Dear 2021 Amy,
Do you remember that first writer’s workshop session?
It was just after 2pm on a weekday in August. You had a class of just 13 students, no co-teacher, squeezed onto the rug of that tiny room. Everyone was wearing masks, including you — yours was fabric, a light blueish-green with stripes that your dad’s bandmate’s wife had made. You could feel your breath warming as you spoke; you yanked the mask down slightly to be heard over the loud air conditioner, looked down at your lesson plan:
Session 1. We Are Writers
You hugged your notebook to your chest, which you had just decorated the weekend before at a friend’s house. You cut out patterns and letters from magazines. Your name — A-M-Y — on the front, your two words — JOY and CONNECTION — on the back, a quote from Jason Reynolds — “Writing is like any other sort of sport. In order for you to get better at it, you have to exercise the muscle.” — collaged between images that spoke to you, photos of family and friends. Under your chair, behind your legs, 13 fresh composition notebooks sat in a bin, waiting to be handed out.
“Good afternoon, writers,” you started, feeling the hum of those words take flight and dip into the ears and minds of the students before you. “This year, we will write for many purposes and audiences. We will embark on this writing journey together.”
Ana’s lesson plan said: “(Make a big fuss handing out NBs.)”
So, of course, ever the good student, you did, handing each notebook to a pair of reaching hands as you told them that next week, they’d have the opportunity to decorate their notebooks with photos, drawings, quotes, and more.
You settled back into your chair, leaned forward ever so slightly.
“Today I want to teach you that the only thing writers need is a pen, paper, and a beating heart. We write about what we know, what we see, what happens to us or others. Everything we experience can become a story if we capture it in our notebooks.”
Could you have known then that you were giving them the tools they’d need to write their own slices of life?
Could you have known then that this lesson is timeless, that “today and every day,” you really can “see every idea that pops in your head as a possibility for a story”?
Could you have known then that Ana would become much more than a mentor, a writing partner, a friend?
Could you have known then that you would have so many more magical moments with those students, and the next group, and the next, and the next?
The half groups in 2022, in the bright windowed corner room. The writing conferences where a student’s pen started racing across the page before you stepped away. The independent writing time when you were writing too, and it was so silent you could hear a pin drop because you’d forgotten to put on the music, but it didn’t matter because everyone was in flow.
Could you ever have known then that by teaching kids to believe themselves to be writers, you’d be helping the writer in you find her way out onto the page again?
Could you have known then that you were speaking as much to yourself, the dormant writer, as you were to them, the writers-to-be?
I know now, so I write to the you of then:
Writer’s workshop will, without a doubt, change your life.
Yours, always,
Amy
Writing With Abandon 
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