On the first day of the Writing Across the Curriculum course I am taking at CSI, I was full of enthusiasm for being able to relax into the seat of student. I was also excited to take a writing class, a form of expression I have been grateful for since I was a plaid-skirted elementary school student. As a shy student who did not like to participate, I needed a way to express myself. Writing was the way. It gave me a voice. I enjoyed writing fairy tales and rhyming poems and recording my days in a diary. When I couldn’t talk back to the fiery tempered Sister Bridgette or Ms. Shepherd, or when I was shut-down by own father, I was always able to talk back with pencil and paper.
Over the years, my skill and love of writing evolved. In high school, I enjoyed writing personal and literary essays by hand on loose leaf and on the archaic Brother word processor; I also joined an after-school poetry club and was able to experiment more with language. In college, I discovered the existence of creative writing classes, something nonexistent in the Catholic schools I attended. During freshman year, I dropped chemistry and any previous intention of having a career in the medical sciences and majored in English and Education instead. Living in Manhattan at the Hunter College dorms allowed me access to countless literary readings and a community of writers. In 1999, I graduated and almost immediately started teaching middle school. A few years later, I received an MFA in Poetry at Brooklyn College. I kept writing by meeting regularly with a few friends, continued attending readings and lectures.
But then I became a full-time middle school English teacher. And my energies became directed to helping young people express themselves through reading and writing. It is one of the many joys of teaching: students delving into their souls and psyches and manifesting parts of themselves through words. I see them struggle, wonder, seek assistance, delight in, share, and light up. This experience reminds me, reminds us, that all people, regardless of age or reading level, have beautiful experiences and ideas to share; all people can express themselves through writing; all people can find power and voice through writing.
Even though I was guiding students to discover the writers within themselves, I began to stop thinking of myself as a poet or writer. Instead, I was teacher, spouse, mother. I began to see myself as a writing failure. I never published my work. I wrote maybe one poem a year. I was writing lesson plans and blog posts but didn’t think this counted. I thought getting an MFA in writing was a joke, and I was very self-deprecating. Truthfully, it is comical to be able to indulge in the art of writing in such depth that I know what caesuras and villanelles are, terms that are fun to know but not practical or life-saving.
During this sensational period of sabbatical, I can rethink what it means to be a writer and reignite my love of writing. Looking back, I realize I have been overly judgmental and critical of myself, defining what it means to be a writer through narrow, idealized terms. I thought being a writer meant being published and copyrighted, making money off of writing, receiving awards and grants, doing readings in cafes. But writing is so much more than that. It is an appreciation of life, an extension of experience, a practice like yoga or weight-training, that requires introspection, commitment, revision.
So why is it that the majority of the teachers in the Writing Across the Curriculum class has such a negative attitude toward themselves as writers and toward the act of writing? Many express the sentiment that they cannot write or that they hate writing. Yet when the professor assigns “inksheds” where we write for 5 minutes to a random prompt then share with the class, what each teacher writers and shares is meaningful, unique, and thought-provoking, often funny and witty. Clearly, they are all writers who have probably had bad experiences or simply not enough opportunities to write.
In schools, there is so much emphasis on reading. Where I teach, we have a 20-minute reading period every day and every student and teacher is expected to read. I think schools need to start supporting writing as well. Teachers would benefit from more opportunities to write more. For professional development, instead of giving teachers articles to read, they should be given a small blank notebook and pen and be asked to write whatever they want to.
That is what I love about writing on sabbatical. I can write about whatever I want to, practice whatever literary skills I want to, write in any genre, as long I am intentional about my organization, elaboration, and craft, the elements of writing that is on every rubric I use to teach. I also find that engaging in the regular practice of writing helps me improve as a teacher; my process and experience can be a way to help me scaffold and model strategies for authentic and creative writing.
Being in a class with teachers of all grades and disciplines, I am reminded that we all have the capacity to write. We just need to find the time to practice and to stop censoring ourselves. No one needs a degree in writing to write. In fact, all of our students, kindergarteners holding thick pencils, 3rd graders writing extended responses on the state exam, 8th graders writing science fiction stories, seniors writing college admissions essays, are writers. But in order for them to believe they are writers, their teachers must believe they are writers, too.
To all of those who resist writing and are overly self-critical or simply want to know more about writing, I recommend reading Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Here is an excerpt from this book:
We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn't matter. . . Recording the details of our lives is a stance against bombs with their mass ability to kill, against too much speed and efficiency. A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp's half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter. It is not a writer's task to say, "It is dumb to live in a small town or to eat in a café when you can eat macrobiotic at home." Our task is to say a holy yes to the real things of our life as they exist – the real truth of who we are: several pounds overweight, the gray, cold street outside, the Christmas tinsel in the showcase, the Jewish writer in the orange booth across from her blond friend who has black children. We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing.
Writing is necessary. It is a way of validating our experiences, communicating within communities, seeking justice, seeking universal understanding. We must live. We must read. We must write.
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