Student Authors Get Professional

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

I teach all major subjects in a fourth and fifth grade combined class at a highly diverse progressive school in the East Village of New York City. Approximately 68% of the students receive free lunch as well as a number of other social services and spend the majority of their time within their neighborhoods. Our school is committed to contributing to the community and to developing our students' understanding of the experiences of others as well as their responsibility as members of society. Last year my students had the opportunity to write “expertise books” using “real” blank books in which to publish their words and drawings. The published pieces were produced in picture book form - an experience that allowed the students to become authors, following in the footsteps of Ezra Jack Keats, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, and so many others. While using these books, the entire class was truly bubbling over with excitement – asking to take their writing projects to work on at home, diligently seeking out ideas and material for illustrations, and even complaining each day when our writing time came to a close! Even the more reluctant writers in the class were caught up in the excitement and it became nearly impossible to do anything but schedule at least an hour each day devoted to writing. This year I want to bring this experience to my classroom again. Creating their own books fills the students with a great sense of pride and excitement, especially as they are given the opportunity to share their own knowledge about something which they know a great deal. For some students, this assignment is the first that gives them a true feeling of being a writer. For other students it serves as another experience in a series that shows them they can become an author, an illustrator, a storyteller. In the past, I have witnessed students pulling piles of lined paper together inside covers made of construction paper. In time, these loose pages can tear and wither. My dream for this assignment is to have enough blank books available for my students to use to publish several of their pieces throughout the year. These books will add an air of authenticity and an increased sense of worth to their writing projects. With these resources at their fingertips, my students can become real authors with their words and drawings encased within hard covers designed to preserve their creations. All of my students will participate in this project. For so many of my students, writing is still a world which seems foreign and unattainable to them. To be a “real” writer is an achievement of which many of them could not conceive. By publishing non-fiction pieces on topics of which they are experts my students can catch a glimpse of themselves as authors. If provided with these seemingly simple resources – these blank books of pages for them to fill – that glimpse can become a reality.