Writing With Abandon

Reflections and ramblings about life as an educator, writer, reader, knitter, and over-thinker. Trying to do the writing only I can do.

Tag: writer's workshop

  • Could you have known?

    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

  • When Ralph Comes to Visit

    “Are you ready?” Betsy asked me in the morning as we readied the theater. It was thirty minutes before the second performance of our class’s theatrical adaptation of Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher, and today, not only were the students’ parents coming, but so was Ralph, himself!

    “Ready! And nervous!” I spat out. We still needed the videographer to come to check the new prop placement, and he wasn’t replying to my texts.

    “Tranquila,” Betsy said. “Enjoy this!”

    And despite a little tech hiccup right before we let parents in, I did.

    I managed the changing of the digital backdrops and the sound effects, preparing to give cues if students needed, but mostly, I just enjoyed the show. Ralph and Ana sat to my right, and I kept warming at his audible reactions:

    “Wow, she’s good.”

    “Huh!”

    “That’s pretty clever.”

    When E as Mr. Peacock introduced him, and he stepped up to take his line (the line he wrote), the audience applauded loudly. Ralph! Here! A storyteller that inspires!

    The rest of the day was a whirlwind of professional learning sessions with him, organized by Ana. My brain buzzed with ideas, my pen moving rapidly to catch all of the wonderful things he had to say.

    One has stuck with me all afternoon into evening.

    Ralph says, many students think revision is to fix a piece of writing that’s broken. He sees revision as a way to honor a piece that’s good, a piece that means something to you.

    Flying Solo meant something to us. We went through more than seven revisions of the adapted script, honing it each time, whittling away, adding, molding, sculpting a dynamic play that could truly capture the magic we felt with the first read. And I think we honored that original magic today.

    I’m exhausted, and ready (in a way) to get back to our regular schedule without rehearsals. But mostly, I’m grateful.

    Thank you, Ralph. Thank you for writing this book and all the others. Thank you for giving us permission to adapt it into a play. And thank you for coming to see it, for meeting our students. The smiles on their faces meant so much.

  • On Letting Go and Watching Her Fly

    There’s something about teaching Writer’s Workshop that I feel oddly possessive about. It was something I grasped tightly to after meeting Ana, moving to Miami, and starting to work at KLA. It helped me through a tough couple of years in my personal life. It was something that I had control over, and which brought me and my students joy. It got me writing again, got me to see myself as a writer, just like I hope my students will see in themselves.

    So, letting go of it as a subject that I teach, that I plan, feels… scary, and uncomfortable, followed by guilt that I feel that way. It’s like a blanket being pulled off the bed that I’m still clutching to a corner of because I am desperate to stay snuggled up in it, even though I know the blanket is big enough for me and another.

    But that fear and discomfort gets replaced by awe and pride each time I watch Kim lean in and open up to the students, whose eyes light up with her stories. Every time I watch her implement all that she’s learned in just one year. There’s no doubt in my mind she will teach them so wonderfully. And I’ll be right beside her to support, to model conferencing, to be her mentor.

    “Writers, today I want to teach you,” she says, using that predictable language. And teach them she does.

    I can’t wait to watch her fly.

    Kim reading one of our student’s stories out loud, just like Georgia Heard did for us at the Quoddy writing retreat.

  • The First Writer’s Workshop

    It’s 5:30am and I’ve already been up for an hour. I’ve been struggling with morning insomnia for a few months now — waking up around 4 or 5 to pee, and unable to quiet my brain enough to fall back asleep. I have a notebook beside my bed to help me dump these thoughts, the goal being to train my brain to deal with them later, but tomorrow is moving day and so I’m too excited to settle back down.

    Besides, it’s the perfect time to get my slice of life out of the way. And I do have a goal for my Tuesday slices, now that the school year has started — I’d like to document a year in the life of a 5th grade teacher and her class and the learning we all do. So I thought I’d begin with the first Writer’s Workshop.

