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I was pleasantly surprised as I checked the submissions for the local Gallery of Writing that I created. The authors of all the entries to date? Teachers. Principals.

I am still in awe of the pieces I reviewed yesterday. Poignant. Colorful. Amazing.

It makes me think about the conversations I have been having in and around schools lately about the teaching of writing. About folks reflecting that they are not good writers. About teachers being afraid to write with students because they may not be any good. About teachers being afraid without even knowing they are afraid.

Writing isn't always about a final product. It is about the process - the emptying out of our heads and our hearts onto paper or a computer screen or a napkin. It is about the magical interplay of words, the painting of a picture, the emotion that stays with you for days.

It is about false starts and scratch outs and sometimes silence. It is about sharing and polishing and tweaking. And even when it isn't perfect - it is about publishing. Putting our writing - and ourselves - out there.

Join us. Pick up your pen. Turn on the computer. Write.

Writing Round-Up

* Been procrastinating (like me attending to this blog)? This site will give you some tips - it really hit home for me on an article I need to submit!

* Local writer/teacher/coach shares updates from her Writer's Studio and this post on building a future generation of writing teachers is nothing short of inspiring!

* Great post on following your instinct with writing - and a list of writers who talk about their process at the bottom.

From the "So What Are We Going to Do About It" Department

As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, two studies on writing have reached a similar conclusion: students are writing much more outside of class and are much more vested in what they're writing outside of class than they are in their academic writing.

I don't think there is a single teacher out there who participates or observes the power of technology that doesn't already inherently know this. I also don't think there is a teacher out there who has seen students pass notes, keep journals or heard an amazing (unassigned) poem who doesn't know this. My question is what are we going to DO about it?

The Stanford Study of Writing is very interesting - both for the content as well as how it has been made available on the web. Unlike traditional academic writing that comes to us in reams of paper (my own bias - sorry!) this site is chunked accordingly and full of hyperlinks and graphics. Very compelling graphics! Very, very compelling graphics!

I wonder what a similar study of American high schools might yield? Of middle schools? Of elementary schools?

The NCTE paper on Writing in the 21st Century recognizes the challenges and opportunities we face as "people write as never before:"

1. developing new models of writing
2. designing a new curriculum supporting those models
3. creating models for teaching that curriculum

I am the first to admit that I don't know where to begin with this - except to think about how my own writing has changed over the past few years, reflect on my success and my struggles and to begin to integrate that into my work with teachers. But that is me - outside of the classroom. I am wondering how teachers are beginning, how administrators are beginning, how students are beginning.

So - what are we going to do about it?