My students will be operating in a writing environment that I encountered in graduate school. In order to teach them what writing is, I will forget that they are not graduate-level students, and I will watch their writing abilities develop. I will ask more of their creative abilities and their abilities to write and rewrite. These students will react with awe and will be inspired by writers, poets, and musicians with whom they have one thing in common--words. This will be unique in the public school setting.
Students will be crafting a creative thesis, much like that required in college graduate programs, over the course of the school year.
They will be reading in public and learning to give close readings of others' works, along with commentary. Students will learn what it's like to get close to their own writing.
My Project
Jamieson will read and critique a few student manuscripts that we send him one week before his visit. During that time we will read, view, and listen to some of his creative works. When he visits our class, Jamieson will take over and be the workshop teacher for that day, leading workshop of student-submitted writing. In the evening Jamieson will headline our Haunted Reading, which will also include a few student writers.
In the two years I've hosted the Writers' Workshop in my classroom, student engagement, ownership, and connection to the surrounding community all increased dramatically.
Continually, visiting authors, poets, and lyricists commented that students in discussion sounded like graduate-level writers. Now I teach in a new school in a community with fewer resources and hope to emulate and expand on the success of the last two years.
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