I’ve always believed in the writing process. My teaching didn’t always reflect that belief, as I spent too many years earlier in my career creating worksheets and essay prompts and outlines and templates. I soon realized that just because my writing instruction included steps didn’t mean it was a process.
That said, in more recent years, I’ve tried to integrate more elements of writing workshop: writer’s notebooks, quickwrites, peer response groups, conferring. Just about every day, for example, we begin my AP Lang class with writing—writing to reflect, explore, find topics, generate ideas, develop fluency, play with language. Students work through the process of finding ideas worth writing about, organizing those ideas, and developing their voices.
As much as I’ve tried to turn the writing process over the students, the truth is, no matter how well-intentioned I may have been in my efforts to empower students, I realized that nothing empowers students more than actually giving them power. So that’s what I did.
What follows is how I’ve taken another step in shifting my classroom towards a more authentic writing workshop.
Tricia Ebarvia 