The Writing Workshop -- A Reflection

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned – It’s been over two weeks since my last blog post. There’s really no excuse for it other than monumental laziness. In the middle of Midwestern July heat, one finds oneself content to merely sit and wallow and occasionally pick up a book.

Last Wednesday my writing class met for the last time with a grand total of ten participants. It’s been interesting to see who comes back and who doesn’t – throughout the course of the four weeks I had a grand total of twenty-two people  show up, with about four kids who showed up to every class (Melisa, Kahil, Hadiya, and Monica, you’re the best!) and seven or eight more who tried their darnest to make it to at least three because they’d forgotten week one or had to be on vacation. As my grandfather commented, it might have been wiser to charge something for the program because then people would have a reason to come – they’d be "invested" in it.

I didn’t feel right charging people to come hear me talk about writing – for starters, I don’t think what I had to say was anything worth charging for. I was sharing experience, not proven and published fact. If I had a New York Times Bestseller under my belt or a Booker Prize, then yes, I would start thinking about selling the secrets to my writing success. As it is, I was happy I wrote six pages of my fanfic yesterday. My writing is supposed to be non-profit to keep the copyright folks happy and I think that’s the way it’s going to stay.

Over four weeks I learned just as much from my kids as I hope they learned from me. They taught me that it’s unsafe for my voice to talk for an uninterrupted 45 minutes, that this is very boring for middle schoolers in particular anyway, and that one has to be very careful with the way one words one’s advertisements. (Some parents signed their kids up thinking it would be an ESSAY writing workshop, which makes sense, given that all the other teen programs at the library are geared towards school somehow.)

In their evaluations on Wednesday night, they reminded me of many other things as well. Kids need time to practice and share their ideas (“More sharing time, please!”). High schoolers have different writing needs than middle schoolers do (“Grammar wasn’t very helpful – more on character development?”) but everyone can use positive criticism (“Thanks for all the great feedback – really helped my confidence!”). I also learned, once again, that you cannot please everyone – I had high achieving students so elitist in their reading habits I’d never heard of anything they’d read and kids who hated to read whose parents had signed them up in the hopes that I would work some magic on their kids and open books for them. (Newsflash to parents – if your child is in middle school and hates to read, it may be that they have a problem a qualified reading instructor needs to sort out. Also, if they hate to read they will probably also hate to write)

If I do this writing workshop again, I’ll be more selective on age – middle schoolers in one section, high schoolers in another. I’ll make the class longer (an hour and a half) and make sure I have enough handouts for everyone. I’ll request a better meeting space so everyone has a place to write and I'll come to class better prepared than I was this time. I’ll listen better. I’ll remember your names. I"ll always bring pens and paper. I’ll find more resources for different writing development topics like character development so that students with specific needs or wants will be able to get the help they want and deserve. I’ll make them read a little more and have discussions. I'll make your assignments easier and cleaner cut.

My students also told me something I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else – “You’d make a great middle school teacher!” Three or four of my students told me that, and that made me feel really good. Tomorrow I have to go in and take the Praxis, a big liscensure test that will measure whether I can, indeed, begin my student teaching in the spring. Let’s hope for the sake of future middle schoolers in Minnesota and elsewhere that I pass.