Membership in an a Multi-Age Community of Writers

Thinking deeply about the goal of my writing workshops, which is to foster a sharing of ideas encourage a love of writing, I have been encouraged to research methods of teaching that will scaffold my journey. Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi, authors of the book Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide, firmly believe that in order for students to become as strong writers, they need to have a strong sense of audience, which means real readers who might be interested in the words, ideas an information they put on paper (Fletcher and Portalupi, 2001). Initially, I translated this focus on audience to mean a focus on publication, which led to a slippery slope. I say that because I erroneously believed that if I began the workshops with a push toward publication, the students would be intrinsically motivated to write authentic pieces.  Instead, I discovered a notable disconnect from my original workshop goal as a result. 

Originally, we had talked about selling our publications to help support our printing and distribution costs. I began to feel uneasy after our first publication had been released and several of the students asked how much money we made, and if they could keep the money for themselves. This made me rethink the goal of my writing workshop, and questions began to swim in a murky puddle of indecision and confusion. 

Do I want the focus to be on submitting pieces by a certain due date for a regular publication? 

Would that put to much emphasis on the consumer aspect of selling our publications? 

Should it be the students' responsibility to take part in the funding for supplies?

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that at least until our workshop process is well established, I want workshops to be identified with a method of instruction where the primary focus is on writing as a process, not a product.

I do believe that writing for an authentic audience is important, but I've come to learn that the term "publication" can be widely used. Fletcher and Portalupi define publication to include: published in a book, entered in a science fair or writing contest, posted on a class blog, or even having a piece read by a peer or someone the student writer looks up to (Fletcher and Portalupi, 2001). Since student writing can take place in a variety of forms that honor their work, the notion of writing for an authentic audience is expanded. 

In an assessment I did early on in the workshop, I asked the students to come up with a list of writing goals to get an idea for what they hoped to accomplish during our time together.  From this experience, I learned that the whole idea behind developing goals for writing is challenging and confusing. Looking closely at the list, I realized that most of their goals were focused on functional and grammatical improvement, or logistical writing necessities, such as always having extra pencils and paper, always using proper punctuation and no fragments, etc. I found it even more interesting that one or more of the students went so far as to insert traditional grammar correction symbols for letter capitalization and punctuation on specific words in the list.   

 Frank Smith, author of Writing and the Writer, says that every act of writing is a convention, dependent on the developmental stages of the writer: putting spaces between words, writing text from left to right, following grammatical rules, spelling words and shaping letters. These conventions exist so that readers understand their own text and communicate with others (Smith, 1994). Through their own stages of record keeping, children grow to understand the purpose and place of conventions. Experienced writers shift between different operations according to tasks and circumstances, and they do not accumulate process skills and strategies once and for all. They develop and refine writing skills throughout their writing lives (NCTE, 2004). In thinking about this concepts, and what I could offer the students of my writing workshop, I came to the conclusion that perhaps we could revisit the student generated list writing goals and use it as from as a tool to evolve student thinking about themselves as writers over time.

What does this mean for the teaching of writing in my workshops?

A lot, because with the limited time my students and I have together, once per week for one hour, every minute is precious and there is certainly not time to red pencil misspelled words and incorrect grammar. Through his books and his research, teacher and author Donald Graves has had a major impact on the teaching of writing. In the preface of Fletcher and Portalupi's book Writing Workshop, they described a conversation between Graves and a teacher interested in implementing a writing workshop in her classroom. The teacher asked, "How should I teach writing if I can only sandwich it in one day a week? Graves responded, "Don't bother. One day a week will teach them to hate it. They'll never get inside writing." (Fletcher and Portalupi, 2001). Given that I don't have a classroom of my own to work with, advice like this is discouraging. One hour a week is all the time I have to develop relationships with the members of my workshop. So in response, I turn my attention to focus on what it means for this group of fourteen young authors to be members of a weekly writing workshop on their own accord.

To honor the time and flexibility that I do have with these willing writers, I believe it is best to look at student perceptions about writing and membership in this group. In a recent workshop, I asked the group to share with me why they like being part of the workshops. Several of the members agreed that they really liked "hanging out" and writing whatever they want and sharing their work with their friends. David Buckingham, from the Institute of Education at the University of London, argues that "hang out" time is a critical aspect of peer relations and adolescent development (Buckingham, 2008). Nearly every session, the students are anxious to read their writing aloud, which implies a feeling of comfort and safety in the group. Buckingham defines identity as a relationship with a broader collective or social group of some kind that is about identification with others whom we assume are similar to us in some significant ways (Buckingham, 2008). Since many of our writing activities involve collaborative thinking and working closely with peers of such variety in age, it's safe to say that being part of the Candy Houses Writing Collective has become part of our identity (at least on Mondays at 4pm).

In order to build a sense of community via the sharing of ideas and collaboration, I agree with the theories of Gunther Kress, a Professor of English Education at the University of London’s Institute of Education and author of Literacy in the New Media Age when he argues that education in this modern digital era must teachers must be able to adapt to genre-blending modes in order to encourage a freedom of choice as students learn to discover their talents, express themselves, and demonstrate their learning (Kress, 2003). Since the members are range in age from seven to fifteen, their writing skills vary greatly, and therefore their use of tools and methods do too. While some of the younger students are focusing on story illustrations and then adding text later, the older students are often working on longer chapter stories, using computers more frequently and submitting pieces to online publication sites for young authors .

In our weekly gatherings, we have established a routine of meeting together on the couches in the library for the first five minutes of workshop time to discuss upcoming projects, and look at quotes about writing advice from published authors. Then we head to the tables for about 7-10 minutes of uninterrupted writing, or as we call it sacred writing time. We begin with writing prompts the students can choose from, or they can choose a self-selected topic, but during sacred writing time, students are either writing or drawing. The objective is just to keep the pen flowing and experience the feeling and the outcome of writing by hand. Cartoonist and author Lynda Barry believes there is a kind of story that comes from writing by hand. The physical activity of writing by hand involves many parts of the brain, which are used in story making such as time, place, action, characters, relationships, and moving forward across an entire connected gesture. And that's just what goes on when we write a single letter by hand (Barry, 2010).  Soon I'll be generating questions and conducting informal interviews with the members of the group to get a sense of the feelings about being part of the group, and their attitudes about writing as a result.

For the remainder of the school year, I would like to continue our writing workshops that integrate group check-in and goal setting meetings, writing mini-lessons, conferencing, with students, opportunities to share and give feedback, and opportunities to publish their work in a variety of forms.   Perhaps it is most important for students to come away form our time together with an understanding that writing is both a process and a tool for thinking and learning.  Excellence in teaching writing as thinking require the teacher to understand varied tools for thinking through writing, such as journals, writers' notebooks, blogs, sketchbooks, digital portfolios, online discussion groups, dialogue journals, screenplays, and so on (NCTE, 2004).  I also hope that the members of the workshop grow to understand that writing grows out of many purposes, including the development of social networks and a sense of community, and in turn identity.