Wrapping Write

What’s New? As I wrap up yet another year of teaching it is bittersweet. I will write with my first year writers, this wonderful community that has brought me so much laughter and joy this semester, just two more times and then never again. Tears are rolling down my cheeks at the thought. I will need to pull myself together before I head down the hall to teach. But today we are going to plan our final jam sessions where my charge to my students is to delight me with their rhetorical skills and I know that they will. This year I have leaned into project-based writing which means giving my students choice so while I suspect most students will choose games because that is the source of so much of our fun this semester there will still be several who opt for a slant essay instead. Our final days together will be marked with showcases and reflections and that makes me happy and proud – but I will miss these writers.

Update: In some ways the Fall 2022 semester has been wonderful. I have spent the semester engaged in inviting writers and building community and I will bitterly miss this community of writers. I will see many of these students on campus and some will return to my classroom in the spring semester but I will never again write with this specific community and that makes me so sad. My one comfort is that I have built a community of writers by celebrating writing in every class meeting. As I read student reflections about our writing journey I am struck over and over again by how important it is to center authentic writing if your goal is to make writers. This semester I was not a perfect instructor and I did not teach perfect classes, but I did make writers and that was the plan. How will you wrap up write?

More important than ever

While we know the midterm wall can be brutal, there is nothing like the exhaustion that students, teachers, and administrators face in the final weeks of the school year. The spring semester is always tougher than the fall semester and my math skills are not up to the challenge of calculating how much more difficult this semester has been more than a year into a pandemic with the continued worry about what the summer and fall will look like. Sometimes I can summon optimism about school in the fall and other times I need to grab a paper bag to control my breathing, but right now I must focus every ounce of energy to just get myself and my students through this semester.

I know that I am not alone with this struggle as I have seen repeated appeals on social media and teacher message boards for ideas to help their students navigate these final weeks of the school year. I suggest that teachers consider one of these three paths: Celebrate, Play, Reflect. Personally, I choose to embrace all three because I just love a twofer, but think you cannot go wrong with any combination you choose. Focusing on celebration, play, and reflection will be good for your students and good for you. I hope that is a twofer anyone can get behind.

Celebrate

Recognizing and celebrating individual achievement has been a cornerstone of my praxis for a long time. I have used student-awarded badges for this purpose and I know that reading the evidence supporting those awards is a highlight of my week. Many students find joy in recognizing their peers’ achievements as well as receiving recognition themselves. I love using praise poetry as the capstone of this mutual admiration and will always cherish the poems written from this practice. Sometimes I shake up the more traditional praise poems by mixing in superpowers for a bit of fun to break up the emotion. I started the practice of praise poetry to provide closure to our journey as a community and provide students a much-needed boost to carry them through finals week. I can only think how much more of a boost we all need this year. I highly recommend including yourself in this practice, too. You need this boost just as much as your students.

Play

One of the most damaging trends in American education is our abandonment of play. Even in elementary school we have cut the time and opportunity for play and it is often missing entirely from middle school and high school. We have done so even as science has established the role of play in both learning and well-being. I have built a whole class around games, but even before I began gaming the teaching of writing I made play a key part of wrapping up the semester and beating end-of-semester stress. Now I end the spring semester, my gaming semester, with a game jam, but even my fall semester, which is focused on American literacy, wraps up with a fun, creative project that can be almost anything from a poem to a letter to a cartoon (or even a game). Learning can, should, be fun and playful, too. We all need more play in our lives.

Reflect

Reflection is a key part of my philosophy for teaching writing. As part of my #ungrading process, my students reflect throughout the semester. However, a final reflection to bring the lessons and experiences of our semester’s work together is also essential to my praxis. I believe in the power of the literacy narrative as tool to inspire and guide reflection. Helping your students conduct a transliteracy reflection at the end of the year can provide a valuable yet low-stakes learning experience that plants literacy seeds for the future and helps lock in essential lessons.

It is tempting I know to choose the path of least resistance and to just put everything on autopilot at this point in the semester, but simple low-stakes literacy activities can provide both respite and a capstone for learning. Focusing on celebration, play, and reflection at the end of a semester or year can be just what everyone needs after any school year, but especially after this school year. What is your recipe for wrapping write?

Author: Deanna Mascle
#TeachingWriting and leading #NWP site @ Morehead State (KY): Passionate about #AuthenticWriting, #DeeperLearning, #PBL, #Ungrading, and #HyperDocs.

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