    ***

    This year is a little different. It’s the first year at KLA that I don’t have Ana in the classroom across from mine or down the long hallway, and it’s not because she’s on maternity leave or has moved away. Ana has gotten the job we’ve all been hoping for (and more!): instructional coordinator. This means she is more available to do coaching work with teachers, coordinate curriculum for the school, help streamline and align all-school practices, and so much more. This spring and summer, she also wrote a whole new WW launching unit for us: The First 20 Days of Writer’s Workshop, a beautiful unit that emphasizes talk, encourages teachers to join in the writing, and keeps writers in their notebooks to help them develop a strong repertoire of strategies for generating ideas of what to write about.

    To be honest, my head hasn’t been in the right place since starting school, what with everything that’s been going on (see my last post), but I knew I needed to start this year off right with a first Writer’s Workshop lesson that would hook my writers. That need became even more apparent when, during our morning meeting share, students expressed their feelings (good or bad) about writing — some saw it as something to enjoy, when they got to write made up stories or jot down their feelings to destress, while others cited it as being boring, hard, or tedious, unless they were passionate about the topic.

    I knew this first lesson would be important in convincing my reluctant writers that maybe, just maybe, there could be something to enjoy about writing this year. (And I have verbal — and written — proof from previous years that I’ve been able to do this. Many students who previously didn’t like writing either fell in love with it or found the utility in it.)

    So, as they gathered on the rug in rows for the first mini-lesson, I took a breath, told them I needed a moment to put on my writing teacher’s hat, and then leaned in close, as if letting them in on a secret: “Good morning, writers.”

    Envisioning language, a suspenseful story, big eyes and smiles, audible surprise — I wish I could have filmed the lesson from my perspective. It was a beautiful example of engagement, when every single kid is there with you, one of the utmost highs of teaching.

    And then, the planned conversations for oral rehearsal — one partner talking, the other asking follow-up questions. By the time I sent them off to write, there was no question that the notebooks would be filled. When the timer beeped, you could feel that they would have kept going.

    But it’s the first six weeks of school. The first 20 days of writing. And so we go slow to go fast.

    I’m ready for day 2.

  • The Joy of Writing Mentor Texts

    It’s my fifth year teaching fifth grade, and my third year teaching Writer’s Workshop to fifth graders. Last fall, I was excited to attend an online session with Hareem A Khan and Eric Hand for their new Graphic Novels unit for Grades 4-6. I was blown away by the work they did and immediately pre-ordered the unit. When it came in the spring, I eagerly launched into teaching it, knowing my student writers would love it.

    Last year, though, we were only able to do the first bend, as it was close to the end of the year and we had limited time. Instead of writing my own mentor text, I based mine off of Hareem’s, which is great, as it worked for all of the mini-lessons, but it wasn’t my own. I didn’t have to actually go through the writing process of generating an idea, bookmapping, considering panels as I sketched my thumbnails, or really working on my cartooning skills either when drafting. I didn’t have (or get) to experience the time-consuming yet rewarding process of creating my own short graphic novel. Until this year.

    This year, we had enough time to teach the full unit. I didn’t reinvent the wheel with the first bend, so I still used my Hareem-inspired graphic novel for that. For Bend II, in which the children write graphic memoirs, I knew I wanted to challenge myself to create my own, and I knew exactly the small moment I wanted to use for it: the fridge debacle.

    Throughout the unit, Kim has remarked over and over again how incredible it is to watch the writers’ engagement in this medium. As graphic novel lovers, they thrived (with only a few gripes here and there of “I’m no good at drawing!” — but once they realized they could get away with stick figures, it was full steam ahead). And for me, as someone who enjoys doodling herself, I was thrilled to be working in the new medium as well. I even enjoyed students’ feedback for revisions during mini-lessons, such as the lesson where I modeled how to build suspense by deciding on the number of tiers and panels within each tier. I revised an original thumbnail of 3 tiers, 2 panels per tier, to 3 tiers, one panel per tier, because as R suggested, it would be much more impactful: dun, dun, DUN! Or when E remarked that I could start the story right at the loud noise waking me up, and flashback to the preceding trouble later on.

