Kim Yaris

The cold air ____________________my neck. How would you fill in the blank?

I’ve been working with a group of first grade poets and I posed the same question to them. In my head, I considered the words “blew on” and “breathes on.” My first grade friends came up with those words too but they also came up with “kisses,” “tickles,” and “stings.” When I brought this question to these young writers, I had preselected “breathes on” as the best choice for what I was trying to say. After talking to them, they made me reconsider. “Sting” was, by far, the BEST word for the image I was trying to create. I planned to teach these first graders something new about word choice and walked away having learned more than I could have ever taught them.

A colleague recently shared a story of a college professor who postulated in a graduate school class that first graders weren’t really capable of writing poetry. When she shared that story, all I could think about were these first graders. They write things like “the snake slithers like a worm” and “my guinea pig, my own little prairie dog, he’s so fast like lightening!” By virtue of being a child, they find poetry in everything. They are awed by things that stopped being beautiful to adults a long time ago. First graders can’t write poetry? Only if we grown-ups tell them they can’t. Otherwise, their words capture the poetry of the world perfectly.

Today is Mother’s Day. I had grandiose visions of sleeping in till 9:00 and eating breakfast in bed off a tray filled with flowers and adoring letters from my children. But, here I sit at 6:30 AM dressed in my sweats and sneakers ready for my morning walk—why? Because that is my routine. That is what I do every day.

I visited a kindergarten this week. I taught a brief lesson on what to do when you are stuck and don’t know what to write. After my lesson, I took a risk and simply said, “Now, I’d like you to go get started on your own writing.” In a classroom of five and six year old writers, you might have expected chaos—a mad dash to the folders, confusion until everybody found something to write with, but no, that is not what happened. It was quiet and orderly. The children quickly gathered their materials and sat down to write. As I began to confer with them about their work, they talked to me about their “drafts,” “stretching out words,” and “brainstorming their planning pages.” They easily sustained twenty minutes of independent writing and could have gone longer except for the fact that I stopped them because I was leaving and wanted time to share.

Such language, organization, and stamina during writing workshop. How is this possible? I wondered. And then I realized. In this classroom, writing is valued by the teacher. Every day since the first day of school, they have had writing workshop. Their language is so impressive because the teacher uses this language when she teaches them. The transition from mini lesson to independent writing time is so smooth because each day for the 150 odd days that they have come to this classroom the teacher has set expectations for how to gather their materials and get started in order to make the most out of the time they are given. They can sustain long periods of writing because they have practiced and because they have been taught that their words matter. They know that they have important things to say. Writing Workshop is an integral part of their day. It is a routine is ingrained into their being—just like me and my sneakers.

Yesterday I visited a teacher at her wit’s end with book abandoners. She said, “I can’t believe that here we are in April and I still have kids who pick up a book, read a couple of pages, and put it down only to start the cycle again with another book!” She continued by saying, “These are fourth graders. They should be reading chapter books!”

Understanding her frustration and knowing that she is feeling the pressure of June, my question for her was simple. “Should they?”

She thought. “Shouldn’t they?”

Reaching our wit’s end is not a comfortable feeling. However, it is sometimes just what we need to rethink our instruction and evaluate what WE are doing that might be impeding the change we hope to affect.

When children abandon books, it is often their way of telling us that their reading is too hard. Perhaps if these children were reading shorter texts they would build the stamina they’d need to sustain a longer text. Or maybe, if these children spent some time with picture books they’d rediscover a passion that died when the books they were expected to read stopped having the lovely illustrations that they fell in love with as young readers. Either way, maybe fourth graders shouldn’t always be reading chapter books. I’m thirty-eight and I haven’t picked up a chapter book today. I have read the newspaper, my email, and several samples of first grade writing. I feel a sense of accomplishment. Could it be that chapter books don’t always give our young readers a sense of accomplishment? Are we perpetuating an anti-reading sentiment by pushing them into long texts all the time?

I warn to be wary of the word should. Very often the change that we seek rests with “should not.”

A girl writes about a painting in a museum. She shares how it looks “like a line of poetry,” and how the colors blend together like “a rainbow under the sea.” After she reads aloud, the class claps. Another boy stands to share his work. He begins to read: “Thor gives dry kisses, not drooly ones. When he is done, the class claps again. This group of fourth graders is doing the difficult work of “showing” instead of” telling” in their writing and they are impressed by the accomplishments of their classmates.

I, too, clap after they share but secretly I am celebrating something very different. These two writers have spent countless writing workshops staring at the blank page watching the clock slowly tick, wishing the period over. As I cheer their accomplishments, my mind wanders to the daffodils I had seen on my morning walk: tiny green stems topped by yellow buds poking out from beneath the hard weathered grounds of early spring. “Finally,” I thought to myself convinced that the flowers would never come out.

How many times had I thought the same thing about these two writers? Would they ever be able to find an idea that seemed worthy of writing? Would writing ever be anything but painful hard work? At times I felt doubtful, but like the daffodils that slowly took root and found their way through dirt and rocks, these writers, found their way to beautiful words and vivid descriptions. They were nudged and nurtured and what emerged? A beautiful flower. Finally.

For many young writers, revision is the most dreaded step of the writing process. Over the course of the last few days, I have been exploring revision with some fourth and fifth grade students. We have been investigating how decisions about what to take out can have as much of an impact on improving writing as adding details or descriptive language.

One of the pieces we tackled read, “We were getting ready for school when we heard the bus squeaking down the street.” Squeaking is one of those words we teachers love. Isn’t it wonderfully descriptive?

