Developing Identity: Vulnerability and Value (Children Want to Write #2)

[As a member of my school’s Leadership Team, I have volunteered to facilitate a monthly book study using the text Children Want to Write: Donald Graves and the Revolution in Children’s Writing. This is one entry in an intended series devoted to reflections, musings, and captured wisdom that results from our book study readings and discussions. See how it started here.]

The DVD that accompanies Children Want to Write is a treasure trove of additional fodder for reflective teachers. When introducing the reading assignment for our session (chapters 1 & 2), I prepared colleagues to expect the featured video for chapter 2, “The Mother of the Story,” to be part of our discussion. Together we viewed the clip in which one young writer, Debbie, articulates what writing is really about—for her.

During the group viewing, I asked colleagues to watch the video specifically to identify characteristics of this student that made her a writer. The interview Lucy Calkins conducts with Debbie emphasizes her identity as a writer. She describes her ownership of her writing, expressing how she is in control of the choices and decisions related to her work. While she honors the influence of others in her writing community, she knows she is ultimately the decision-maker, or “the mother of the story.”

In the resulting conversation, my colleagues and I reflected on the conditions that are currently in place in our writing workshops, and we dreamed aloud of what we would like to see and do in order to promote such self-awareness and high levels of reflection in our own students. We want to nurture our students towards the development of their own writing identities.

Debbie’s confidence in describing herself as a writer and her relationship to her writing is evidence of the active role she assumed as a writer. She showed deep investment in her writing and owned her ideas. She was comfortable taking chances, and changing her mind or standing her ground. She recognized an intrinsic reward in writing. 

Comparatively, I frequently encounter students who are more passive, operating from a position in which writing is something done “to” them, given as an assignment or a consequence. Risk taking weighs them down, and fear of having nothing "good enough" to write paralyzes them from the start. The act of writing is not yet internalized and ownership of the writing is not yet actualized. 

How do we make the shift?

I take hints at ways to begin from Graves’ wisdom about writers and vulnerability and value.

Students need opportunities to see themselves in the role of a writer. I need to empower them with words and wide-reading experiences, and I need to gift them with time. I can instill this idea by calling them writers, and reminding them they are. I can involve them in partnerships with other writers, including myself, stretching their potential as developing writers. I can create ways to share and celebrate their writing.

Students need to experience that they have ideas worth thinking, exploring, and sharing through writing. I need to validate that their ideas have worth. I can cheerlead their efforts, honor the personal nature of their work, and recognize the risk that is involved. I can help students increase their comfort with vulnerability by being a vulnerable writer myself.

Students need to find acceptance, through discovery, that writing is often imperfect, sometimes unfinished, unpublished, and/or private and not shared with a wider audience. I can de-emphasize final drafts and publishing. I can model more exploratory writing and be an example of a writer who doesn’t perfect every piece I begin. I can to broaden students’ perception of what writing is.

Debbie was a writer. By accepting vulnerability and internalizing the value of her written work, Debbie developed her identity as a writer. With some intentional choices to promote these habits in our writing workshop, so can our students.

Too Many "Would-be-Writers" (Children Want to Write #1)

[As a member of my school’s Leadership Team, I have volunteered to facilitate a monthly book study using the text Children Want to Write: Donald Graves and the Revolution in Children’s Writing. This is intended to be the inaugural entry in a series devoted to reflections, musings, and captured wisdom that results from our book study readings and discussions.]

Why this book, and why now?

            It seems each year I work at puzzling through negativity in students around writing. Reluctant writers, they’ve been called. They have been characterized as unwilling, difficult, and/or unable. Yet, I wonder if my classroom make-up has been comprised of “would-be-writers,” as in, students who would want to write and would enjoy writing if they had a chance to be writers.

            I’m fearful that in an effort to deliver good writing instruction, we may have actually exacerbated the challenges of writing by establishing conditions in which students have been expected to write as a performance, an attempt to meet certain specifications as outlined by their teachers. Conversations with students often reveal that writing is perceived as a task or assignment to be completed, something that is done to fulfill teachers’ directions. Do we create this by imposing routines and structures with too many parameters and prompts in an attempt to “cover” writing objectives?

           Donald Graves’ work describes the necessity of a different outlook. Graves’ writings and research cause us to slow down as practitioners, and he refocuses us on the students…the writers. Children Want to Write is a compilation of Graves’ work that invites teachers to slow down, to reflect, and to consider what it means to be a writer—both by engaging in the practice of writing ourselves and by trying on the mindset of our students to understand their development as writers.

            I accepted this invitation from Graves (through the work of Penny Kittle and Tom Newkirk) in the summer months, spending days with my copy of Children Want to Write. My own thinking and reflection, scrawled in the margins and in and around the text, prompted a freshness for me in returning to writing workshop in the fall—I was enthused about inviting students to write, and I was a renewed writer myself. When the opportunity arose in my school community to propose titles of professional texts to be considered for a building-wide book study, Children Want to Write was atop my list. I enthusiastically shared my hope that this work would become a basis for wide reaching discussion about writing instruction. I hoped others would have a stirring reaction to the text and that it would inspire us to create conditions school-wide to develop writers, to guide students in self-discovery through writing, to facilitate a shift in student affect towards writing.

            After reading the first chapter herself, Graves’ strong invitation to teachers of writing to be writers themselves sparked my principal with energy to encourage our staff to engage in writing themselves. Hoping to encourage us, she enlisted the PTA’s support to purchase Moleskin notebooks for each participating staff member. Each book study session incorporates at least one invitation to write with an optional prompt for those who want a starting place.

            Our work with Children Want to Write is significant and important, a message emphasized in the choice to hold our book study sessions during reserved staff meeting times. This communicates that the work we are doing as a learning community is worth the investment of time and energy. Our book study group includes classroom teachers, special education teachers, our literacy coach and interventionists, and our principal. The experience of the group ranges from those who were fortunate to hear Graves speak in person at the onset of his revolution to first year teachers who are absorbing his influence eagerly, having been impacted by the work of Graves in their own formative years.

            The shared conversations, the commitment to deeper learning about writing instruction that positively impacts students, the redirection to the writers we are developing…these things make me hopeful. I am hopeful that Children Want to Write, and what we as professionals do with it, can be a catalyst to change writing for our students in big ways. I am hopeful that we can create an environment for learning with fewer “would-be-writers” and more students (and teachers) who proudly identify themselves as writers.