    And the result has been so much more rewarding than creating a mentor text that I can use for future teaching: I used writing and cartooning to create art out of one of the more annoying and stressful moments of my adult life. It took lots of time, stolen at lunch, or while the children were reading or writing or taking a math test, or at home while I watched Netflix. The joy of sharing this piece with my students who have followed along and assisted me in the process has been so special, as has sharing it with my friends and family who experienced the debacle alongside me.

    I present to you, The Fridge Debacle:

  • All The Things We Do

    Today after eating with Kim and Ana and talking about reader’s workshop and writing conferences, I fell into a deep “I’m a terrible teacher” mindset.

    “I haven’t conferenced. I’ve sucked at reading their work,” I texted Ana. “And now I feel bad that they’re not reading daily, but we can’t change the routine again this year.”

    She grabbed me as we passed in the cafeteria: “I was literally having the same thoughts yesterday in the shower.”

    Then she suggested making a list of everything we are doing, so we can see where there’s wiggle room. What can we knock off our plates so we can do this?

    “But I also like my work-life balance this year,” I told her. “And I don’t want that to change.”

    I walked over to Kim and opened a new document on my computer.

    “I want to make this list, but also so we can see that we’re actually doing a lot.”

    “We do SO much. I love this idea,” Kim agreed enthusiastically. “I used to do this for parenting, too.”

    I appreciate Kim’s enthusiasm for all the things.

    So I started typing as we both shouted things out:

    ///

    ALL THE THINGS WE DO

    • Prep the materials we need for that day (copies, manipulatives, charts, post-its)
    • Plan lessons and units (writing, reading, read aloud, math, investigations, SEL, word study, sentence study, morning meetings, closing circles, integrated projects)
    • Create anchor charts for various lessons and units
    • Check and give feedback to their math work
    • Check and give feedback to HW
    • Email parents
    • Attend meetings during and after school hours (Hiring Committee, Literacy Committee, Tuesday PD, parent meetings)
    • Support students when they need help during independent work
    • Manage social emotional needs — conflict resolution, redirections, etc.
    • Transition them all over the school
    • Do mindful moments and brain breaks
    • Take them to snack and recess and lunch
    • Plan and execute field trips
    • Plan and rehearse for graduation / end of year things (middle school panel, blast off week, graduation rehearsals, etc.)
    • Write, direct, and produce a 5th grade show, which included rehearsals daily for the weeks leading up to it
    • Give kids band-aids (physical and emotional) when they need and clean poop off their shoes after recess sometimes
    • Collaborate with coworkers to do integrated learning
    • Do mentorship ALL THE TIME (sometimes formal meetings, sometimes informal, always happening constantly)
    • Take our own mental breaks (at our lunch and recess)
    • Brainstorm together constantly
    • Put out fires as they come up
    • Meet every other week with Male
    • Make each other laugh so hard we cry
    • Create partnerships and groups for collaborative work
    • Shepherd the children like wayward sheep at the end of the day
    • Manage time all the time (it’s like I have a TimeTimer living inside of me)
    • Manage arrival and dismissal (20 mins in the morning + 20 mins in the afternoon)
    • Take verbal punches from the children daily #FifthGrade
    • Get and give hugs (and a little bit of lice)
    • Document everything! (photos, videos, audio recordings, transcribing, creating wall documentation – printing, cutting, putting it up)
    • Work with small groups
    • Check in with students one-on-one during independent work
    • Create and modify assessments
    • Create rubrics for assessments
    • Grade assessments and projects
    • Grade writing (unit work + on-demands)
    • Hold celebrations for writing that often include other teachers and students
    • Write positive compliment post-its for each kid, almost every week
    • Find games and other early finishers activities
    • Complete progress reports (cumulative grades, comments/narratives, inputting them into Google Slides, saving them as a PDF and schedule sending to parents)
    • Hold parent teacher conferences
    • Do F&Ps three times a year
    • Complete middle school recommendations
    • Administer MAP exams, then download and send the results to parents
    • Reevaluate and reassess how our teaching is going, then adjust and shift based on what we think is best (sometimes involving whole new planning and prep, such as for read aloud, reading stations, etc.)

