Author Visit: Writing Workshop with Linda Urban

I sit at a table in my classroom, side by side with my students. Our workspace is layered with notebooks and index cards and black Flair pens and their covers. The students hands--and mine--scrawl a memory onto our pages. I'm finding myself transported to Barcelona, 1995; I'm sitting down to dinner with my high school Foreign Language Club. And while I'm about to sample that first ringlet of calamari again, I'm also keenly aware that my classroom is still and busy, humming with an aura of writers at work. 

"And, stop," a voice cuts the quiet. "Who has something they would be willing to share?" 

Half a dozen hands go up, and Linda Urban proceeds to move from one student to the next, signaling the students' moment, each reading aloud with confidence and pride the writing produced from an image conjured up through the selective questioning of the visiting author.

This week Linda Urban returned to OES to lead writing workshops for my 5th graders, enlisting their help in co-researchers about writers notebooks. Each workshop began with a glimpse into Linda's own notebooks and notebooks of other creators of kidlit, emphasizing the imperfect and the importance of writing in our notebooks for ourselves first. Then, my students and I participated in exercises selected from Linda's own study of and with comic-artist Lynda Barry (What It Is, 2009, and Syllabus, 2014). The curated exercises Linda facilitated were geared towards engaging writers and quieting their critical mind while using their writing notebooks as a place of play. My students were enthusiastic workshop participants and co-researchers, many producing more writing in short spurts of time than they typically do in our regular writing workshop and complaining when time had run out.

After school, Linda presented a third writing workshop session, this one for an audience of district colleagues and staff members. The adult audience wrote through many of the same exercises, and Linda shared her message about the importance of play in writers notebooks with research from numerous leaders in the field of education.

I am not new to the inspiration of Linda Urban. Linda and I collaborated in a long-term partnership a few years ago that shed light on Linda's process while revising Milo Speck: Accidental Agent and influenced me to strive for as much authenticity as possible in my classroom writing instruction. I've hosted Linda Urban at OES twice before, in both a classroom visit and a whole-school visit with assemblies designed for primary and intermediate audiences. I've witnessed her interactions with individual students and groups of almost 200 and know first-hand that Linda Urban's energy, sense of humor, and genuine nature contribute to her highly-engaging and phenomenal way with students.

And yet, I will never turn down an opportunity to be reminded.

Linda Urban's writing workshops were a terrific success. Here's why:

Linda builds quick and easy rapport with writers--both students and adults. In her willingness to share her own examples, Linda's model of vulnerability invites her workshop participants to take safe risks, also. Linda's interest in and respect for students has them eager to embrace their writer-selves.
Linda's suggestions are practical in practice. Each of the exercises and ideas Linda shared can be done in little time, making the commitment to "try it out" feel doable in and among all the other constraints we face in the classroom. Many of the ideas and practices Linda shares will require small shifts in the work we already do with students.
Linda's presentation is well-balanced between sharing her own story and examples, those of other writers, and issuing an invitation for student (and adult) writers to play and write. Our sessions were close to two hours long, and the participants could have gone for longer.
Linda's message about using notebooks and making time for play is important. And sometimes we need these important reminders to revisit, or we need the chance to slow down and experience the truth ourselves in order to recommit to doing what is best for students.

My week has been spent picking up little gems that my students and colleagues are putting down from our time with Linda Urban. It has been gratifying to overhear students make reference to their time spent with Linda, to incorporate small bits of what we shared together into the last few days in the classroom, and to bump into colleagues who attended the afternoon professional development session and hear them express how meaningful that time spent writing with Linda was to them.

We're thankful to have shared a day writer-to-writer with Linda Urban, and her words and encouragement will last through the year and beyond.

You can have Linda visit your school or classroom, too. (And honestly, I don't know why you wouldn't...) Send an inquiry or find out more.

Why I Write: Students Need Writing Mentors

My mother recently found and sent me a photo of myself at 18 months, sitting in a highchair at the kitchen counter in our first apartment. Blank pages before me, one heck of a grip on a pencil, and a beam of pride on my face. My mother's familiar handwriting on the bottom of the polaroid reads, "Writing Letters!"

I've always been a writer.

