From Potential to Power: Reading and Writing the National Gallery

As teachers of writing, we are acutely aware of how important the presence of an authentic audience can be for students' motivation to write. Though my state’s standards call for students to “write for real or potentially real situations” [emphasis mine], it’s a challenge to find such opportunities on a regular basis.

When I first heard about the National Gallery of Writing, I was naturally excited about the idea of NCTE launching a large-scale project to highlight the centrality of audience and publication in the writing process. I find that the Gallery has achieved that goal, and I’ve enjoyed my time spent browsing galleries that interest me and searching for entries by friends, colleagues, and community members.

It wasn’t until mid-November, though, that the real power of the Gallery became clear to me. I was at my Writing Project’s reunion dinner when a Teacher Consultant described a local gallery he curates. Knowing his students’ interest in giving voice to their ideas with a real audience, he had them submit pieces of creative writing, opinion pieces, poetry, and multi-modal compositions (many of which were about the power of language and writing in their own lives) to the Gallery. His students are incarcerated men.

I respect this colleague’s work generally, and I’m very interested in the intense social justice approach his work is taking, so I rushed home from the meeting to have a look at the submissions in the gallery, Education Justice Project: Voices from Prison. What I found there confirmed my sense of the importance of a National Gallery of Writing, as the authors represented in that gallery are truly among the most voiceless in America. Yet their writing is as poignant, thoughtful, and articulate as anything else I’ve read in the Gallery.

Though I could point to any number of examples, I encourage you to read “On ‘Being pushed’ vs. ‘Being pushed around,’” a two-part piece that contains a foreword and a letter to the author’s son. Admittedly, being a father of a young son and a believer in the power of writing myself, I’m perhaps biased in my assessment. But I think you’ll agree that, with introductory material that describes the written journal he’s keeping for his son and that specifically identifies his ability to “pour [his] emotions onto the pages that [he] writes[s]”—to say nothing of the contents of the letter itself—this is writing that both profited from and richly deserves the potential to be read.

With this in mind, take some time in the weeks to come to help ensure that the audience for the writing in the National Gallery is real—not just potentially real. Search for pieces written by children the same age as your students by using the age range filter and share them with your classes. Have students look for writing on topics that interest them by using a title keyword search. Using other search tools, such as author’s state of residence, technology used, or media type, find a piece that is particularly inspiring to you and share it on Facebook, Twitter, or another social networking site.

However you go about it, capitalize on the rich potential of the National Gallery of Writing to help get the word out about the importance of writing in every aspect of our lives.

Is My Writing Good Enough?

I've tried to decide what to write about for hours now. I've looked at every possible news story. I've read through articles from the most recent Council Chronicle. I've checked out my favorite blogs. I've searched the notes in all my journals.

I hate this kind of writer's block. I have pages of ideas, but I can't come up with something that seems important enough for NCTE's National Gallery of Writing. Nothing really feels right. Nothing feels good enough.

I know people suffer from writer's block every day. It's just that I'm an English teacher. I'm not supposed to have this problem. I know all about the writing process. I know that writing is hard work. I've tried brainstorming, rewriting and deleting—but I can't get unstuck. My writing just doesn't seem good enough.

Some little part of me expects a wonderful topic to spring forth. There must be a perfect idea out there somewhere, and I’ve searched and brainstormed for hours to find it.

Just as I was ready to give up, I remembered Gardiner Davis’s “Use the period. And other writing lessons,” a recent column from Crosscut, a Seattle news site. Davis explains that our quest for perfection is really the result of technology, more than anything else.

Now don’t jump to conclusions. It’s not that computers cause these problems. Davis points to technologies from the earliest days of writing. In the days of cuneiform, when writing required careful carving on clay tablets, there were grave consequences for error. There was no chance for correction. Only the option to start over. Davis describes the ultimate effect:

So fear enters the process. And as the element of fear gets linked with writing we create writer's block. That’s when the obsession with correctness comes in.

Davis goes on to discuss how this obsession with correctness resulted in essays covered in red ink and students and adults who hate writing.

