The Power of Voice

Navigating the turbulent waters of middle school is never easy for anyone; it sure wasn't for me at least.  Many students come to school, damaged, struggling under oppressive weights, and often they have had to learn at a young age to put up a protective layer that even many battle-scarred adults didn't develop until much later in life.  Even those students who come from comfortable, supportive, and nurturing home environments still find themselves having to navigate the murky social waters of middle school, which isn't an easy task with even the steadiest of compasses.  This is why I do all I can to create a safe haven  for all students in my classroom, or "Writers Sanctuary," as we call it.  This entails ensuring that all students know that there is no place for ridicule or mockery within those four walls, and that once they are ready to share the voice they are developing, they will be listened to without judgment.

Well, even with that, I admittedly still find myself forming impressions of students early on based on demeanor, despite my inclinations not to do so. I'm not proud of it, and I'm quick to correct my thoughts when I catch myself making snap judgments based on surface attitudes or behaviors.  I'm ashamed to admit that earlier this school year I made such superficial judgments about one particular student.  Thankfully, I quickly came to realize just how wrong my early assumptions were.

Most of the time this particular student would sit with her arms folded across her chest, accompanied by a persistent sneering facial expression, and the writing covering her binder and notebook were written in the "tagging" style.  It's not like any of this bothered me; I'm not easily shocked or offended and I have been teaching long enough to have had plenty of students who constantly wore similar facial expressions and would spend their time scrawling rap lyrics or nihilistic phrases of gang culture, and they usually had many good reasons to throw up such protective layers, particularly to authority figures and other adults.  Also, this student was never disrespectful or disruptive, but since she never did any homework or finished any assignments or projects begun in class,y offense was of a more subtle nature: I really didn't expect much from her at all.  Having low or no expectations of someone still so young is something I am embarassed to admit to, but in my defense, with 175 students in my classes, it's not always possible to break through the layers of each one.

Fortunately, one of my main flaws as a teacher is paradoxically also one of my strengths: I have never been able to accept the perfectly sensible axiom that claims that if you can reach one student, you have done a good job. Forget that, I want to reach them ALL, even as I recognize the impossibility of doing so.  This causes quite a bit of emotionally and mentally draining sturm und drang as I ruminate over those students who fail academically, or those who always seem disengaged, or who give me any sort of negative feedback, while only briefly appreciating those who show the opposite. At least this spinning of the wheels in pursuit of the impossible keeps me from becoming complacent, though.  I'm always trying to crack the code, observing my students and gauging their engagement, and I'm always changing my thoughts and attitude toward them. Such was the case with this particular student, who I quickly noticed was always engaged in her writing, always in the flow, and always wide-eyed and attentive to what was being discussed or shared in class.  Yes, even the sneer quickly faded.  She rarely smiled, but that's okay, we're not all smilers, after all.

So as the year went on, this young lady quickly became one of my favorite students.  She would always give me the "Writer's sign" around campus, and never fail to let me know if I didn't give her the writer's sign back and "left her hanging." (One of the cardinal rules of my classes is that one never leaves a fellow writer hanging.) She still never did much work outside of class, but in class she was a prolific writer, and day in and day out, was one of the writers who would consistently be in the flow during our Daily Writing time.  She was too shy or guarded to share any of her writing with the class during "Open Mic" Fridays, but I accept that since not all students are socially confident enough to publicly show the world their inner selves.

The other day at lunch she approached me with a broad smile on her face.  Since she's one of those kids who smiles so rarely, it's a gift to cherish when she does.  She handed me a rumpled sheet of lined notebook paper, and said she wanted to put it in her writing anthology project as her "fiction" selection.  As I ate lunch, I read her read her story about a young girl who has to take care of her little sister, and in a sense is forced to be more of a mother than a big sister.  This leads a lot of arguments with her mother and through a series of flashbacks, the narrator recalls the absent father, and how when she was a young girl she had to call the police on her father for abusing her pregnant mother. 

It is a very powerful and emotionally moving piece of writing, and the flashbacks are handled deftly, flowing logically from the narrative action.  The author is an English language learner, and while the draft of her story contains some spelling and syntax errors common with English language learners, the thought and writing strategies were admirably complex and sophisticated.  Most importantly, she felt she could trust me to share what is obviously a very personal and painful part of her life.

I wrote my feedback on her story, and gave it back to her when she came into class the last period of the day.  I waited until class was over and the students were leaving for the day.  When I called her over and handed her back the story, the look of anticipation on her face was touching.  I told her how much I enjoyed reading her story, and that I wrote some comments on the paper.  She smiled again, and I reminded her to make sure she shared her story with me when she had a chance to revise it.

To my surprise, almost immediately after school she sent me an email with her revised story attached to it.  I had a meeting after school that I had to get to, so I didn't have time to read her revisions or to reply with anything more than a brief "Thank you for sharing your story."

She replied a few minutes later by saying, "Haha you shouldn't be thanking me thanks to you I found a place/sanctuary where I get to write.  My writing has improved allot (sic) since I've been in your class (:"

No, I should be thanking you.  Thank you for sharing your story with me.  Thank you for having the courage to deal with the issues in your life at the young age of 14 and still be able to smile.  Thank you for reminding me, yet again, why I teach.

Thank you for showing me why we write.

Oh, the title of her story is "Blessed," which is what I feel by being able to help students discover their voice.

Inside a Writer's Brain

One of my 8th grade students made this for me:

I think it's a fairly accurate representation. 

Oh, and in case you were wondering,  "writter" is not an ironic misspelling of "writer." No, in our writing community, a "writter" is one who brings shame to or otherwise disgraces the good name of a "Writer with a capital W;" therefore, calling another a "writter" is a serious accusation and not an epithet one should casually use. 

