Five Things I Love About Teaching Writing

Many of you know that my school is a tinsy-bit different, and right now we are in the middle of our J-term which means that I'm spending my entire day teaching 12 kids about the New Yorker Magazine. That's the whole day straight for 14 days, and it's really pretty cool to see how much they can grow in such a little time when they really get working. It makes me happy - which is very good because if I wasn't happy, I'd be tired.

5 - Writing is nothing more than speaking on paper. Most students won't write much when they get out of school, but all of them will speak - probably a lot. Spending all day honing in on their writing skills has actually helped my students speak better. They think faster, they think on a deeper level, and they've stopped saying 'like' (I hate 'like').

4 - Writing is not math. No offense to people who like math (I was once a high school mathlete, so I kind of get it), but math pretty much always works the same way. Writing rarely gives you a straight consistent answer. I like that.

3 - Writing is not life or death. Some people are just designed to life or death decisions all the time. They become doctors, or EMTs or nuclear war button pushers. I'm not. If the writing sucks today, nobody dies. It will just get better tomorrow.

2 - Writing can feel like life or death. As much as it doesn't matter whether or not you chose to use or abuse the serial comma, writing does matter when you put yourself behind it. Writing is taking a risk to say what you believe. If people don't respect your opinion (respect is not agreement), then I think that is like dying. And that matters.

1 - Writings is all about telling stories. Stories are all about life (I mean it's pretty hard to write a story about something that doesn't ever do anything or have anything done to it). That's why we tell so many stories to children. So they know how to live their lives. What's not to like about that?