I have a complicated relationship with writing. I’ve posted several blogposts
throughout the years describing the successes and failures of different tactics
I’ve used to actually enjoy writing: Writing: To Love or To Hate, Overcoming the Dementor and Essay Writing: From Frolicking to Mental Breakdowns. The common factor that’s
helped me be successful in writing, is one I haven’t blogged about yet: being apart of a community of writers.
I want to transform my classroom into a safe writing community that helps students have an authentic audience and write together, not in solitude. When I read Penny Kittle’s book Write Beside Them, I realized that the first step in creating a productive, safe community, was to bring myself, the teacher, and all my uncertainties about writing to my students in the classroom. And invite my students not only to see into, but also participate in my writing process.(Which feels scary. And vulnerable).
I want to transform my classroom into a safe writing community that helps students have an authentic audience and write together, not in solitude. When I read Penny Kittle’s book Write Beside Them, I realized that the first step in creating a productive, safe community, was to bring myself, the teacher, and all my uncertainties about writing to my students in the classroom. And invite my students not only to see into, but also participate in my writing process.
I used to think that writing was something you had to do alone--like how only Frodo could carry the ring all the way to Mount Doom. And perhaps, that is true to some extent. But with every powerful and scary, magical ring (or essay), there's also a Sam who can come along with you on your journey and carry you when you get stuck.
The first time I experienced a writing community, I was in my sophomore year of college, taking the last introductory writing course to the English Major. My teacher-- Dr. Gideon Burton--was (and still is) passionate about how the digital world impacts the humanities and writing. We made a class blog, where we were to write updates on our writing process of the big research paper and comment on/encourage each other through the process.
For the first time, I wasn't stressed and anxious and alone in one of the library study cubical with only a stack of old books and JSTOR articles to comfort me; I could turn to people who could groan with me, who could offer me a fresh perspective, and who were struggling with writing too!
I love how Susan M. Church describes the benefits of a writing community (if you are as obsessed with writing communities as I am, definitely check out her article here):
"...group interaction helps...by extending, heightening, or altering the author's understanding of his or her own text. A reader's comment, interpretation, or question may cause the writer to take a different perspective and see new possibilities to explore (Harste, Siegal, and Stephens, in press). This is particularly useful when the writing is not going well. Talking about the meaning the writer wants to convey but can't find a way to write, or about a piece of writing which does not convey the intended meaning can help the writer identify the source of the problem and find a way to try to solve it (Elbow 1973). Reading another writer's work in progress may have the same effect, especially if the writers are grappling with the same sorts of issues," (176).
Anyways, that is probably enough gushing. On to the appetizer!
**Disclaimer**: If you are looking for a quick fix to catapult your classroom's writing community--that is not this type of tactic. Prepare to be vulnerable. Prepare to put some effort in. Prepare to not know the answer. Remember that this is an appetizer: something to make our students believe that they can write too and share their attempts. Remember what Penny Kittle says:
"You have to be a writer, no matter how stumbling and uninformed that process is for you; it's essential to your work as a teacher of writing" (8).
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| Image From the New Hartford Tech Spotlight, March 2012 |
The Best Appetizer for a Writing Community: Yourself
Prep time: On-going
Cook Time: Between 5-15 minutes, (can be used as an anticipatory set, scaffolding, or a mini-lesson)
Serves: 20-40 students (depending on your class size)
INGREDIENTS:
Sincerity, sprinkled to taste
24 ounces of thought
For the Writing:
1 prompt/idea, same as students
4 tablespoons of figurative language and/or rhetorical devices
1 cup of vulnerability
2/3 cup of writing strategies
Mold, same form as students'
For the Presentation to the Classroom:
1 draft, at whatever stage necessary
3 heaping spoonfuls of vulnerability
2-3 questions, specific
3 tablespoons of class input
1/3 cup of uncertainty
DIRECTIONS:
1. Pour the 24 ounces of thoughts into a notebook, word document, blog, etc. (Conversion tip: 24 ounce thoughts = 24 hours = 1 day.) We become teacher-writers by writing regularly, writing voraciously, writing purposefully, writing a variety of things. I think this post celebrates not only the commitment and struggle of writing as a teacher, but also all the things we can write. It's pretty empowering.
"And yet we write. We write blogs for community consumption. We write letters to the superintendent or school board. We write articles for the journals of our professional associations. We write rants and diatribes, poems and promises. We write a column for the local paper. We do write.2. Gradually, mix the cup of commitment into the ideas until the commitment is completely dissolved, resulting in doughy, flexible writing.
3. Take time to play with and shape the writing; if it gets dry and crumbles, that's okay! Writing takes time and effort; and the writing process can be frustrating. But that's the point of writing as a teacher. Kittle says that "You can't really teach writing well unless you write yourself," (7). Why? Cindy O'Donnell-Allen answers that. She says that when teachers are writers, they "know the writing process inside out" and "can support [the] students' work in authentic ways." (check out her full article here). We need to experience the frustrating process of writing. We need to experiment and play; we need to be familiar with how it feels when our writing flops or when it soars, so that we can support our students through flops and soars.
