I began writing alongside students so I could experience the work as a writer. I was doing the writing work because I needed it for the thing I cared about most: teaching. I wanted to be a strong teacher, and the area where I most needed to improve was my writing instruction. It was a disaster.
When I started writing what I was asking kids to write, things changed. They changed because I experienced the ridiculous assignments as a student and realized they weren’t meaningful at all; they were busywork. After all, if the teacher doesn’t want to do the assignments, there’s a good chance no one in the room wants to do them. It was a travesty. It was salvaged by the lesson I learned: Just because an idea sounds good doesn’t mean it actually is. We must do the things we ask students to do and experience the learning (or busywork) to vet the practice. Cute ideas don’t translate to effective practices.
Being a teacher who writes wasn’t enough to transform my writing instruction. My instruction changed because I sought insider knowledge about being a writer. I figured out how to work through stumbling blocks, and I learned the nuances of different genres. I determined how to make things accessible for all students, not just those who were “naturals.” The more I learned about being a writer, the more convinced I became that all people can learn to write.
This paradigm shift rocked my world. Throughout my elementary, high school, and undergrad years, teachers told me I was “lucky because I could write” or “a natural at writing” or “had some talent as a writer.” As I was writing what I asked students to write, I realized that I needed to figure out how the writing worked to have something to say in a lesson. That way all of my students could become stronger writers, not just the lucky ones. Writing, like math, could be learned. I didn’t need to leave it to luck.
My notebook was a workhorse, teaching me the importance of specificity in instruction as well as the essentials of the writing process. I focused on understanding the writing process so I could empower students to make it unique to their own needs. Being a teacher writer was simply part of my livelihood as an educator. I needed it to determine my lessons and to differentiate my conferences according to student needs.
Think Like a Teacher
To move from using my notebook as a writer to using my notebook as a teacher, my brain must flip the work I do as a writer into moves I can share with students. Rather than feeling like I’ve arrived simply because I have writing to share with students, I take time to reflect.
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What moves do I repeat?
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How can I name what I am doing as a writer?
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What variations have I seen students (or other writers) do?
This changed the game for my writing instruction. I loved the challenge of finding a way to give concrete advice for my students to become stronger writers. For example, when students were struggling with fluency for narrative writing, I found myself saying, “Just add details.” Although students nodded like they understood, their writing wasn’t getting any longer, so I banished the phrase “just add more details,” and challenged myself to figure out advice for the writers who needed more than luck to write longer scenes.
I looked over my own narrative writing and spent time thinking about the questions.
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What moves do I repeat? I write with a lot of dialogue and action. I include the time and describe how the setting looks. I love to use sounds, which made me check to see if I use the other senses. I was surprised to find four of the senses in my writing.
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How can I name what I am doing as a writer? I could name some of the moves I was making, such as dialogue and onomatopoeia, but I didn’t know what to call “describe how the setting looks.” It’s description, I thought, but I knew that wouldn’t be helpful to students. I went on to the next question.
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What variations have I seen students (or other writers) do? I thought about the way Ryan described a rooster trail of rocks spinning out from the back tire of his uncle’s motorcycle. I considered the way Jane Yolen described the Jewish stars in The Devil’s Arithmetic. I thought about Jami’s description of her baby brother when she first met him in the hospital. I realized that writers describe all kinds of things. There is object description and character description. This allowed me to make the leap to connect dialogue and action as things characters do. In fact, there is a whole slew of character details: dialogue, action, description, and feeling.
By allowing my brain to flip the work from writer to teacher, I knew how to help students write longer scenes. We talked about sensory details, object details, character details, and setting details.
As I shared my insider knowledge, students started writing more. We took the mystery out of plot and talked about struggles and tension. We discussed kinds of struggles common to humans, external and internal conflict, and words that make the reader sense tension. The word suddenly was a game changer for many less experienced writers in the room.
As students learned how writers work the words to create a clear message, they experienced the positive challenge of writing. It’s a puzzle we all must learn to solve—how to stack words to build a message that affects readers.
