Like most who live in western New York state, I love spring for many reasons. The snow has melted, the robins have returned, and the lake is beginning to look inviting again. Spring is a special time for the writers and teachers I support, too. Many of them have devoted a year to improving their craft, and they’re eager to publish their pieces and connect with other writers who share their interests. These are the…
Adult writers are often judged by their abilities to sell their work to the masses. In most schools, children are taught to pursue high grades. Both groups are conditioned to value the product they create over the processes they pursue, and while one can certainly understand how this reasoning is influenced by reality, it’s also significantly flawed. I’m thinking of two writers that I used to work with closely: one seemed to write at the…
This year, I’m supporting teachers across several districts as they work to implement the new Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Text created by Lucy Calkins and her colleagues at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. In each district, it’s been important to bring teachers together regularly to unpack each unit and plan for future instruction. Debriefing has been just as important. The chart below is one that I used…
In my work with teachers, and in our fellowship programs at the WNY Young Writer’s Studio, I become closely acquainted with kids who absolutely hate writing. What’s worse is that they believe they aren’t capable of it. Why? Well, mostly because they are unable to sit silently before a screen or page and push words out of the end of their fingers in a coherent fashion until every inch of white space is covered in…
Many children and adults will tell you that writing is quite literally out of their grasp. They can’t wrap their hands around it, and since this is how they learn best, writing remains beyond their reach. Many writers need to move, and they need their writing to move as well. They need to write out of their seats and on their feet, spreading their ideas across whiteboards and tables, lifting pieces of them up with…
These are my first and favorite conversations with writers at the start of a new year. Before we crack into our new notebooks, before the first genre studies begin, we take some time to talk about what it means to be a writer and what it means to live a writer’s life. Teachers often ask me how I manage to write every day, and I always say that this depends on what people think it…