Not according to my fifth graders.

As I circulated the room, checking to see which words were getting the ax, I noticed nearly all of them saw this word as “fat” destined for the chopping block. I didn’t get it. “What was wrong with the word squeaking?” I asked. I wanted them to justify their decision.

It was simple in their eyes. Buses do not “squeak” as they are going down the street. They “squeak” when they stop. When a bus moves, it is more like a “rumble.” The word “squeaking” was not right. This writer needed a more precise word.

Now I saw their point. I marveled at the shortsightedness of my own thinking. I couldn’t believe how a strong action verb lured me in to make me believe the writing was solid.

As I sit here typing this, I find myself wondering if the problem is not in teaching revision inasmuch as it is in the WAY we teach kids to revise. The extent of much of the teaching about how to improve a piece of writing never gets past “add detail and description.” By starting with “what should we take out?”, my students began asking questions like: Does it make sense? How does it sound? Is this detail important? Is this confusing? Does this tell instead of show? Is this specific enough?

When they asked these questions, they had no trouble going back to their piece with fresh eyes. Their pencil points were sharp, ready to eliminate the fat. The impact on their writing was immediate and profound.

Never again will you hear me say, “add description, add detail.” The better question seems to be “What can you take out?”

Are you wondering what this is going to be about? That’s what good titles do.

Last night I had one of those cherished heart-to-heart conversations with my eight year old son. He was asking me how people fall in love. An honest question followed up by an innocent theory: “Mom, do people have a love sac in their bodies that gets turned on when they’re grown up?”

So you see, he wasn’t asking me about the love you feel for your parents or your brother or your grandma. This was about LOVE—the grown-up version.

Thinking back on this conversation, I find myself smiling. This is one of those “kids say the darndest things” stories I will share with my friends and family (unbeknownst to him to spare him any embarrassment). It’s a sweet story, one worth telling.

Imagine now that I called this story “The Love Talk” or “Talking about Love.” Would you be as interested in reading my story? I polled the students I was working with today about which story they’d be most interested in reading. It was unanimous. Everybody wanted to read “Activating the Love Sac.”

Teaching kids about writing titles has been relegated to “afterthought” status in my instructional repertoire. I am wondering today how that happened because ultimately, a title is our first encounter with a piece of writing. First impressions are lasting impressions and if we want readers to look further, we have to entice them. From now on, I am upping the ante on teaching titles. I want my writing students’ voices to be heard.

Yesterday, I worked with a fifth grade class on stretching their thinking about a topic. I had them reread a recent notebook entry and underline a line of their writing that spoke to them. They then rewrote this line on the top of a new page and used it to prompt their thinking and writing for the day. As far as lessons go, it was a good one. The children were inspired. They took their writing in new directions.

After the lesson, I proceeded with my conferences. Most went smoothly. I encountered the typical set of writing issues: “I don’t know what to write about.” “ I’m done.” And then:“I don’t know what else to say.”

“ I don’t know what else to say.” This particular conference posed a particular challenge for me. The young girl I was working with shared her original entry about a stranger on New Year’s Eve. The line she had lifted inspired a new entry about her family tradition of watching the ball drop and eating twelve grapes and making wishes for each month of the newyear. Her problem now was knowing what she would write next. This is where my own struggle began. I wanted to say, “That thing about the grapes is so interesting to me. I’d love to know what you wished for.” But I couldn’t. The teach the writer, not the writing mantra echoed in my mind. I needed to help her know how to solve this very common writing dilemma: What DO writers do when they don’t know what else to write?

So instead, I said, “Well, when I write and face this problem, I reread what I have written to help me rethink my idea. You might even try lifting another line from this entry and see what happens.”

After that, I walked away. When I checked back in with her, she told me she decided to write about grapes. When I looked at what she had done, I saw that she had launched a whole new entry about her brother’s allergy. She took her writing in a direction only she could have imagined for herself.

I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome of this conference and realized as I left this young writer to her work how important it is to resist our impulse to help too much. Each time I sit down to confer, I make a subconscious decision—will I enable or will I empower? When it comes to efficiency, it is always easier to enable. However, if it is effectiveness I seek, empowerment is the only way to go.

When my now six year old son was three and four, he had a fierce independence streak. He wanted to brush his teeth, get dressed, and put on his coat and shoes all by himself. When this started, we celebrated. We’d say, “Look at what a big boy you are!”

As time went on, I found myself cheering his accomplishments less and less. I was in a rush. I had places to be, things to do. Instead of encouraging my son to do things for himself, I insisted on doing them for him. I usurped the responsibility of putting on his shoes, zipping up his coat. Why? It was quicker. Shamefully, it was more convenient for me.

Now I have a six year old son who, when it is time to go to the bus stop or leave the house, refuses to put his shoes and coat on by himself. Where once he was so willing and eager to do it on his own, I created a monster who depends on me to do it for him.

When I think about the mistakes I have made with my son, my thoughts turn to writing workshop. Teachers contend with students who refuse to write on a daily basis. In our rush to confer and meet the needs of 20-25 children, we do the equivalent of “put the shoes” on these writers. Because we are in a hurry and we have places to be and things to do, we tell them what they need to do as writers. We list ideas for them to choose from as we tap our foot and hurry them to get started. Each time we rush a child, we need to remember that while it may not be convenient at this moment, the time we invest in helping children understand the writing process saves us a lot of time in the future. Ultimately, we want these writers to know what to do when we’re not there and if we teach them to rely on us to do their thinking for them, really, what have we taught them? Learning and thinking takes time. Sometimes, we can’t rush it.