Who I am as a writer and what I know and understand about writing has changed, though. And so has writing instruction in my classroom.

I'd be fibbing if I attributed the change in my perspective to one single factor over the last few years. Truthfully, I can name three very specific events. But the one of these three that is most easily replicable is this:

I write.

What I write ranges from short bits of fiction to poetry to book reviews to professional pieces. Most of what I write lives inside of notebooks and my hard drive, has never (and probably will never) be seen or consumed by readers. What I write doesn't matter so much. It matters more that I do.

Writing regularly (or, close...ish) changed my perspective. When I looked at writing instruction in my classroom through my teacher-writer eyes, I could hardly look away from the incongruence of my writing workshop and my own writing life. So, while I write for a lengthy list of purely personal reasons, too, these reasons #WhyIWrite are some of my most important:

I write because every day I face forty-five apprenticing writers, and it makes all the difference when I can say to them over their notebooks and my own, "Yeah, me too."

I write because my students need writing mentors. Students should learn by engaging with a writer who has plentiful and practical experience in this thing they are learning to do.

I write because my own tendency to shield and protect my writer-heart from criticism and judgement reminds me of the need to be kind with my students' writer-hearts, too.

I write because experiencing that the process of writing changes for me with everything I try to write nags at me to be flexible and open to students' writing needs and paths to "publication" that don't look like mine.

I write because relationships are born of risk-taking and bearing ourselves, and if my students are going to trust me, I must take chances first.

I write because my students encourage me and inspire me.

I write because they want to know what happens next.

And so do I.

So Much Potential: On New Writer's Notebooks

Over time, my life as a writer has changed me. For instance, I have a greater appreciation for the potential of a new notebook.

Every time I begin a new writer's notebook, I find myself swept into this ultra-reflective state of mind. Flipping through the pages of the previous, finished notebook, I make note of the things preserved there--large and small--that I captured and stored away. Brave moments, developing ideas, markings of wonder, complaints, and celebrations. And inevitably, I close that finished notebook and smile to myself about all that filled the pages knowing that most of what is there now, committed in imperfect scribble, I didn't anticipate when I was writing on the first page.

Similarly, I found myself in this position this week when I saw my fifteenth First Day of School. I was ready with a few minutes to spare, and I sat in my too-quiet, too-tidy, too-white classroom, noting the connection between my feelings this morning to those that stir when I open to that first page of a new notebook. "There--at those cleared tabletops, in those empty chairs, on those blank walls--rests so much potential," I thought.

Soon, the quiet was replaced with eager energy, excited students looking and behaving a whole year older. The once empty tables were cluttered again with toppling school supplies.

We went about the business of sorting and storing materials. When I asked the students to hold up their writer's notebooks, something surreal moved through the air. As I gathered the notebooks at each of their tables, I was struck with the assortment and imagined them in the back-to-school aisles of the stores, thoughtful and deliberate in picking their new writer's notebooks. I was overcome by what I know from experience: on this day, they could not know how those blank pages will be filled, what will happen in the days they live as writers, but later they will look back with wonderment of what is there.

And this became the basis of launching writers' workshop with my students, the heart of my impassioned words about the endless possibilities and potential a new notebook holds. I held their stack of brand-new notebooks and talked with unrestrained enthusiasm about how much I wonder about their blank notebooks, and how wonderful and exciting it is to dream of the growing and self-discovery that will fill their pages. I spoke to my writers about the gift of time to write, to wonder, to explore. I spoke of writing imperfectly, taking chances, and the opportunity to revisit and revise. And I spoke about the great privilege that I feel, because I get to journey beside them as a writer, too. Every day. This whole school year.

I told my writers about my ritual of reflecting at the end/start of each new notebook, and I flipped open to the first page of the very notebook I'm writing in now. I read this first page aloud:

It was quiet when I stopped. I had goosebumps. I looked around at their faces, reading the expressions. They were on the edge of their seats, their eyes sparkled, and they couldn't suppress their smiles. So, I did the very most perfect thing to do: I invited them to write, encouraging them to let their first, new, blank page to speak to them.

I returned their notebooks with great reverence, as best I could between uncoordinated attempts to brush away embarrassing tears. But always astute, they noticed, and I heard one student tell another, "This matters so much, she's crying!" The tears were entirely unplanned, but Yes, Dear Writer, your new beginning as a fifth grade writer very much matters.

