The alarmed fog horned that it was 6:45 CT, anxiously set the night before. The big event? A facebook live chat with two of my all time favorite author/teachers. Penny Kittle was going to chat with Kelly Gallagher about their own writing and what they were putting in their notebooks this summer. Technology was not my friend as I anxiously awaited the feed to go live. I had the dreaded black screen and spinning wheel of death. I switched from my phone to my laptop and huddled in the hotel bathroom to listen to the wisdom these two had for me on this early, non-school day, summer morning. It was over in less than 20 minutes. I sat there a bit stunned. That was it? I got up for 20 minutes. YES, I did! Of course, I could have watched it later in the day, but I wanted to be on when they were on. Stalkerish? Maybe. But, more of "they are up and talking and no one is watching" kind of support. I will add there were two of us watching it live. Dozens more will watch later and comment, but it was kind of exciting to be one of the only ones watching...okay, that does sound like a stalker. So what did I gain by getting up early and listening to these two for a mere 15 or so minutes.
Nothing. I learned nothing. So it was a waste of my time, you ask? You would have rather slept in? Never! Listening to the discussion reiterated the importance of what I am trying to do in my classroom. Without knowing who I am, these two have given me the green light to continue to teach writing, real writing the way it should be. They have given me confidence in knowing that I am not alone when I say students should have writing choices, just as they have reading choices, and I have to not only do it with them, but I have to give up the power to want to correct every single mistake they make along the way.
Writing is so much more than knowing where to put a comma or having subject-verb agreement. Writing is about getting words, real words, authentic words on a page. As teachers, we have robbed students of their own voices long before they even knew they had a voice. We have taken the imagination and curiosity and magic they began with in elementary and squashed it into the five paragraph essay. No magic. No beautiful words. No student voice. We are graduating students who have no writing identity, who have very few thoughts of their own, and have lost their imagination.
I will continue to swim upstream against this trend. I will continue to create a space in my classroom where students freely choose what they want to write about, and I will continue to do it right beside them. The magic is still there. It's just gotten a little lost...
