The Top Ten Things Educators Talk About When They “Just” Write

Teachers, do you write? Why or why not?
​Please talk freely!

Dear Fellow Teachers,
 
This week, I’m heading to NCTE, the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English. (#NCTE19 is in Baltimore, this year, so send your local eating and touristing recommendations.)
 
One of my presentations at NCTE will share some research on what happens when teachers write. I plan on discussing the top two or three themes that came out of my research. I thought I’d use my blog to post the full top ten I worked with, for anyone who’s interested. I’m hoping it will spark some discussion, so please comment at the bottom of this post.

Best,
Eve

A little story

Here’s a little story about my transition from writing and editing, which I did for the first two decades of my career, to teaching English, which I’ve now done for just about as long. I was in my early 40s and I had a young child. In my first year of full-time classroom teaching, I had a hundred-fifty students, and was learning on the job. On top of that, I had to get a master’s degree to get certified to teach in New York State, so I applied to a somewhat fly-by-night teaching program. Upon enrollment, students were asked to submit a short essay on an assigned topic, to demonstrate writing fluency. At this point, I was the author of thirty young adult novels including a few bestsellers, and a variety of short pieces for adults. I’d been far too busy as a brand-new teacher to do any writing, and this was a good excuse. I wrote something invested and poignant and lovely—at least I thought it was. I got a letter back from the school. Is this your thesis statement? Where are your topic sentences? Apparently their definition of essay and mine were not the same.
 
I tried again; I think I was required to. I did it just the way my mentor teacher at my new job had instructed our 8th grade students to do it. I boiled water, opened up the cellophane package, and dropped in the noodles and contents of the flavor packet. Presto! Ye olde five-paragraph essay. Which by the way, I’d never

heard of until I started teaching, even though I’d supported myself as a writer for twenty years. They did plenty of terrible things to children in school in my day, but the five-paragraph essay wasn’t one of them. My rewrite took twenty minutes. I got back my essay with the highest of praise.

​That set the tone for the next eighteen years in the classroom, where my beliefs about writing and teaching writing were often at odds with the norms and goals and systems of “school writing.” And where I felt far too lonely pushing back against neoliberal practices that favor writing instruction that can be packaged, assessed on tests, formularized, put on a classroom poster, and crunched in the data machine, over writing as a transformative, culturally responsive art and skill, often a messy process, that respects the myriad ways and reasons individuals—students or anyone—write. And every day I thought, “If these people actually wrote a little, they’d start to get it.”

What do teachers "get" when they write?

So, I want to share what teachers actually “get” when you give them a few protected, sanctioned days to just write. For the past seven years, I have run extended weekend writing retreats for educators up in the country and more recently, multiday workshops at home in NYC, where I live.
 
At the retreats, educators write—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, blog posts, academic writing, professional writing, the next big commercial thing, picture books, experiments, work they started before they arrived, work that wasn’t even in their heads before they arrived, sustained pieces, bits and pieces… whatever they need and want to write. We share writing at evening readings, and people can get and give feedback on their work at daily sessions, if they wish.
 
My NYC workshops involve more hands-on writing activities that we do together, and that can be applied in the classroom, but there’s also plenty of time afforded to write.
 
I finally started recording the wrap-up discussions we had at the end of these immersive writing experiences, and got to work pouring over them and trying to analyze and categorize and poke around at what educators talked about when given the time and space to “just” write.
 
I’ll get off my soap-box now, and let other teacher-writers speak. These are the results of discussions with thirty-seven participants, at two different retreats, and one NYC workshop.

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The importance of low-stakes writing

​I’d like to tell you that the number one topic was writing. But there were actually two top themes. One was, in fact, the importance of low-stakes writing--low pressure assignments, writing for fun and experimentation, writing without the pressure of a grade or what William Zinsser, in On Writing Well, calls “The Tyranny of the Final Product.” 
 
Here are a few typical comments. (I’ve changed people’s names):
 
Suzanne, high school Social Studies teacher at a boarding school: "I think the biggest thing I realized was that I can write without necessarily having a purpose at the outset. I think I often don’t write because I’m like, well, who’s gonna to see this? Or what is this for? Or as we talked about genre the other night, like what is this even gonna be? What am I making? And this weekend, for the first time in a really long time, I just started writing things, and some of them took form and became pieces."
 
Lucia, middle school English teacher: “I want to build more time for just, ‘You’re going to sit down and you’re just going to write creatively for ten minutes… once a week, and it’s not graded. They can share if they want.”
 
Ocean, high school English: “When I first started teaching, I was always doing a free write Friday… and if we didn’t do it, the kids would notice, and they would want it. … And I just sort of stopped doing it because you have this book that you have to teach, and we only have, oh my God, spring break is just around the corner… But it’s definitely inspired me to just really push to include that again.”
 
Ayana, Ocean's department chair: “And it’s not even to say we have to abandon everything else. It could be a creative quick write, or a creative free write about the texts, even.” (I love how the department chair responds with a way to keep teaching all the planned curriculum--but get a little more open with it.)
 
Siobhan, early childhood teacher: “There was a freeing aspect to not feeling your writing has to be something that’s epic… it does free you up to writing in different ways.”

