I, like many people, did not have a love for teaching writing. Not because writing, as a subject, is not interesting, rather writing requires grading/scoring stacks of papers with a wide variation of writing abilities, styles, and attitudes.

About 100 times I have heard, “To teach reading, you need to be a reader.” Not nearly as many times, have I ever heard, “To teach writing, you need to be a writer.” A plethora of professional texts focus on developing student's writing lives, but, as I find, to inspire students to become writers, you have to be a writer as well.

p: mrsdkrebs via photopin cc

One of the more frustrating aspects of writing instruction has become the student writers' propensity to ask, “Is this good enough?” Or, my new favorite, “Will you correct this so I can write a final draft?”

Ownership of Writing

I am finding students lack ownership of writing and are more than willing to transfer the load of writing demands to the teacher.

Not that I am curing what ails the maturing writers, but I found a strategy: Modeling my writing life.

Students identified three concerns when we started writing instruction this year.

1. Rough drafts have to be perfect so that all that needs to be done is a final draft (neat version)
2. There is nothing to write about (no ideas)
3. Everything is a narrative

However, within those statements, students, albeit stunted writers, want to write. Several expressed not only that they like writing, but want to be writers.

Promise!

The challenge, in the first six weeks became giving students space to become writers and authorities of their own writing.

This began by me promoting my writing life to them. I revealed to the class (most of) what I wrote. This included story ideas, character descriptions, teaching reflections, and book chapters. 

I discovered students emphatic response to the authentic writing. What did they like most? Messiness. Every idea, every first draft made little sense. No level of perfection at all.

Students also noticed my writing notebooks and observed me writing at odd times, like in the middle of a lesson, to jot down ideas.

Students and I also spent 15 minutes a day just writing, then sharing, simply to celebrate ideas.

You could almost feel students collectively decompress as writing anxiety exfoliated like the maple trees on the playground. In fact, students really fancied mini-lessons that included my writing vs. somewhat contrived ideas designed simply for the sake of a lesson. Both fifth and sixth graders appreciated seeing how writing develops in physical context.

The class learned, within the first week of school, that writing could be anything. One student wrote about her communication struggles. Several wrote about football games. One student sputtered for three days writing random sentences down. At last check, he proudly showed his three page story that he couldn't wait to work on.

We added genius hour to the mix so students could explore and write their own books, another activity where I work alongside them. Here, students are exploring writing adventure books, like their favorite author, Gary Paulsen. Several students began to recognize the difference between a “seed” and a “watermelon” and are moving into connecting seeds to make the watermelon.

To address the narrative issue, because in reality, narrative encompasses all the “types” of writing, as labeled by the CCSS, students had the freedom to write whatever they wanted. For most, in their minds, this meant they could write about real stuff, like book reviews or summaries. In time, students will see that narrative, as Lucy Calkins and Tom Newkirk suggest, is essential to writing opinion and informational pieces.

Since students began to realize that writing drafts and ideas can be yucky and messy, they seem to love writing more. I suspect they will love writing completely once they see how ideas can be developed into magical representations of their souls. If I want my students to be writers, I have to show them I am a writer as well.

Justin Stygles is a Grade 5/6 ELA/humanities teacher. He is currently writing a book with Corwin Literacy. Justin recently became a National Board Certified Teacher and he will be presenting at the IRA conference in May.