    WHAT WE’RE NOT DOING

    • Writing conferences and small groups
    • Reading their writing notebooks / using them as much
    • Protecting indie reading time
    • Aligning our investigations to the social studies and science standards explicitly (general topics, but not the nitty gritty)

    ///

    I shared the document with Ana.

    “OMG YESSS. This is your slice today :)” was her reply.

    I may still be ending this day feeling like a worse writing teacher than I was last year. But I do recognize that I’m doing SO much. And I hope that anyone else who ever feels this way realizes that they are, too.

  • The Final Slice (For Now)

    I tell people all the time one of the most beautiful paradoxes to me is writing. And the reason why is because in order to do it one has to live in an extraordinary place of humility, in the process of making something that perhaps might be shared with the world. On the flip side, the mere notion that someone wants to make something that might be shared with the world is rooted in ego.

    Jason Reynolds, from an episode of Unlocking Us with Brené Brown

    I can’t believe March is over. What a month to have documented daily. An exhausting month. A scary month. An emotional month. A month that finally, thankfully, is coming to an end, turning itself over to April and new beginnings.

    I was wary about this challenge, as it’s probably the most disciplined I’ve been writing in years. Maybe even a decade.

    I have always been a writer.

    As a kid, I would write stories and create fake newspapers on AppleWorks on my iMac. In middle school, I started blogging on Xanga and LiveJournal with camp friends. For years in high school and college, I wrote every day, whether journaling or free writing, or writing stories and memoirs. I surrounded myself with other writers and edited Caliper, Stuyvesant’s literary magazine, my senior year. I even went to college for Creative Writing. I started running an open mic with my friend, as well as a one-page flyer-style lit mag, and consistently participated in both. But in my final semester, I dropped the major because of a logistical conflict (and conflict between professors) with my other major.

    After that, I let writing fall by the wayside. I didn’t feel that I could do it, that anyone would want to read what I wrote. I journaled off and on, but could never quite get back into a groove.

    During COVID, I started journaling again more consistently, but I wasn’t producing writing for any audience aside from myself.

    It wasn’t until I started teaching writer’s workshop that I rediscovered the love of writing within me, through teaching kids how to go through the writing process themselves. Their excitement and nervousness inspired me to write mentor texts, and then their feedback to those mentor texts fueled me further. In our memoir unit this year, one student said, “I don’t understand why you’re a teacher. Why aren’t you a writer?”

    Well, I am both. I am a teacher. I am a writer. I write for me, I write for audiences (blog followers, my students, my friends when I write love letters to them). I am a copywriter, using words to advertise and persuade.

    This writing challenge wasn’t easy. It was quite difficult in fact. And not every post was a real “piece,” if you will. But it was something. And I put myself out there. And for that I’m proud. I hope to keep the momentum going — Tuesday slices? SOLC 2024?

    I wrote every day for the 2023 Slice of Life Story Challenge run by Two Writing Teachers.

  • Writing Conference with Myself

    If a writing teacher were to come up to me right now, 8:17pm on a Tuesday night, 28th slice of 31, ask me the magic words: “How’s it going?”

    If it were I in the writer’s seat, pen in hand, notebook open before me, I would reply: “Not well.”

    “Not well?”

    “I can’t think of anything to write today. I’m plumb out of ideas.”

    “What tools do you have for generating ideas?”

    “I know, I know. Think of places and people and memories close to your heart. Make a list, choose one, write everything down. Use Ralph Fletcher’s ‘breathing in and breathing out,’ or a photograph, or an observation out my window. But I’m telling you, I’m stuck.”