3.Share you writing with others (not just your students)! Sometimes, the writing is better off stored in your word doc/notebook/blog archives for it to ripen for later. But, if you want to create a writing community in your classroom, you need to experience being in one yourself. Meg Petersen, the Director of the National Writing Project in New Hampshire, and a professor at the University of Plymouth, says that while we, as teacher-writers, can learn a lot by writing, "we learn just as much from seeing each other through our readers’ eyes," and explains that when we listen to our writing being discussed and questioned, it:
"lets us create a kind of productive detachment from our own lives which makes our identities visible to us. We realize how our lives are shaped by our race, class, age, gender, regional, and religious backgrounds, and see how they could easily have developed very differently. We can become more open and less judgmental of the lives of others, like our students, or the parents of students. The more teachers become aware of their own identities, the more likely they are to see their students more clearly."If you are not sure how to start writing and making a writing community of your own, I suggest checking out the FAQ about Slice of Life writing at this post. It gives you a genre to begin finding your voice and identity as a teacher-writer in, and writing a community you can be apart of!
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| 1st Draft of Directions |
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| Feedback |
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| Draft #2 of this blog post |
For the Writing
1. In a graphic organizer, word document, or lined paper, combine writing idea/prompt together with strategies until some sort of coherency begins to take shape. This type of writing is not necessarily the Slice of Life writing discussed earlier. It is the writing that we bring to the classroom and actively invite our students into. While the other type of writing helps us develop into teacher-writers, it doesn't go "deep enough into the process to be useful modeling," (Kittle 7). To be effective models, we need to write what our students are writing, and that means using the same strategies and requirements that we give our students. Paige Pennock says that when she shows her students that she's writing with them, it helps them "buy into the assignment" and helps her "better coach her students along because [she's] seen [her] trouble spots" and "can show them [her] process though multiple drafts," (100).
2.Once coherency exists, sprinkle in the figurative language or rhetorical devices to the mixture. Don't be afraid to experiment!
3. After letting the writing rise (and punching it down with class discussions and revisions) in the classroom, publish! Conversion Tip: Publish ≠ Use the Product of our Writing as a Model for our students. Only our writing process should be used as a model. Publish = Let your Piece Move On from the classroom and your students. In Celebrating Writers, Ruth Ayers says that if we focus on the product, we are focusing on perfection (
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| A Writing Assignment I wrote |
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| My attempt at writing it |
For the Presentation to the Classroom:
1. Show your draft of the writing assignment to the class in all it's messy glory. Conversion Tip: Draft = Writing at Whatever stage. Feel free to substitute your draft for pre-writing, or even for figuring out what you want to write about or have the assignment be about, like Susan Church did when she approached her students and told them candidly:
" 'I have a problem I want you to help me with. I am trying to get out the second issue of the Resource magazine and I need something to liven it up. So far we have only serious articles. Do you boys have any ideas?' I really meant this invitation; I had a deadline for publication and needed more contributions. After only a moment, Scott shouted, 'Super Heroes....' The boys proceeded to have an animated discussion..."(176).2. Pour the vulnerability on the draft, until your writing process becomes visible. When showing our writing to the class, we don't just want to show the messy product. We need to make sure that we are talking out our process. Why? Because our students notice and learn from it. Kittle says:
Kids mimic what we do...when they arrive in class they read our energy; they read our passion for what we teach. Is this worth learning? Then when we go to write, they watch how we write. It is precisely why we have to take our roughest first draft and put it on the overhead, reread it out loud to them, and talk about what belongs and what is a rabbit trail that should be cut (51).3.Ask the class specific questions regarding your draft, mixing in the uncertainty with gusto till your writing becomes flexible and fluid, letting you shape and unshape it according to the class's suggestions and your writerly soul. Penny Kittle gives us many examples of her modeling and incorporating her students into her writing process--at varying stages (see pages 108, 137-139, and 210-211), across a wide range of genres. Though the situations are different, she keeps to this creed of keeping the moment authentic. She asks questions and opens up about what she doesn't know; she tries things out--sincerely. She calls this "thinking in its rawest form,"(7). I think "raw" is a good word for it, because it implies not imperfection, but that which is unprocesssed, and that shift of thinking takes us to a growth mindset, where we want our students to be when they are writing.
4. Invite students to look at their writing and do the same. Modeling process and product also gives us and the writing credibility. Sharing our writing changes our classroom into a community of writers. By inviting them into participating in our writing process, they can buy into the strategies we are modeling, buy into writing, and buy into sharing their writing with others. I love how Paula Uriarte shows how this happens:
The most significant benefit to writing with my students is credibility. When I wrote an argument about a program for teachers in our state that was being cut, I showed them my drafts. I talked to them about how I had a colleague give me feedback. I showed them the revisions and the OpEd piece that was published in our local paper. I was using writing to make real and authentic change. (And the program did not get cut).
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| Image from Kelly J Brough |
In the beginning of this post, I showed pictures of my first draft of this entry. I had two big questions: How can I incorporate more of my research into this form? and How can I make my directions section more valuable? Throughout this post, I included pictures of my writing process as I've tried to figure that out: my first draft, the feedback I got from a peer at college, a picture of my second draft. I wanted to mimic, to you readers, how I would present my writing process to students, like how baking blogs often have pictures to illustrate the steps in their process (I modeled the form of my post from this one). I don't know how well it translated. I'm sure it could use more revisions.
This process has been frustrating, stressful, and fun. As writing is. Sharing it at first made me confront my perfectionist self (all her worries and anxieties over writing), but as I continued to show stages of my progress, it felt freeing. We need to have writing communities so that we allow ourselves to have unprocessed words, to celebrate our raw thinking, and so that we can grow.
I'll share one more quote from Penny Kittle:
"Collaboration is at the heart of our work. It isn't a community unless I'm apart of it: working, thinking, learning," (63).We, as teachers, need to be proactive in creating writing communities in our classrooms. And the first step, the best appetizer to it all, is putting yourself, your words, and your thinking out there for the students.
If you've tried this appetizer out before, or a variation of it, comment below and tell me about it!
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