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.

Five Things I'm Celebrating About nErDcampMI

Parma, Michigan is not a short trip from my little town in western Maine. But it's a distance I'm willing to travel to spend time in a place where the energy for all-things-literacy runs high, a place where I can refill my cup and pocket seeds of inspiration alongside other nerdy folks from all over the country. nErDcampMI is a professional development opportunity that I am celebrating.

Five Things I'm Celebrating About nErDcampMI

Photo credit: #nerdyphotographer Justin

1. Connections. 
Some of the truest relationships I have built are with others who share the love of all things nerdy, and yet, in most cases, these important people are people I see only a few times a year--if that often. For my Voxer group, nErDcampMI is a gathering space for us to return to, to celebrate and to enjoy each other's company. And, true of my Voxer group and other nerdy friends, too, it is easy to pick right up where we last left off. I don't think any of this is an accident. It comes down to friendships that are seeded in deep-rooted passions...passions that are alive and thriving at nErDcampMI, passions that are so central to our identity. It is so important to know we are not alone. Not just to "know," but to feel we are not alone, and nErDcampMI provides a gathering space where we can feel our commonality pulsating. And while we're returning home this week feeding on the nErDcampMI energy, connections built here will be sustained all year long.

2. Story. 

For the second year, I was honored to present a session on Day One of nErDcampMI. In a session called Writing Mentorship, Beyond Mentor Texts, I showcased my students' learning and growth as writers that resulted from experienced writers (both published authors and *ahem* me) sharing our writing lives transparently. I am so lucky to be able to tell the stories of my students and my classroom and of my own learning in hope of inspiring others. (Not-so-)Secret: It makes me wildly nervous to prepare and present, but I will always swallow my fear for the opportunity to share the Story my students and I are writing.

But sharing stories isn't limited to organized sessions, and the informal, spontaneous conversations that I had with other teachers and writers have left me as hopeful as the opportunity to speak on this topic did. I hope my story and my example of transparency with my writing life can be even a small nudge that helps someone else discover the value of writing and sharing their writing life with their students. I sincerely hope I can cheer other teachers on as they begin to build a their writing lives bravely. I'd love to hear their stories, too.

I can't wait to tell new students 
about meeting Nora Raleigh Baskin 
& to share nine, ten with them.

3. Learning. And learners.
There are organized sessions and Nerd Talks preplanned for Day One, often by prominent names and podcasting to empowering student readers to strategies for teaching perspective in writing and beyond. (Find the notes from all of the Day Two sessions on the nErDcampMI Idea Board.) But the people. The people who come to nErDcampMI open and curious and with a mindset of growth and self-improvement. And that makes nErDcampMI a positive and refreshing climate of professional learning that leaves you inspired to try something new or different that what you knew (or thought you knew) before.

personalities we love and admire. There are always too many interesting and appealing options of pop-up sessions on Day Two to choose from. The opportunities for learning at nErDcampMI are abundant and diverse, ranging from

My students are BIG fans of 
Tracey Baptiste's The Jumbies.

4. Gratitude.
Something special about nErDcampMI is the make-up of the crowd. Sure, 1,200 people is A LOT of people. But in and among the hundreds of teachers, librarians, and other educators is a great number of authors and illustrators (and their editors, too!) who generously make the trip to connect with all of us, also. To have authors and illustrators accessible to lend expertise to panels and discussions, to field questions and compliments about their books, and to take endless photos with us that undoubtedly boost our star-status with students IS special. I am glad for the opportunity to express gratitude to these creators who make the books our students love, books that grow them as young people.

5. Magic.

Jenni Holm conferences a young writer's four-panel comic.

Possibly my very favorite part of living the nerdy life is making connections between readers/writers and the authors they love and admire, so having a chance to volunteer at nErDcamp Jr. is the perfect conclusion to filling my own cup at nErDcampMI. Overseeing a small group of young readers and writers as they rotate between author sessions and dinner is a fantastic "pit stop" in the middle of summer to talk to kids and to witness the magic of talking to and learning from published authors and illustrators. This year my group had mini-writing sessions with Jenni Holm, Ruth McNally Barshaw, and Louise Borden. The students were respectful, thoughtful, and engaged. I love thinking about my return to my own students and sharing with them that I could connect with new kid-friends in Michigan over a shared appreciation of the same books.

nErDcampMI organizers (Colby & Alaina Sharp, Suzanne Gibbs, and team) have a lot to be proud of with another successful year in the books. Congratulations...and thank you.

You can take part in reflecting and celebrating each week, too! Ruth Ayres hosts Celebrate This Week - the Celebrate Link-Up on her blog every Saturday. Take time to celebrate.