    “Let’s try. What’s one small moment from today, just an image, that gave you joy?”

    Ugh, I’d think. Fine, I’ll try.

    And close my eyes. And breathe. And think about what moment today was not hectic, not loud, not tiring.

    “I’ve got it!”

    “Great. Now write it down.”

    Tuesday, March 28th

    At recess, my student brought her notebook down to the playground, led me to a bench, and read me her poem about #middleschoolfeelings. Legs crossed on the bench, notebook open in her lap. Voice soft, yet powerful. We workshopped a few possible endings. She borrowed my pen to ink the chosen one. Then went off to share it with a friend.

    Day 28(!!!) of 31

  • A New Community

    I had different plans for this slice (or did I? It’s 5:40pm on a Sunday and I am tired and ready to get out of the house for a walk or a run before I settle in for the evening), but then I read Elisabeth’s wonderful slice about commenting!

    As a first time slicer, the comments were a totally unexpected and welcome surprise. Yes, yes, I knew that commenting on 3 other slicers’ posts each day was part of the challenge, but I didn’t realize that meant other slicers would comment on MY posts.

    And so each day I was pleasantly surprised as a couple of comments would come trickling in, or likes, or even follows! It filled my cup, especially during a month that has been such a mental, physical, and emotional challenge for me.

    So, I dedicate this slice to the new community, and offer a little introduction about myself, inviting you to comment with the same so that I can get to know my fellow slicers/bloggers/writers better!

    My name is Amy. I’m originally from New York City (Upper West Side!), lived in Madrid for two years, and now currently reside in Miami. I love reading, knitting & crafting, singing loudly to music, cooking, and moving my body (yoga, running, pilates, rollerblading). I taught for 5 years in NYC public schools as a Spanish dual language teacher, and currently am in my second year at a private school as a monolingual teacher (though with many students who are bilingual, porque claro — estamos en Miami). I studied creative writing in college but then let go of it for a little while, only to rediscover my love of it as a teacher of writer’s workshop last year. My friend and mentor, Ana, encouraged me to start this blog. My cousin and literacy consultant, Nawal, inspired me to join the slice of life challenge. And here I am!

    Now, tell me a little about you!

    Day 26 of 31

  • Rihanna’s “Croch”

    Today I got to see my older sister, Tillie, for the first time since Thanksgiving! She’s here on a “moms getaway” weekend with 3 of her best friends, resting and relaxing by the poolside. We met for breakfast and when she told me a story about my nephew, John Henry, I knew it was perfect for today’s slice.

    Apparently, my niece and nephew are obsessed with Rihanna’s halftime show (I mean, who isn’t?) and have requested for my sister and her husband to play it for them a million times.

    “And he’s been drawing so much lately,” my sister told me. “Every holiday, he makes a new drawing for our front door. On Thanksgiving, it was a turkey. On Christmas, a tree. On Valentine’s Day, we cut up a bunch of hearts. And this weekend he even made a St. Patrick’s Day drawing of a leprechaun with the belt and the pot of gold and everything!”

    Super cute, I know. He’s also been writing a ton, thanks to his amazing kindergarten teacher who teaches him writer’s workshop.

    Recently, they’ve learned that writers label their drawings.

    Here’s where Rihanna comes in.

    “So he drew a picture of Rihanna in her halftime outfit,” Tillie said. “And—wait, I think I have the picture on my phone, hold on.”

    And that’s when she showed me the detailed drawing — with labels! — of Rihanna in her halftime show outfit.

    “He labeled her crotch!” Tillie exclaimed.

    John Henry’s drawing of Rihanna

    And he sure did.

    “What does that say at the top?” I asked.

    “Rihanna,” Tillie laughed. Ah yes — Reeona. Gotta love phonetic, inventive spelling.

    “Wait — is that her baby?” I asked, pointing to the stick figure in a circle inside Rihanna’s tummy.

    “Oh my god, I didn’t even notice that!”

    Man, do I miss my nephew!

    Day 18 of 31