Final Update: One of my advanced expository writing students just reflected after engaging in a writing workshop:
The part that was surprising to me was how useful it is to read other people’s expository writing and to see people’s drafts of it, not polished versions, and how eye-opening that can be for someone who wants to write and wants to learn more about writing. It truly was a very unique and helpful experience to have, and I am insanely grateful to have been able to be exposed to it. I had never experienced expository writing like this, and I think that by doing it with a community of people also learning has been immensely helpful. I think the fact that it was expository writing and personal experiences put into stories was very helpful to learn from. I learned how many people can have similar topics or lessons but have very different feelings, stories, or images that they create.
I have written often about the benefits of writing in community and this student’s experience brings tears to my eyes because I know how the benefits have rippled throughout my writing life. I will forever and always shout from the rooftops that all readers have something to teach writers and restricting feedback to the instructor is malpractice at best and the road to destruction at worst.
As I have only weeks left in this season of transition into my third act (and retirement) I have been thinking about how I can continue to build writing community in my life and continue to promote it via this writing evangelist blog.
Note: Final update does sound ominous but I take that approach because another goal for 2026 will be re-visioning what this blog and all its contains will become when I retire. One thing definitely remains true – writing in community is essential for the care and support of developing writers (which is all of us).
What’s Really New? Last week my students began drafting their rhetorical analysis essays and this week we will work on both wrapping up those essays and reflecting on their journey as writers. We really are in a sweet spot as writers. I love how many students are able to mine their notebooks for ideas and sometimes paragraphs of writing they can use for their essays. I love how many students are able to ask important driving questions for their peer reviewers. We are doing good important work in my classroom that will shape my students’ future as writers.
What’s New? This week my students began drafting their American Creed essays and as I moved around the class checking in with writers two things brought me joy. After three weeks of thinking, writing, and discussing our personal values and beliefs my students had lots to pull from to start their essays. I will never get over the thrill of watching students with their hands on their keyboards and their eyes on their filled notebook pages. While we have been preparing for those drafts, we have been reflecting, writing, and sharing our goals and challenges as writers and so as I moved around the room I was able to have essential and informed conversations about what the writers most wanted to ask their readers. I love everything about those conversations because they are key learning moves and shift the power and agency from me to the developing writers in my care. Writing workshop works in my classroom because we have done our homework as a community of writers and the awesome power and possibility of writing is ceded into the hands of those writers.
Original: Developing as a writer is a journey not a process, but that journey is not a straight line with clear landmarks which is one reason why writing progress is so challenging to teach and assess. My lifelong journey to become a better writer and a better teacher of writers is heavily influenced by my experience as a professional writer. I have always sought to replicate the feedback loops that supported me as both a journalist and novelist, but it was my National Writing Project work that introduced reflection into those loops and that has become the not-so-secret sauce in my classroom.
My Students are Writers
Every time my class meets we begin by writing this simple sentence frame “My name is ___ and I am a writer from ___.” There are multiple benefits to this simple class ritual, but for this post I want to focus the act of writing down the words “I am a writer.” My students write those words every time we meet as a class and then during that class they engage in writing and then share that writing with a supportive community. While the opening ritual and focus on writing have long been a part of my class format, this semester I shifted our reflection practice to include the specific instruction for my students to share their writing story for the week with the community. As with all our writing deliverables, students are prompted both in class and out of class to write about their journey as a writer that week. I love explicitly bookending our week with reminders to students that they are writers. I love focusing my students’ attention on what they are learning about writing and about themselves as writers. I love showing my students that words have power.
My Students have Writing Goals
Through my decades of teaching writing I have always encouraged my students to study their rhetorical situation to better understand the expectations that surround their writing deliverables. Often those conversations have centered around the writing workshop or peer review process. While I have asked my students to set writing goals both separate and as part of the process of asking for feedback, this semester I incorporated their goals into their writing stories to make that connection explicit and I’ve been very pleased with this shift in our thinking as a writing community. The practice of pairing goals with reflection combined with ungrading has offered my students agency over their own writing journey. The powerful combination of setting individual goals and reflecting on their individual journey within a supportive writing community can be transformative for writers at every level.
My Students are on a Journey
I have long argued on this blog and taught in my classes that learning to be a better writer is a journey. This understanding of writing development as a long (and often fraught) journey is one of the primary reasons for my love of the literacy narrative. This semester I have experimented with weaving my students’ literacy narratives throughout both our work and our workshop process to inform a TQE approach to their reading and feedback during workshop. In addition, TQE informs their end-of-unit reflections. Student writing and reflection has long been the focus text of my classroom and building in a process for students to share their thoughts, lingering questions, and epiphanies about their own writing as well as the writing of their peers (and the writers inspiring us from outside our community) is beneficial in so many ways.
My praxis focuses on showing my students the ways that writers think and act because my focus is helping students develop as writers while also developing tools they need to continue that growth after they leave my classroom. The journey to become a better writer never ends and I hope to spark joy in that adventure.