Once all of the students had their notebooks again, I settled with my own and began drafting this post. Once or twice I made myself pause to observe their stamina and behaviors. Almost without exception, their pencils were moving fluidly.

Before I left for the day, I peeked inside their notebooks, curious what I would find there. Some students had launched into drafting stories, but some had listened for the voice of the blank page, and their voices caught my heart.  

"How can I become the most spectacular writer I can be?" 

Wow, kid. Keep asking. Please.

I love how creatively the blank page "spoke" for this writer.

Moving from grade 4 to grades 5/6 this year, I recognize the growth on these first pages, too. A year later, a year more of life as a writer, and the students aren't as afraid of the blank page. Maybe, just maybe, they see that blank page as limitless possibilities...so much potential.

Thirty Days of Writing: Looking Back

My December "Don't Break the Chain" Calendar

Today makes 30 days. December 1 to December 30.
I wrote for 30 minutes on every one of those 30 days.
My longest string yet.

So, on this last day of #writedaily30, I'm looking back.

Calling today "the last day" has me a little on edge. See, I can't really look at today as a "last" day. I've been successful with this challenge, but I can't afford to chance breaking the chain. I can't treat today's celebration of my accomplishment as a finale or lean on 30 days of success as a reason I don't need to write tomorrow.

The truth is, I do.

I do need to write tomorrow. And the day after. And the 363+ days that come afterward. 
I do need a place to reflect and express and play and create and explore.

I don't always need the same thing of my writing time, but I do always need my time to write.

My December #writedaily30 goal was essentially to show up. To make a commitment to keep my pen moving on paper for 30 minutes every day. No specific topic, no intended audience, no pressure to publish. Just "me" time with my notebook to see what would come.

Writing is generative.

Flitting among the pages of two (Yes, not one, but two!) notebooks, there are recurring themes and ideas I have circled back to. There are pages that house classroom vignettes or specific memories I'll be glad to hold on to. And there are occasional rants or outpourings of questions--followed by more questions--that may never have real answers. But that's ok.

All of it is, actually. Because it's evidence of how my thinking and my life as a writer are evolving. Together.

Last night I set a timer for five additional minutes after my 30 had passed. I wanted those five-more-minutes to respond to Linda Urban's prompt: What have you learned about yourself? What have you learned about goals and daily writing and commitment?

Reflective notes flowed freely from my pen. I was astonishing by the ease in which I was listing! Could it be that while my attention was turned to keeping a 30-day writing commitment and establishing a habit, I was glazing over some bigger realizations? Like these:

• Ideas come to me. All. The. Time. An offshoot of writing daily means that consciously or subconsciously, I anticipate the chance to write. My daily goings on include observing, generating, and storing ideas for writing time, whether intentional or not.

• My notebook is an extension of myself. Along with my wristlet and phone, my notebook is the third thing that travels with me almost everywhere. And I depend on my notebook to catch my randomness--inspirations or otherwise.

• Sometimes the pressure of posting publicly stifles me as a writer. I get caught up in doing it right. Giving myself permission to "take a break" from blogging was hard, but a necessary reprieve to let me get back to reflecting on and banking ideas. And I've come away with at least a dozen smaller writing pieces that I can return to. That said...

• I need to up the ante on myself. Free writing with no pressure has been what I needed this month, but now I need to attend to a nagging idea that is begging for more of my attention. It's time to find a balance between continuing to generate writing and making project-specific progress.

• As solitary and personal as writing is, keeping the company of other writers is motivating to me. Beyond the gentle nudge of accountability, the #writedaily30 community is special, generously encouraging one another with positive responses to expressions of relief or frustration.

So...
Today I'm celebrating my success. 
I kept a commitment for 30 days and wrote 30 minutes on each of those days.
And I came away with lots of possible blog posts, a project to pursue, and a whole lot to think through about what it means to be a writer and a teacher of writing.

I'm pretty sure I still need to write tomorrow.

