As much as I love reading, writing has never been enjoyable. My memories of writing are surrounded by feelings of boredom, guilt over not writing enough, and avoidance. Teaching writing is something that is consistently put on the back burner so to say, as reading and spelling (and standardized tests) pushes it out of focus altogether. In student teaching, when pressured to show evidence of working on students writing goals in their IEP’s, my cooperating teacher would say, “I just don’t know what to do with writing”. This is a common frustration for teachers everywhere.
I have never studied writing, its creation or exploration. In reading Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Textbook and Dorfman & Cappelli’s Mentor Texts, my ideas of writing have been sufficiently challenged. Having a writer’s notebook that isn’t page after page of random writing prompts and a minimum sentence count is a completely new idea to me. If my writer’s notebook as an adult is colorful, messy, and filled with pictures and random ideas, how much more could a child’s notebook be? The process of writing itself is a messy, colorful, illustrative process, not the standard 5 paragraph essay or the circuitous steps of drafting, revising, editing, etc.
Last semester I studied diverse children’s literature using mentor texts to teach social justice issues. This made sense to me- using exemplar books to teach fundamental issues to children and to spur a love of reading. Using mentor texts to teach writing never occurred to me. The first chapter of Mentor Texts is exactly about that: mentors. “Mentor texts are pieces of literature that we can return to again and again as we help our young writers learn how to do what they may not yet be able to do on their own” (Dorfman & Cappelli, 2001, p. 6). It makes perfect sense to teach children how to write creatively and well by using creative, well-written texts, yet this is something that never crosses teacher’s minds.
Another light-bulb moment that occurred to me when reading Mentor Texts was the idea of the teacher as a writer. In my educational experiences that I can remember, the teacher never wrote along with their students; instead they tried to catch up on other work while their students were sufficiently occupied. This is understandable, as a teacher’s work never ends. But this idea of literally coming alongside each student in the writing process is not only a great example (or should I say mentor) but allows the teacher to experience firsthand what she is asking her students to do. To live through the frustrations, boredom, excitement, and writer’s block alongside her students in my opinion makes them a better teacher.
The greatest stories usually are based off of experiences or memories. So why not generate story ideas through different, even “fun” exercises? This is what Mentor Texts is chock full of: generating writing ideas, fleshing those ideas out, and allowing the students to be in charge of their writing topics. Using strategies such as I LOVE/I DON’T love, a bucket list, favorite places, a memory chain, maps, sounds I hear/sights I see, my beautiful things, graphs, pictures, and what if? stories are all wonderful examples of stretching the bounds of the definition of writing itself. In fact, Textbook, as a memoir is probably the most unconventional book I’ve ever read, yet it is a book and it is an example of different forms of writing. Amy Krouse Rosenthal, as a published writer, defies norms by including one sentence on one page, or captioning a picture, or creating a quiz. It’s time writing came out of its box for good so that students can see the colorful enjoyment of this specific form of communication.
Writing is like reading in that the only way to get better at it is to do it more. In relation to the wise words written by Jane Austen, perhaps I should take these writers advice and practice.
Watch what I’m referencing here
Examples from my writer’s notebook:
References:
Dorfman, L. R., & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing through Children’s Literature, K-6 (2nd ed.). Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
Rosenthal, A. K. (2016). Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal: Not Exactly a Memoir. New York, NY: Dutton.
Horton Who? 
I love your honesty about what you’ve thought about writing and how much of a struggle it has been for you, as well as how hard it is for other teachers to figure out how to incorporate writing in their classrooms. I would have to agree with your light-bulb moment when reading ‘Mentor Texts’ because this happened for me as well! I had never thought of writing along side my students, nor had I considered the impact that it would have on my students and their own writing. I also think this would allow teachers to take a step back during their busy day and just reflect. With this idea in mind, I am so glad that you shared some of your own entries – as this is just what Dorfman and Cappelli want to see teachers doing!
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Emily,
I love the connection you made from the textbook “Mentor Texts” to the graduate course of Advanced Children Literature that we had last semester. I am going to be completely honest and say that I did not even make the connection that all we did last semester in that course was read quality mentor texts such as those described in Dorfman and Cappelli’s text. I would have to agree with you when you make the point that teachers as writers themselves are few and far between because I have never had the opportunity to experience a classroom teacher write alongside their students. I think it is beneficial, not only for the students but for the teacher too, to create a writing community where the teacher might model a think aloud but also might sit back and let the students have more control. Writing is such a crucial part of learning and also reading so it is hard to believe that there are so many classrooms lacking.
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Emily,
I totally relate to loving to read but not loving to write. I have felt the same way at different times in my schooling career. “Mentor Texts” has really opened my eyes to a lot of things about teaching writing, especially since this is the first graduate reading class and the only reading class that I have in my program. I am really excited to learn more things about teaching writing and how to incorporate mentor texts to my teaching. Great job with the connections that you made to our writings throughout your blog post!
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Emily,
Like you, one of the things that I appreciate more about “Textbook” is the the variety of writing that can be found within its pages. In your post, you referred to this as “different forms of writing” which I think is a perfect explanation for thee collection of pieces that Amy Krouse Rosenthal has put together. I appreciate that you mentioned these different forms as inspiration for your own writer’s notebook because I felt that same way! I love the way that you describe writer’s notebooks as messy, colorful places because that belief is what will truly make writing come alive for your students. You also mention the concept of teachers writing alongside students- a practice that many of us seldom saw in elementary school. It reminded me of why I often find it so much easier to writer in our class on Wednesday nights: Dr. Buchholz writes with us! The first time she did this my class in Block 2, I’ll admit, I was a little taken aback. “What are you doing?” I thought, “You’re a college professor. Surely, there must be something more important for you to do during this five minutes.” But there wasn’t because what she was teaching us was important. The reality is that students are more likely to be motivated to write when they see that you are motivated yourself. They’re more likely to see themselves as writers when they are surrounded by people who see themselves as readers. They are more likely to enjoy writing when they see the people around them enjoying writing. Thanks for a great post, Emily. I really appreciate you sharing all of your thoughts and insights from these first several weeks!
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Emily, I love that you mention the messiness of your blog, and the aspects of color and pictures and such. I looked at Callie Long’s blog earlier today, and she incorporate pictures of her writing journal. I know that Callie is a very organized person, but seeing pictures of her journal made me feel that my messy, crinkled edge notebook must not be as worthy as hers. (Nothing against Callie, she is great and has beautiful handwriting!) But after reading your post about how they are sometimes messy, I realized that I have been approaching this all wrong. I have been using my notebook to create a perfect “artifact” that I can give to an employer. This notebook does not need to be perfect, it needs to be useful! I think that I am going to start cutting out things from magazines, carrying around markers and watercolors, and really using my notebook as a basis for all kinds of ideas instead of just as a place to complete my classwork assignments. Thanks for the inspiration!
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