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.

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.

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?

I Told My Students to Make a Mess

It's the first week of school, and my new students are impressionable. And I told them to make a mess. 
I really did.

The students have started their 4th grade writers' notebooks.

Friday I plopped three of my own notebooks in front of my students and flipped through the pages under the document camera. I paused to show lists (after lists after lists after lists), some started, others titled and left lonely for a long time, and a few illustrating returns and additions with different colored inks and check marks noting pieces I've explored. I pointed out webs, doodles, maps...anything that I thought would challenge their thinking. But mostly I emphasized imperfection--MESS.

One of this year's students names
good writing "the perfect ones."

My thinking has been guided by years of students with the same ingrained perceptions of writing. Students envision good writing as completed, published work. This year's writing surveys produced words and phrases like neat, good handwriting, capitals and periods, long, makes her [teacher] smile, books, perfect. I realize I'll need to work to continuously combat old perceptions and help students re-vision writing. One of my overarching goals for writing this year is to help students to embrace messiness as part of the process, part of what it means to write.

I want the permission to make a mess--the invitation to have mess inside their notebooks--to be empowering. I hope students will find my acceptance and encouragement to be freeing. I hope it will alleviate some of the pressure that comes with a long-standing image of "writing" as shiny and polished and pretty.

I will continue to keep my notebook and writing process open to my students. This week I will also share images and stories Linda Urban has shared on her blog. I will project a photo that Jeff Anderson shared on Twitter. While showing my writing is powerful, the examples of these published writers will model for students that this isn't just a teacher thing I'm telling them.

Of course, by encouraging students to allow messiness as part of their writing process, I've also invited some big implications for me as a teacher.

I need to embrace students' mess. What they want to try in their notebooks and call writing has to be ok. Work samples varying from lists to graphic novel drafts need to be validated. I've always considered myself tolerant of honoring students' paths, but...am I? When a student came to me during our writing time, disbelieving, and asked, "Can I draw in my notebook?" I had to catch myself before telling him no, torn between encouraging his writing and worrying about avoidance. If that is his entry point, I need to follow. And think about how I'm going to nudge him further. Managing this students' trajectory will likely be handled best through writing conferences.

My perception of monitoring writing progress needs some revision also. It won't be as simple as glancing through the pages to look for approximately one page of writing each day. The work of a writer is not so predictable and calculated. Some days a student may have invested more in small, deliberate revisions than his counterpart who drafted a third repetitive page of a story without direction. There aren't quick or easy rules towards evaluating student progress. I won't be able to judge a student's effort or progress without investing time in learning about the writer. I need to find out who my writers are now--today--in the second week of school. And then I need to watch for evidence of shifts...progress...growth.

So, I'm pulling on my rain boots and rolling up my sleeves, spending time "making mess" with students in our notebooks this week. I need to notice the writing students collect in their writers' notebooks this week. I need to make note of students who might have some reservation about mess, and I need to affirm and celebrate instances of risk taking, wild and messy writing that helps commit thinking to paper. Maybe compiling these observations about the examples they try and what they attempt can inform my next steps and minilessons. After all, it's my students response to my invitation that will give me guidance about where to go.