teaching writing is very difficult

In our textbook They Say I say: The moves that matter in academic writing, authors Gerard Graff and Kathy Birkenstein contend that templates are a good solid foundation for beginning writers. Writing templates can be used to break the spell of the writer’s block, to show writers where to pick up and start from, and a host of other well thought out plans for helping struggling writers be good writers and good writers become fantastic writers.
This might be true to the degree which they present in their book. I agree that with several different templates from which to choose, a person might be able to take into account what others have said on a topic, comb it in with his or her own ideas about the topic in a genuinely original way, and come out with a paper that is truly unique.
My problem stems from the fact that they offer several different templates and I am only allowed to offer one. It becomes a matter of degree for me as I read through this book. I teach high school English and the only template we are allowed to use is The Jane Schaffer Writing Program. In her writing program we are given ONE template to use and I suspect, especially after reading what we’ve read so far in TSIS, that one is not enough for the whole population to get. We appear to be stuffing all of our writers into one basket of noncreative crud. Graff and Birkenstein are way ahead of me on this argument, moving to counteract it before I even said it. On page 10 they say, “Many of our students complain that using templates will take away from their originality and creativity.” Yes, indeed, with just one template for the whole student body, how can it do anything but?
At Redlands High School we use the JSWP exclusively and it does not help the students that I have seen do anything except pass the CAHSEE. CAHSEE essay graders just look for those key elements of the template and therefore they can get through the piles of grading more efficiently. As a result of having to teach the JSWP for the last five years, I have grown to hate it. I have to agree with Graff and Birkenstein that there may be ways that templates benefit the writer, but mostly, to this high school teacher, one template above all (The Grand Jane Schaffer) makes essays that get turned in to me looking like little nooblets on parade with their little noob templates in rows. I know that some of my freshmen have intelligent thoughts. I read them in their journals. But the work they turn in with their required JS essays is mostly shite.