A Letter to My Blog

Dear Neglected Blog,

I'm sorry. I realize I've done a really poor job of keeping you refreshed and up-to-date with my reading diet, happy celebrations, and otherwise random musings of classroom life and professional endeavors. I feel really guilty that I have not shared the highlights of #NCTE14 or amazing connections my students have had with books and authors. I know it likely seems I have been swallowed whole by a book I have yet to review, and that is somewhat disheartening to you. It is to me, too.

So, let me begin by reassuring you: I am still the same "me." I'm still doing important work helping kids find who they are and assume their place of responsibility in a crazy world every day. I'm still a nerdy book lover, devouring middle grade novels in a single sitting (when I can). I'm still thinking-incessantly-about what is going right in my professional world and what needs to change. And, I'm still writing, I promise. In fact, I'm writing more now than ever before.

So then, you ask, what's the deal?
Why no new posts since mid-November?
Why the skipped weeks of #IMWAYR?

*sigh*

For the most part, it's because I'm writing. 
A lot. 
All the time. 
In my notebook.
To reach this point, I've had to give myself permission to relax about posting to you, sad Blog. I've had to allow myself the freedom to write to explore my ideas without the expectation of publishing for an audience, without the pressure of finding words that are pretty, or perfect, or provocative enough to interest readers. And you know-just between you and I-doing so has actually give me PAGES of what feel like possibilities. Possibilities for researching and revisiting and revising... Things that might grow into blog posts I can share later, that will help you appear "impressive."

Dear Blog, I hear your cry of concern that time is passing me by, and I'm not saying enough or showing everyone else who I am. I share your concern a little, too. But right now, this free, personal writing feels good, feels promising. So I'm going to trust in it...for a little while longer.

I want people to look at you...I do. I hope you can one day do even more to introduce me to people and connect me to great professionals with whom I can stretch my thinking. For now though, I beg you, be patient with me and my process. Support me in taking the quiet road. I have some things I need to think about. Explore. Tussle out. 
For a few more weeks, at least.

I will be back. Don't give up on me. 
I'm just finding my way.

Your wandering (but no less committed) writer,
Melissa

Unleashing the Writer Within

One of my major classroom goals this year is to empower my students in writing, to free their inner writer. 

In order to achieve this goal, I am adjusting course and pushing my own writing instruction further. My effort is to strike a balance between teaching structures and craft in writing and teaching expression and purpose in writing. My first instructional shift was to devote a length of time at the start of the year to the purpose of writers' notebooks. Considering that I may have historically rushed students through the stage of "owning" their notebooks and written content, I wanted to slow down this year, modeling and guiding students to curate ideas in their notebooks.

Our year of writers' workshop kicked off with a directive the students were unaccustomed to when I told them to make a mess. Then, in the days of "mess-making" that followed, I observed the students' daily work. I sampled the crowd some days, recording the frequency in which I saw long, voluminous writing, alternative experiments to log writing ideas, and/or strategies to generate writing.

Based on the samples and frequency in which they appeared (or did not appear) in the students' notebooks, I designed a sequence of mini-lessons to highlight lesser seen methods of generating ideas. This allowed me to influence students more directly and facilitate guided practice, exposing students to more available options for bringing about writing. 

Plenty of "what ifs" to explore

Over the last two weeks, pages of brand-new composition notebooks have become collections of

• sketches, drawings, and diagrams
• lists (related to firsts, lasts, people, places, objects, emotions)
• maps of familiar places
• questions and wonders
• three-column lists (borrowed from a Jo Knowles' writing talk).

Not all students tried all of the strategies modeled during the independent portion of the workshop. I decided that was ok for this particular unit, especially since my primary goal was to help students get in touch with their inner writer-voice. An attempt at each was all I required, and the workshop practice qualified as making an attempt.

Left: Map of a familiar place;
Right: List making with firsts, lasts, etc.

In the tail-end of this unit, I've been conferencing with students to listen to their preferred strategies and what writing they have unearthed from within. Many have been joyful and proud in sharing the different "possibilities" in their notebooks. Even my most reluctant writers have been able to name something they tried that felt like it was working. 

In the first month of school, this group of students has produced more writing than the previous years' classes. Sure, there is never a pure study, and I know there are all kinds of variables at play, but easing up on the pressure of expectations and validating students' effort and imperfection seems to have resulted in volume writing and improved engagement. My deliberate decision to coax out the writer within has reinforced the idea that all students can write, and every written attempt has value.