Admittedly, I do not hate writing. I do hate being stuck. But why am I stuck? Davis’s article concludes that purpose and audience are really the key to the best writing. He says some negative things about the essays we English teachers assign, but his final point is well-taken:

When your boss asks you to write a letter, memo, or report, your first question should be, “What is the purpose of this document?” The second, “What do we want to happen because we sent this message?” And the last should be, “How much do we know about the reader?”

Without first clearly answering those questions, putting ink on paper is a total waste of everyone’s time.

Isn’t it absurd when a writing teacher forgets these things? I’ve been so busy worrying about finding the perfect topic that I forgot the most basic things about writing:

• Forget about correctness. You can revise later.
• Focus on what readers want (or need) to hear or know.
• Decide what readers should do or think after reading.
• Just start writing.

So if you’re like me and still haven’t figured out what to post in the National Gallery of Writing, it’s time. Stop looking for the perfect document. Stop trying to decide the perfect topic to ask students to write about for their submissions.

Think about what you want people who visit a gallery to see—perhaps details on how technology has affected your life, resources that show how you teach students, or even how you work as a writer. Decide what you want people who visit the gallery to conclude about how writing happens today for you and the students you teach.

And above all, don't worry about perfection. Just start writing.

 

Writing for Now -- Declaring an Audience

This week I heard a newscast on NPR, "Twitter Seen As Tool For Change In China" (NPR Morning Edition July 24, 2009). The gist of the newscast, that some Chinese NGOs held a training course to teach citizen journalists how to use Twitter and other new media in their reporting, made me think of Tiffany Monk, the Florida teenager mentioned in Writing in the 21st Century, the NCTE report by Kathleen Blake Yancey. Tiffany like many young people, already knows how to compose for the audiences she chooses. Tiffany’s mobile home park was flooding with rain from Tropical Storm Fay and Tiffany knew there were many elderly and disabled people who would be unable to get out. 9-1-1 wasn’t an option, so Tiffany took pictures of the mobile home park, posted them on her computer, and sent them out in emails asking for help. Everyone was saved!

Tiffany is like most of our students. She already knows how to compose and, given an occasion, she knows what she wants to say and to whom she wants to say it. We need to encourage this in all our students.

On February 23, 2009, NCTE held a press conference to introduce Writing in the 21st Century and the National Day on Writing. Two speakers who joined Kathi Yancey during the conference talked about writing today in schools. Dan Brown and his student Mansur Muhammad from SEED Public Charter School, Washington, D.C , talked about writing—teaching it and doing it-- both in an out of school.

Dan’s the author of the blog Get in the Fracas and his July 7 entry states in underlined bold, “Students need more than just their teacher to be their audience in order to unlock their finest potential.” This blog entry, “The Importance of “Going Public,” echoing the title of an NCTE publication Go Public! Encouraging Student Writers to Publish by Susanne Rubenstein, emphasizes the need for us to design school writing assignments that push students to write to audiences beyond the teacher and the school. Another NCTE book, Designing Writing Assignments by Traci Gardner, and many ReadWriteThink lessons give us tips on how to help students work with various audiences in their writing.

I have to agree with Dan and with another idea that Kathi Yancey points out in Writing in the 21st Century. 21st century writers write in order to take action, to make a connection. As teachers, we need to provide our students with the opportunity to make those connections, using whatever tools are available and certainly starting with the tools the students are already using. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, agreed with this philosophy in his interview with Rachel Dretzin of PBS Frontline: Digital_Nation on July 14, suggesting to the surprise of many that teachers have students use cell phones for class work.

For me, having students “Go Public” to their selected audience, using the tools of technology that many are already using outside of school, and taking action are three vital components of the writing assignments I need to design for my students. I’ll need to often be more spontaneous than in the past to take advantage of current situations for writing, I’ll need to allow for students to pursue many different topics and audiences, and I’ll probably need instruction from some of my students on the workings of the tools while some of my students will need instructions on the same from their classmates or me.

I’m guessing, too, that like me you’d like examples of writings produced in this 21st century fashion. Here’s an idea for how we can get just that. Let’s have our students publish their writings to the National Gallery of Writing. I’d really love to read self-initiated compositions on issues important to students: a text message or Twitter exchange, a video, some prewriting notes, an article, a letter, or poem. I’m inviting you to see if your students have such compositions, particularly from their out-of-school lives. Have them publish to a local gallery that you start or to the NCTE Gallery.