Why do we write? A vision for writing at Mustard Seed School
We all know that middle school students write because they have to.
It is the assignment.
They want good grades.
However, I believe that, while those things are true, there is more to writing at Mustard Seed School than that.
I had the privilege of asking many of the middle school students to answer this question, and, as I hoped would happen, I was surprised and inspired by their answers. They said:
“…Writing is a way to express ourselves.”
“We write to entertain, to pass on information, and to become better readers.”
“We write to communicate with each other. We write out our feelings.”
“…It allows us to let out feelings and ideas and put them into words others can understand…”
“We write because it shows comedy, history, suspense, and much more.”
“We write to make people think.”
“We write because we want to put our feelings and emotion out there…”
“…We write to understand ourselves, explore and go deeper into emotion, and to make things clearer.”
As is evident in the words of these students, at Mustard Seed School, we believe that writing is about much more than the assignment.
I believe that the best writing comes from writers who are willing to take a risk and get tangled up in language. For many years, while I was in middle school and high school, I believed that the best writing happened when a really good writer sat down and wrote something beautiful and compelling. It is this fallacy that kept me from writing with courage until I was older. I believe this same misconception, that good authors write well and bad authors write poorly, has held back many middle school students and will continue to do so unless they see the truth: writing is often messy, frustrating, and ugly. In fact, the writing process is a little terrifying at times!
While working with the seventh grade class during our first unit, our personal narratives unit, we had to roll up our sleeves and dig into the writing process with great courage. The seventh grade and I studied how to capture a small but important moment and then retell it. But as we discovered pretty quickly, that is easier said than done. The seventh graders had to be willing to return to their work time and again, each time seeing it with new eyes and, of course, a pen to cross out and revise their work to make it stronger. This was a challenging process and our writing notebooks certainly looked messy at the end of our revising time.
Even so, by the time we reached the end of our personal narrative unit, the seventh grade had a collection of 17 stories full of beautiful language that communicated small, everyday moments that represent pieces of who they are. By the end of this unit, I knew more about my seventh graders, what is important to them and how they see the world, than I could have hoped!
Why do we ask middle school students to write at Mustard Seed School?
Writing gives us a space to sort through our mixed-up ideas and perceptions, and the tiny memories that make us who we are, and to communicate those things to others. Writing is a messy, frustrating process because we are figuring out who we are and what is important to us throughout the process. And yes, this applies even to the 5-paragraph essay!
Even writing that happens within the confines of a designated subject area or structure is an opportunity for discovery and self-expression. Seventh grade students learn how to write a research essay on a topic of their choice for the History Exhibition. This requires them to choose a topic, become experts on it, and then make critical decisions about what to write and how to write it. Eighth graders write a prescriptive process essay for their Math Exhibition, which requires them to solve a math problem and then teach their audience how to solve it, a feat which requires knowledge of math in addition precise, controlled writing. Sixth grade students write memoirs in which they use writing to explore critical moments in their lives and then share those memories with an audience of peers, teachers, and families. All of this writing is done with specific guidelines and expectations that force students to think through the ideas, voice, fluency, mechanics, and organization of their writing.
No matter the topic or the requirements, when our middle school students write, they make important decisions based on what they know of the world, what is important to them, and what they think is most important to communicate to their audiences.
So what is the vision for writing in the middle school?
My hope is that middle school students will learn to see language and words as malleable and freeing. I have lost count of the number of times, during a conference, that a student has said, “I just can’t figure out how to say this the right way!” My advice is usually to just start small and say whatever it is the “boring” way. I remind students not to try to be impressive in a first draft. The writing process is designed to give each writer that first, horrible draft where nothing sounds perfect and sentences ramble on endlessly. It is during the revision process that writers search for the words that are “just right.” It is during the peer review process that writers challenge each other and encourage each other in just the right way. While going through the steps of the writing process, our middle school writers see that they are the ones controlling the language, not the other way around, and they can be free to try new things and make mistakes. My students use the writing process as a safe place to explore language and take risks because they know that the words that are “just right,” are within their grasp.
I also hope that middle school students will write fearlessly. Writing, even when it happens within the constraints of an exhibition essay or a reader’s response, is an opportunity for students to make choices about what they say and how they will say it. It requires them to make decisions about what things are most important and, as is unfortunately too often the case, what has to be left out. In the middle school, students learn to write boldly about what they think and know because they believe that what they say and how they say it matters.
In the words of one of my students, “We write to get important information down. To get things off our chests, to write feelings down. We write down stories and let our imaginations run free. We write for fun or to prove what we’ve learned. We write to reflect, to remember, and to laugh.”