What are some alternative strategies for generating writing that you model/facilitate for students?

On Being a Writer

What does it mean to want to be a writer?

Is that something we "want to be" or something we are, in various stages or progressions, because we engage in the act of communicating through written language?

I am a writer. It isn't a question of whether I want to be or not. I am a writer.

I have been a writer for as long as I can remember. Reflecting on my early memories of writing sent me digging for artifacts from the past. I hadn't been through my collection of elementary school keepsakes in a while, but I was 

confident I would find what I was looking for: my very first book. My first 

A nurse?
That dream didn't last long!

"published" work was entitled "Renting a V.C.R." (Copyright 1984). The book 

cover was a late 70's style wallpaper glued to a sturdy piece of cardboard. The 

binding was reinforced with red tape. Mrs. Palmer, my kindergarten teacher typed my words, and I illustrated the story. And, best of all, my book included an About the Author page, penned in Mrs. Palmer's very neat handwriting. 

Without a doubt, it was a treasure.

The treasure of this book—even though I was unaware then—is that it was a gateway. It was a positive experience with sharing my real story with classmates, my teacher, and my parents. They told me: I had something to say. They showed me: I was a writer. And so my identity as a writer began.

In first grade, I wrote simple books. The first grade version of me progressed from word books (written for my baby brother) to longer stories that began to resemble the familiar bed-to-bed tales. My illustrations, while not deserving of the Caldecott Honor, helped to tell the stories in half-page construction paper booklets, too.

In fourth grade, I was a playwright. Or, I was determined to be, writing pages and pages of play scripts and enlisting the help of any friends I could coerce into joining me (which wasn't many, incidentally). I spent hours after hours in the musty basement on a folding chair at the old card table dreaming up dialogue and stage directions.

In my moody middle school years, I discovered an outlet through poetry. Some of my poems were corny and contrived, but others were filled with emotion and became a vessel for expressing inner conflicts, the start of self-discovery.

I didn't write as freely in high school, nor did I write creatively in college. My writing life was far more academic in focus. In some respects, as writing became more prescribed and forced, I did less of my own writing and more to satisfy expectations. My choice to write went dormant for a spell. And, in fact, until recently, I could count on one hand the number of writing projects I've engaged in by choice.

There isn’t a good excuse for why I wasn’t writing. Time, I suppose is the greatest factor. I wasn’t taking time or making time. I engaged in plenty of rich, creative thinking and philosophical dialogue. I constructed aloud and elaborated on ideas excitedly. Yet, that deep thinking is ghost-like, with so many seedlings of writing that have slipped away because they were not captured or recorded.

Sometimes circumstances force development.

In time, two things happened. First, I grew tired of making examples or producing stilted models of writing to share with students in my writing workshops. A writer though I was, I was faking it when leading the writers in my classroom with pristine writer’s notebook pages and snippets of writing I had composed specifically for the lesson but in which I had little genuine investment.

Second, my professional setting and peer group changed. My closest colleagues—those upon whom I depended to bat ideas around or to engage in healthy pedagogical debate—left my school community for different reasons. New relationships are growing and must be built, of course, but I have naturally gravitated back to the paper as a thinking partner. I have turned increasingly introspective and often explore my ideas and beliefs in the pages of my notebooks. I write to engage my mind in possibility, to dream up a new great plan, or to give time and attention to thoughts that otherwise go unattended. I need a way to capture, develop, and refine my thinking, and I can depend on my Sharpie pens and my notebook to be there.

Melissa, Writer, age 5

Today, I am a writer. 

I have always been a writer. I see that, having dusted myself off, reacquainting myself, and allowing myself time to spend writing. My goals need to be developed and may even change. My audience, subject, and purpose may vary. But my identity as a writer does not.

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.

Handling my Blank Page

Staring.
At a blank page.
Words elude.
Coherence escapes.

Confusion.
   Tears.
Frustration.
   Take a break.
Emptiness.
   Just say so.

Purpose stripped.
Interest robbed.
Committing self to paper--
precarious.

Scribble it out.
Type it up.
Post.

And wait.