Final Update: This is it. The end of my teaching career. I turned in my final set of grades this week as well as my retirement application. I am satisfied that I devoted my professional life to fostering the development of the writers given into my care especially once I learned to lean into the writing marathon both in my classroom and out. As I complete this transition into my third act (and retirement) there is much that is still uncertain, but I am 100% positive that writing in community will continue to be a part of my life! If you are interested in reading my reflections about this transition then check out my third act third space to track my efforts to build community around reading, watching, and writing.
What’s Really New? This weekend I hosted a writing marathon in Mt. Sterling, KY. I hope this belated birthday celebration will become an annual tradition for my friends and I. I loved everything about this day (although I missed the friends who couldn’t join us). I loved the opportunity to reconnect with friends through writing. I love how engaging in emotional and vulnerable writing in a safe place can be so delightful as we laughed and cried together. I will always love the friendships that writing marathons have brought to me and I especially love watching friendships form among those I love. I didn’t need it, but this weekend was further proof that writing is magic. For those inquiring minds, we began with the same prompts and short writes and shares (I am a writer from and Kentucky verses) Liz Prather and I used for the NCTE Write Across America session and then after lunch we scattered to write for two longer sessions drawing inspiration in true writing marathon fashion from our surroundings, our conversations with our fellow writers, and these poems. If you want to learn how to make writers in your classroom sign up today for the Morehead Writing Project Online Summer Institute.
What’s New? Today we live in a world I could not even conceive when I wrote this blog post and yet I also know that was a failure of the imagination. In recent years the stated goals that I put on my syllabi are simple, I want my students (and me) to grow:
- as humans
- as critical thinkers
- as writers and rhetoricians
Because I know if we are to survive and thrive as humans, members of our communities, and as a country and planet, that we need to grow and learn in these areas. I know there are many forces responsible for the state of humanity today, but I also know that the solution to our division and hatred can only be found in focusing on our humanity and our critical thinking skills – and the best way I know to do so is to write and connect in community. Writing in community offers profound connection and I feel that magic at work every time I engage in the practice. I teach argument writing as joining a conversation about a problem in your community but by the time we reach that point in the class we have engaged in many rounds of authentic writing to discover, uncover, and share who we are as humans. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all engaged in this practice on a regular basis? That’s why I continue to believe the world needs more writers.
Original: I know it is more popular to focus on STEM – especially science and technology – but the truth is that we need artists and creative thinkers now more than ever as our world continues to change at an ever-increasing pace. I agree with Henry Doss’s idea of an innovative SEA curriculum that embraces science, economics, and arts as a much better idea, but whether you embrace STEM, STEAM, or SEA, one fact has remained true under both old and new curricula – we need more writers.
Communicative abilities continue to be essential to employers and important for citizenship as my guru Clay Spinuzzi argues frequently when he writes about knowledge work (see The Way We Work Is Changing). Here in Kentucky, where we are all about college and career readiness, writing is an essential skill – for learning and working and participating in our global economy and community. I believe we are not unique in this need for more writers.
This is why the work of the National Writing Project is even more relevant today than it was four decades ago when the first Summer Institute was held in Berkeley. We need more writers and we need more educators to support their development. The process of developing writers is challenging and time-consuming. There are no easy fixes (see You Can’t Teach the Writing Process) but there are amazing resources and mentors out there (NWP has nearly 200 sites to make both easily accessible to teachers throughout the US).
The National Writing Project supports the teaching of writing by working with teachers at every level of education – from primary through post-secondary – across disciplines. Our network is unique because we cross boundaries that restrict others. We span the entire K-16 spectrum as well as bridge disciplines. This allows our teachers to teach and learn together in ways that are unique to the NWP experience. NWP recognizes that literacy needs to happen across the curriculum to best set students on a successful trajectory with tools they can carry forward on whatever life path they choose. Essential to this success is helping students become confident, self-regulating writers, but this is only possible when they are taught by confident, self-regulating writers. Far too many teachers are not confident writers so how can they create them? Focusing on teacher as writer is the founding principle of NWP and the primary goal of our Summer Institutes as well as the core of our ongoing mission.
The goal of the National Writing Project is to improve the teaching of writing. Born of the literacy crisis which sparked the Newsweek article “Johnny Can’t Write,” for 40 years NWP has been a grassroots movement focused on that one simple goal. Our methods are simple and we focus first on teacher as writer because we believe, quite fiercely, that writers make better writing teachers. This is because the writing process is not something that non-writers can really understand or teach effectively. We believe that everyone can become a writer and that transformation to writer should be our primary focus – rather that specific genres or writing tasks. Writers have the skills and confidence to tackle a variety of tasks, but if you have not helped your students become writers with a growing toolbox then most will continue to struggle every time they are faced with a new task or genre or writing situation – and many will fail to succeed.
Writers are created in a community that gives them a voice, helps them make connections, and offers a wide range of writing experiences. There are no shortcuts, worksheets, or graphic organizers to make writers – writers are made through writing.
And so I ask all educators: what are you doing to help us create more writers? Are you a writer? Are you involved with the National Writing Project? Are you supporting writers in your classroom? What are you willing to do to help us make more writers?
Note: If you happen to be in Lexington, Kentucky, this weekend you can learn more about these ideas during the Kentucky Council of Teachers Conference at the Morehead Writing Project session: Bridging the Writing Gap.