Unjustly calling a fellow Writer a writter is a severe violation of the Writer's Code.

What Makes a Writer a Writer?

As the end of the year winds down, I have been thinking more and more about what makes a seventh or eighth grade student enthusiastically embrace the identity of a writer. After three years and nearly 500 students who have become "Writers for Life," I am still uncertain exactly how this has occurred or where I should take it in the future.

I of course give most of the credit to my students.  While it may have just been a whim that first day of school in 2011 when I had the students in each class turn to a partner and introduce themselves by name and "I'm a writer," but all that has followed has largely been due to the actions of my students.  The first student who walked by my classroom door one morning and said, "Hi Mr. Myers, I'm a writer!" led to my being unable to walk across campus without a student, or usually more, calling out to me with affirmations of their writer status.  The first time a student made a "W" for writer hand signal, I had no idea that it would become a sign we all give each other out of adherence to the commandment "Never leave a fellow writer hanging."  Now there is so much more; from our writer's motto that "writing time is sacred," to the whiteboard in the front of my classroom that has been designated our "Writers Board" for the students to add any contribution they wish, as long as it is respectful and writing-related.  Something magical has happened, and I suppose there is some small irony in the fact that I lack the words to properly capture its essence.

All of these exterior manifestations would be meaningless if the students didn't write.  Now, there are more than a few students who proudly proclaim that they are "Writers for Life," while doing very little, if any, actual writing.  I don't begrudge them this, even I do wish they would actually embrace the act of writing as much as the identity of being a writer.  Middle school students are tribal by nature, and that sense of group belonging is something they all need at this turbulent age, so I am not going to tell them they can't claim the identity of a writer unless they produce "X" amount of writing.  I would much rather see the "W4L" logo scrawled on their notebooks than some gang sign or drug reference.  So I don't discourage the few non-writers from claiming their writer status and if they give me the writer's sign, I will never leave them hanging.

For the most part, and I'm talking approximately 90% of my students, they not only proudly declare that they are writers, but they actually write, and write, and write...and my, it's a glorious sight to behold.  Have you ever had a seventh or eighth grade general ed, not an honors or creative writing elective, English language arts class beg for more writing time after the end of the ten-minute "Daily Writing" session?  Well, I have, on several occasions, and often asking more than once or twice to extended time to write.  Have you ever seen a crowded classroom of thirty-five 13 and 14 year old students who, even at the end of the school day become utterly engrossed in their writing "flow?" I have, day in and day out.  Have you had classes of middle school students plan for "Quarter Quell Writerbrations" to celebrate the 25th, 50th, and 75th Daily Writings?  I have, and there would be much more if we weren't on a block schedule with each class only meeting every other day?  How many of you produced over 100 pages of writing when you were in 7th or 8th grade?  I surely didn't, which makes me all the more in awe of my students of the past three years who have written at such a pace.

Whatever I have done to help facilitate this phenomenon is incomparable in praiseworthiness to these amazing kids who have chosen to become "Writers for Life."

At the very least, I owe it to them to do whatever I can as a teacher to keep the writing flowing.

After all, I'm a "Writer for Life," and a writer never leaves a fellow writer hanging.

Writers for Life: Origins

A few years ago, I was a fellow at the Summer Institute of the South Coast Writing Project, my regional affiliate of the National Writing Project, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  This experience was a transformative experience for me both as a teacher, and a writer.  I came out of the Summer Institute revitalized as a teacher, and eagerly looked forward to the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year so I could start working the many ideas percolating in my head into my 7th grade English language arts classes.

I immediately began incorporating several of the elements from the Summer Institute in my classes.  We  begin each class with our "Daily Writing" for ten minutes or so, although I give the students a prompt to work on instead of the free write approach of the Summer Institute.  Every Friday we have an "Open Mic," where student volunteers share their writing; but unlike the Summer Institute where we all had to share some of our writing, I never require a student to share if he or she is uncomfortable doing so.  Also, since we are on a block schedule, each class only has an Open Mic every other Friday.

None of these things would work, though, if I didn't create an environment where students could embrace the identity of being a writer, rather than seeing writing as something they have to do in English class.  Creating such an environment and classroom culture has been my proudest moment as a teacher, and it all started on a whim.

(Little things like a student writing this on my whiteboard is just a small part of the environment in our Writers' Sanctuary, also known as my classroom.)

On the first day of school, in addition to the tedious review of the course expectations and classroom guidelines, on a whim I decided to skip those clichéd icebreaker activities and had the students turn to the person sitting next to them and introduce themselves saying "Hi, I'm ___, and I'm a Writer!"  They laughed, but did it enthusiastically, and something amazing was begun.

There were many milestones along the way, but fast forward nearly three years later, and being a "Writer for Life" is something nearly all of my students embrace with pride.  I'm in awe of what has happened, seeing a group of seventh or eighth grade student not only "in the flow" during the daily writing, but groaning and begging for more time when the timer reaches zero.  I always grant this request, for although it usually puts me further and further behind in my planning, how can I say no to students who WANT to write?  

(Just another day of 8th graders in the flow during Daily Writing.)

I thought it would be difficult to get students to share their writing at Open Mic, but now I feel horrible when I have to deny many students volunteering to read because we run out of time.  We have a W4L logo, and a "Writer's sign" that students give me wherever I see them, in or out of school.  Several of my students have published novels after winning National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  Students who previously hated writing and who struggled to write a few sentences at the beginning of the year, now frequently write pages and pages when the writing prompt is engaging enough. 

I am in awe of what my students have accomplished, and will do everything within my control to build on this foundation.  After all, I owe my students and fellow writers no less than that.