Finding the Joy in Writing (Part 1)

 Episode 5: Joy in writing (Part 1)

 

Meribeth Mathews

 

On Tuesday, April 9 Nic and Jess opened our conversations with an exercise that encouraged us to reflect on times in our lives that our acts of writing have brought us joy.  Our responses were varied.

·   Writing memoirs

·   Writing letters

·   Writing poetry

·   Blogging

·   Writing short stories

·   Finishing and reflecting on writing assignments.

 

After sharing our responses and introducing ourselves, we responded to the prompt, “How can we call upon writing to cultivate joy?” Many of us reached back to when we were children and recalled those writings from when we were young.  Whether it was the writing or revisiting the writing, we reflected on how that the work of the writing brought us joy. 

Writing may not always bring feelings of joy.  Sometimes, joy comes when the writing is finished.  When the deadlines have been met and all of the decisions have been made. 

 

When we step back and reflect on the times when writing has been challenging or fatiguing, we identified several things that spurred us along.  The artifacts we created and shared provided opportunities for others to validate our thoughts and efforts. When we share, we build connections with others as writers and humans. 

 

As teachers of young writers, we want to support our students to write thoughtfully. Each genre of writing has its specific expectations.  We call on students to make choices in regard to the topics, opinions, words and styles. Decision fatigue is a reality that many writers, especially young or inexperienced writers face. As we guide students through the writing process, knowing how much scaffolding students need and how much freedom to allow can be difficult to determine. 

 

Jess and Nic ended our session by setting out some  challenges.  We are challenging ourselves to be transparent in regard to the scaffolds and supports we provide for our students.   Sharing with them the reasons for our outlines and scaffolds provides opportunities for students to decide on how much support they need in their writing.  We are challenged to respond to the writing prompts that we give to our students.  By doing this, we experience the challenges and short falls of our assignments.  We can better relate to our students’ struggles if we’ve been through the experience ourselves.  Finally, we were challenged to ask our students if THEY know why their teacher enjoys writing.  Do we share with our students our thinking process? Do we share our strategies and our challenges with our students?

We have all found joy in writing.  In our next session on Tuesday, April 27, 2021 at 4:00pm Mountain Time, we will discuss the moves teachers can make to bring to our writing classes. 

 

Hope to see you there!