Zaner-Bloser handwriting workbooks for her classes, which boasts "a handwriting instruction program improving written communications and other handwriting skills that lead to better literacy development requiring less than 15 minutes of classroom time per day."
In 1888, Charles Paxton Zaner founded the Zanerian College of Penmanship in Columbus, Ohio. The school's curriculum included courses that prepared students for careers as penmen, who, at that time, wrote by hand most of the documents used by business and industry. The school also trained students to become teachers of penmanship, illustrators, engravers, and engrossers - specialists in the kind of ornamental writing used for diplomas and certificates. In 1891, Zaner sold a share of the Zanerian to Elmer Ward Bloser, whom he met in 1883 while the two men were students at Michael's Pen Art Hall. Bloser, who had been working as an instructor at the Spencerian Business College in Cleveland, accumulated the capital necessary to become a company partner. In 1904, the company published the first student writing textbook: "The Zaner Method of Arm Movement."
Randy Roberts, 55, has taught middle school and elementary school students for 26 years, including his current 21 years at Washington Township Schools in Valparaiso.
"I had 15 years teaching sixth grade and now the rest of my time has been teaching fifth grade," said Roberts, who attended public schools growing up in rural Warsaw, Ind.
In both his classroom teaching career in middle school and elementary school, Roberts has earned a two decade reputation as a strict enforcer of proper handwriting and penmanship.
Like Grisafi, Roberts also agrees he doesn't find a greater degree of "better handwriting" for girls' compared to boys' penmanship.
"I do find that throughout the year, I see far better improvement from the boys once they slow down and learn to put time and attention to the detail of their writing," he said.
Like Grisafi, Roberts said his own attention to fine handwriting came from the early influence of his parents, including his mother "who was a meticulous housekeeper" and a father "who kept a perfectly manicured lawn and yard."
While he always placed importance on handwriting and penmanship incorporated with his classroom lesson plans, Roberts said it's been in the past decade that he experienced his own fear for classroom standards based on what he witnessed from reviewing the homework from his own three children.
"My kids are ages 15 to 20 and when they would bring home their papers, tests and homework, I was shocked to see the misspellings and poor grammar that would slip into their work and it wasn't being corrected or pointed out by the teachers," he said.
"There's this growing belief that with all of the typing done with today's technology and the option of spell-check, writing and spelling are no longer a priority and that's not true."
Roberts blends his lessons for writing and penmanship with the twice-weekly spelling lessons and tests he includes in his curriculum.
"The time, attention, detail and pride put into proper writing and spelling sets an important standard for students at an early age," Roberts said.
"The same excellence expected of students in writing and spelling develops into the work ethic, which will guide them for the rest of their lives."