Fight the power

None of this was at all surprising to me, and was entirely in-line with what I hoped would come out of these retreats and workshops in the first place--to write the way writers write and to raise questions about a single-minded race to a designated finish line in our writing instruction. These kinds of comments—and there were so many of them—were a solid hit to the writing industrial complex. And yes, these educators chose to come to this kind of PD, so I acknowledge that my educator voices lean in a certain direction.

Surprise! Self-care, joy, transformation

But the other number one topic surprised me a little.
 
After writing for several days—and these teachers wrote and they worked hard—they talked about how their time had been an act of self-care and joy. Several used the word ‘transformational.’
 
Dalia, high school English teacher: “This retreat has offered me an opportunity to be my authentic self, inside of the school year, which has never happened before.”
 
And Jennifer, the head of a nursery school: “My take-away is really thinking about the need that adults have to play and tinker, and what that offers back to our work in terms of a freshness of perspective, and I sort of feel recharged in a way that I haven’t in a while.”
 
Fiona, who teaches elementary school students with disabilities: “I feel more dimensional, having the time to think, to remember, and to honor with writing, parts of my life that have been buried for a while.”
 
And from Mick, a high school English teacher who has come on multiple retreats with his partner, Sofia, a high school Spanish teacher: “These retreats that have allowed me to enjoy writing and thinking, have also been extraordinary connective endeavors for us as a couple, packed with meaning, nature, language, solitude, and access to other devoted readers and writers.”
 
And there were several comments like this one, from Rebecca, a high school English teacher: “It was fun. I used write before I was a teacher… But once I started teaching, I don’t have time to write at all. And just to write about whatever, that felt so, “Oh, my God, I missed this.”
 
I’ll stop there with the self-care quotes, but part of me thought, “Wow, how beautiful, how lucky I am to have facilitated this,” and another part of me thought, “Sh*t. What school is going to pay to send their teachers for self-care? And really, this is a critical issue--teacher self-care, so we can care for our students. And the idea that writing can afford self-care and be joyous is critical for our students, too, of course.

Practice what we teach. Isn't it a no-brainer?

Topic number three was how important it is to do what we expect our students to do, how it helps us empathize with how they feel.
 
Dan, middle school English and Social Studies, and chair of the Social Studies department at his school, summed up what a lot of people were saying throughout the time we were together and at the wrap-up discussions: “We all need more reminders of what it is like to do the things we ask our students to do—to write, to take the risks of self-exposure both on content and on craft, and to share our work with people we have come to respect, when we feel or fear we may not measure up.”
 
Ayana, the English department chair I quoted a moment ago: “I expect my students to be readers, so I’m a reader as well. If I’m expecting my students to be writers, I need to be a writer as well.”
 
I commented, at that point in the conversation, that the lines to meet authors and get books signed are nearly endless at NCTE, but many of the people on those lines don’t consider themselves writers. Imagine hiring a music teacher who doesn’t play an instrument or read music. Yet we hire teachers who don’t write to teach kids to write all the time. To which Ayana posed the question, “How do we shift the default?” I love that phrase--shifting the default. How do we become readers *and* writers?

What can I bring back to my classroom?

There was naturally a lot of discussion of classroom application and implementation. I made this its own category as I coded my data, but it was woven into a lot of the comments about other themes, as well.
 
There were very specific ideas, like Todd’s—he teaches middle school English at a school for the deaf: “I think I’m actually going to find maybe a different room than my classroom that I can set up so we have more space. And maybe we can have face time where everyone writes in sign language, or maybe people can find places to sit on pillows or something and be a little more comfortable… maybe once or twice a month we can have a room that’s like a writerly room where people can write for 30 minutes or 20 minutes… I think I want to do that for myself as well…”
 
Or Paola’s—she teaches young children: “I want to try to implement a 1st grade version of the [daily feedback sessions]. Not sure how that will look yet.”
 
And there were more general comments about classroom implementation, like Nyla’s, a high school English teacher and doctoral student: “I’ve left with a lot of ideas thanks to conversations with all of you and the idea lab and the initial prompts and the unstructured writing space. With things I can go back and sort of push against in my classroom space.”
 
Or Lucy’s, also a high school English teacher: “I guess when I think for me personally what happens when teachers just write, I feel like I have a very difficult time separating my teacher-self from my everything else-self. So even when I’m writing, everything I’m doing and thinking about, especially in this space, I feel like I still have the lens of ‘What can I take to my classroom?’ in mind.”

Writer identity--or lack of it. How do I denigrate myself? Let me count the ways.

Classroom application was neck-and-neck as a theme with writer identity (or lack of it). This one stands out as so important to me. How can we build writer identity in students if we don’t feel like writers ourselves?
 
Mark, an early childhood educator: “I would say I was going to this writing workshop, and people would say, like, ‘Oh, that’s great. Do you write?’ And I was like, ‘Well, you know, not really. I just journal. Every. Day.’”

​You can hear everyone laughing on the recording I made of the conversation, when he says that. There’s the low-stakes piece, too—the valuing of journaling or other kinds of low-stakes writing. Mark wound up writing a spectacular piece—funny and poignant and important. It wasn’t something he intended to write; it grew out of a conversation he had at dinner the first night.
 
