Last semester and this semester I have written along with my students. My Dad was an old naval officer (and later a minister) that always taught me that you should never ask someone to do something that you are not willing to do yourself. It wasn't bad advice. I feel that I should be writing the same assignments that my students write.
It's also interesting to note that my examples are not always the best. I use my written examples as an in-class example, but I often catch mistakes and areas that could be improved. This is not such a bad thing. It shows students that we all make mistakes and can use revision in our writing. I'm the first person to point out mistakes that I have made and, hopefully, we all learn from them.
So far this semester my students have done a much better job with their revisions. I can actually see substantive changes between their rough drafts and the revised drafts. But I empathize with my students on revision. I can't tell you how I revise. I don't know what my method is, and it may change from paper to paper. The one thing I DO know is that I never write a paper the night before it's due. I allow myself plenty of time to do the paper, and I read it and tweak it several dozen times before I would consider printing it. But like many of my students, once that paper is printed it feels like it's chiseled in stone. I have no desire to go back and rework something that has been committed to ink and I can recite in my sleep.
Time, of course, has a way of changing the way we think. When I now read papers that I had written in my freshman, sophmore, and junior years I wonder how I could have turned in such rubbish.
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This is the first time I have written anything along with my students, not because I don't see the value in it, but quite frankly because I don't have the time (between degree papers, comps, and classes......).
My style of revision and writing has changed a great deal in the last few semesters so I understand how you feel. I actually used to be one of those (in undergrad) who would write assignments a few days before they were do and I actually did pretty well on them so I used to think that I wrote better under pressure but little did I know that I do much better work when I take time to go through the "process" of writing and revising!
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