Source: http://tinyurl.com/5pmfze

Ask a lot of writing teachers in American schools today (unsubstantiated statement based on my conversations with writing teachers) and they complain of having to subject students to drill-n-kill software programs, grammar worksheets, dull writing prompts, and equal inanity when it comes to writing. “Use technology for writing?” says one administrator to a teacher, “No way! Our kids just don’t have the technology to write with, and we don’t have it at school either. Better stick with paper and pencil.”

And, even if students escape the drill-n-kill grammar tutorials, mind-deadening writing prompts, the best they can look forward to is cramping their hands writing in Mead notebooks for small audience(s) of one or a few classmates, their teachers hoping they’ll develop that love of writing that comes from constant writing. Remember Jeff Whipple’s blog entry on writing?

1. Writing is a laborious process without technology…you get hand cramps (maybe we should consider it takes longer to get carpal tunnel syndrome (sp?)) clutching that pen and scribbling on paper.
2. Easier to compose, edit and publish.
3. Easier to reach an authentic audience that “stretches far beyond a teacher or my classmates–someone whose role…is only to assign it a mark.”
4. At home, students write with technology–one on one technology access. At school, they’re stuck with “traditional, structured and less inviting methods of content creation.”

What happens when we fail to engage? Maybe this image will illustrate the problem:

via Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas

Ok folks, let’s not forget that engaging writing is being written with technology our students have in abundance…mobile phones, that beguiling technology that represents everything people who crafted the Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act have absolutely NO clue about:

In Japan, half of the top ten selling works of fiction in the first six months of 2007 were composed on mobile phones.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, mobile phone novels (keitai shousetsu) have become a publishing phenomenon in Japan, “turning middle-of-the-road publishing houses into major concerns and making their authors a small fortune in the process.”

One book, Koizora (Love Sky) about high-school girl who is bullied, gang-raped, becomes pregnant has sold more than 1.2 million copies since being released.
Source

You know, even writing about topics like those above in American schools is “Not a good choice.” Why? We’re too darn prudish for our own good, instead burying real life topics–including social justice writing–in the ground, still-born for fear that Imagination, the illegitimate’s seldom-seen in schools father, will hang around and take responsibility for spurring future creative genius.

Judith Beth Cohen once said that she didn’t write because she had answers but because she had questions. I recently had a Twitter exchange with Matthew K. Tabor, where I asked:

Publishing student writing online via school district. If student writes something real and raw, would you publish it anonymously or not? Where is the line drawn? How much can students write about and share via a district web site without negative rctn?

What are your thoughts? Scott Swanson tweeted this stance that I doubt 99% of teachers would follow his lead on (challenge me if you think that’s not true!):

We just don’t teach this kind of writing for social justice, we don’t want to, as Jeanne Russell emphatically states, help children become empowered by enabling them to take control of their life story.

Recently someone asked:

For sixth grade writing, what do your teachers use for workbooks/materials? Just looking for some good resources.

One response I strongly agreed with was this one:

It really depends on the writing style, instructional style, etc., but anything New Jersey Writing Project, National Writing Project, or 6 Traits is going in the right direction. Materials from Nancy Atwell is at the top of the list for middle school writers.

The point here, do not use workbooks. Use these resources to build a strong writer’s workshop program. I taught middle school language arts for ten years. I taught every year in 7th grade since the writing test moved there (until I moved into instructional technology last year), and we have had either 98 or 100% pass TAKS writing every single year. It is all in the training via one of those three I listed. It will save you a ton on resources down the road and improve your literacy program overall.

Are these questions the YouthVoices folks are dealing with? Consider this quote:

We want to provide an online community where students who aren’t blogging yet can start and where students who already have blogs can feed their work into our network. We want to make it easy for teachers from around the world to sign their students up in Youth Voices and to begin to use the Youth Voices curriculum and our Drupal site—or a similar one of thier own—in their classrooms.

What answers do you have for school districts that want to publish student writing but then are taken aback by the raw reality of that young adult, engaging and authentic narrative? It’s clear this kind of writing has health benefits, such as those pointed out by the BBC…and if it works for cancer, why not life?

Thoughts and feelings, or the cognitive processing and emotions related to cancer, are key writing elements associated with health benefits, according to previous studies. Writing only about the facts has shown no benefit.

Could one go so far as to say that if you’re writing with passion, inspired by imagination, that passion may one day beget creativity?

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