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Gate City Writes Blog

Fostering the Writing Identities of Teens in ELA Classrooms

7/27/2018

3 Comments

 
When I taught high school English, I became familiar with the dramatic moans and groans from some students after I said, We get to write today! Some students, clearly uncomfortable with this task, resisted by saying, I’m not a writer or I don’t write or I’m not good at writing.

In my early years of teaching, I used to buy into that kind of fixed mindset. To help them, I provided structure (e.g., 5-paragraph essay worksheets) and strategies (e.g., daily journal prompts). Even though some of them improved on academic writing, they never said I’m a writer, and that really bothered me. I wanted my students to leave my classroom believing that they were writers in some way.

In my latter years, I responded to students’ comments by saying, Everyone is a writer. We just have to figure out what you want to write about and how you want to write it.

To read more, check out our publication on Writers Who Care.
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  • Gate City Writes
  • Events
    • GCW Winter Workshop 2019
    • The Poetry Project Institute Summer 2019
    • GCW Summer Workshop 2019 >
      • About
      • Registration
      • Schedule
      • Continuing Education Units
    • GCW Young Writers' Camp
    • National Day on Writing
    • Community Voices Summer Workshop
  • Blog
  • Photos
    • Book Fair Photos 2017
    • National Day on Writing Photos 2017
    • Gate City Writes Workshop 2018