And here’s Todd, again: “The first thing I wrote was just a mess and I threw it away. But [our opening activity—a kind of group brainstorm] was really helpful. And looking at what other people wrote and reading my own comments and people’s responses and stuff, things started to emerge. And during the writing crawl [another activity], the writing crawl, it just was great. A lot just started coming out and I wrote nonstop and I started thinking of myself as a writer in that moment… I thought, wow, we’re writing, I’m writing. And now I have more confidence to keep it going, I think.”
 
And Ada, an early childhood educator: “I never saw myself as a writer… I realized I had a voice, and that was so surprising to me.”

Sharing work. Judge or judge not?

People also talked about the importance of sharing work. Some of this discussion was straightforward, like when Mark said, “It was so motivating knowing I was writing something for a workshop and then knowing that I was probably going to read it.” Or when Jeff, who teaches high school English, and writes gorgeous short stories, said that the workshopping [feedback] sessions gave him, “Not only a gentle deadline, but a gentle workshop where people were taking real risks and trying new things and I knew that there would be a patient and measured response that was respectful but also honest.” Or Karen, high school English, commented that sharing was “a little unsettling, which is what I’m assuming most of our students go through.”
 
Bu there was also a new take-away for some participants who linked sharing with feedback, and hadn’t considered that it could also be done with without it.

Kaide, an elementary school teacher, echoed the reflections of a number of people: “I never thought about a gallery walk as something just to enjoy someone’s piece. I do a lot of gallery walks in my classroom. It’s mostly when the students give each other feedback or I give them feedback. It’s nice to teach the students how to be in the present moment. Don’t be so quick to criticize, just let it sink in. I’m definitely going to try that one.”

Kaide wasn’t the only one who noted the luxury or pleasure, in an assessment-driven education climate, of just appreciating each other’s writing. It’s inspiring, it helps us get new ideas, it fosters writer identity, it creates community.

Time and space. Who doesn't need more of that?

Many people expressed gratitude, as Dan did, at having “the time and space to do the work which is so hard to find in the context of our ordinary teaching lives.” This discussion was woven into a lot of the self-care discussion.

People also talked about making time and space for their students to write. As Ruth, high school English, put it, “It’s always been a goal to get back into it and having this retreat space allowed me to really actually focus on trying it again…..I [want to have] something where I’m not evaluating [student] writing in any way other than just giving them the space to write, I think is really important. Because, I really valued having the space and time to write.”

​Some tied time and space to writing identity, like Siobhan, quoted earlier: “This retreat affords us the time and ability to commit to writing.” And Ada, early childhood teacher: “The time and space to write reaffirms that I am a writer.” Todd, whom I quoted in the classroom applications section got us launched on an interesting conversation about creating special writing spaces and conditions for our students.

Writing in social spaces. Let's hear it for community!

The community aspect of these retreats and events was noted for inspiration and support, or as Dan described it, “that sense of community and welcome and hearing the things that other people are doing and the ways that that opens up boundaries that we have imagined were there for ourselves that don’t have to be, in terms of content or form.”
 
Jeff (and numerous others) mentioned “the frequent informal conversations about what, and how we teach.”

Muck about. Wonder. Wander. Sometimes you need to write to figure out what you're writing.

Another theme was the idea that writing is messy, that sometimes you need to wander without a definite goal, to “muck about,” as Ken, a high school English teacher, put it, to figure out what you're writing as you write. Again, this pushes back on the Tyranny of the Product, and our neoliberal school writing practices.
 
Josh, an early career secondary school English teacher, who experiments with form: “Writing is really hard. It’s okay to look at a messy thing and not name it and not categorize it and just read it for everybody.”
 
And there’s the piece of Mark’s I mentioned, which “was not on my list at all, and in fact came from a conversation I had the first night. So, there was like this reminder to just kind of be open and pay attention.”

The zen of writing

That openness, that attention, that zen quality has been present in all the retreats and workshops, and gets lost when we’re racing toward a product or following a script or focused on an assessment.

Balancing structure and freedom

Which brings me to the last of the top ten themes in our discussions, that there’s a sweet spot between structure and freedom which is critical to writers. Nyla said, “The retreat provided the perfect balance of freedom and constraint that I needed to be productive and to feel inspired and creative.”
 
I’m going to add that obviously our students need that, too. And that the freedom is harder to create at school than the constraint.

How do we shift the default?

I want to be very clear that this research comes from a self-selected group of teachers. And that in order to categorize and describe the main themes in these conversations, I’ve boiled down complex conversations. There are so many ways to read this data. I could have, for example, coded for comments where the act of writing was emotionally charged or part of the affective domain. (Instead, those comments ran through other themes.) Or where writing was social. (Ditto.) My intention is really to offer some of the voices of my writers, and keep the conversation going. To invite more educators into a discussion about what happens when we write (and share and reflect on our processes), why it’s important, and how we can make more opportunities to do it. How do we shift the default?
 
Please post comments or questions. Discussion is most welcome!