How I’m Bringing Joy into Writing Assignments

Notes from the Classroom



My daughter is writing a great story about the
poop emoji plunger she won at our family white elephant party at Christmas.

It’s a great tale of intrigue and strategy. And even though she’s only in kindergarten, she’s already learning that her writing is powerful. In this case, she can use it to make people laugh–and that’s one of her highest priorities these days.

This makes me think about Ralph Fletcher’s Joy Write, a book that’s intended for K-6 teachers, but which has valuable lessons for the upper grades too. Fletcher’s book looks at the ways in which teachers can make writing a joyful experience for students. In the opening chapter, for instance, he compares writing workshop to a hot-air balloon: “For roughly an hour each day the kids would climb in and–whoosh!–up they’d go.”

But how do you create joy when, as in my AP class, there’s a pretty high-stakes test looming?

Let students choose their own topics.

My students have to be prepared to write three very specific types of essays by May. It would be irresponsible to not prepare them to do that.

But I don’t have to dictate their topics.

Why not analyze a song, a TV show, or even a threaded Twitter rant they come across?  Write an op-ed on something about which they’re passionate? Research topics of their choosing?

My students won’t necessarily have the same amount of freedom my daughter, Molly, has in kindergarten. But there’s room for a lot of joy if I commit to conferencing with each student and helping each one find ways to connect to their writing topics.

Give students an opportunity to write playfully.

Just as it would be irresponsible to not prepare them to write those three types of essays, I’m beginning to think it’s irresponsible to not give them chances to do other types of writing as well.

Fletcher argues in his book that “writing workshop has become more restrictive . . . less free-flowing, less student centered” and he’s right. He suggests creating a greenbelt that preserves space for “raw, unmanicured, uncurated” writing.

I love this idea, and I think I can make space for a greenbelt in my room, too. Why not dedicate a little time each day to some free, “unmanicured” writing? It will be tough at first; my students have not had many opportunities in recent years to write playfully. But I think if I stick with it, they’ll get there. I might start by just sharing Molly’s poop-emoji-plunger tale and see what that inspires with them.

There’s not enough time for everything, so let some things go.

It’s time consuming to conference with individual students, helping them to find topics. Greenbelt writing eats up class time.

So I have to let stuff go.

When I started teaching AP Language years ago, we examined six or seven really dense essays as a class each unit. Was it important for their critical reading? Sure. But is it more important than digging into a topic they love? More important than feeling the joy of knowing you’ve crafted a sentence that is finally, exactly, what you want?

I don’t think it is. I think whooshing takes time. I think if I want my students to find some joy in their writing, I have to accept that it’ll be a messy process that will happen on a different timeline for each student. Nobody gets anywhere fast in a hot air balloon, but it’s sure beautiful once it’s in the air.

Hattie Maguire (@teacherhattie) hit a milestone in her career this year: she realized she’s been teaching longer than her students have been alive (17 years!). She is spending that 17th year at Novi High School, teaching AP English Language and AP Seminar for half of her day, and spending the other half working as an MTSS literacy student support coach. When she’s not at school, she spends her time trying to wrangle the special people in her life: her 8-year-old son, who recently channeled Ponyboy in his school picture by rolling up his sleeves and flexing; her 5-year-old daughter, who has discovered the word apparently and uses it to provide biting commentary on the world around her; and her 40-year-old husband, whom she holds responsible for the other two.

3 Early Literacy Essentials that Are Essential for Secondary Teachers

Notes from the Classroom


When I’ve asked students who identify as non-readers to recount a happy school-related memory, more often than not, they return to somewhere in elementary school. Most were happy because they knew what they were doing, and when they didn’t, someone explicitly told them what to do.

That changes by high school. At that point, we assume that they “know better.” But the truth is the same: kids don’t know what they don’t know.

So, how can we help these high school students, who may require more explicit skill instruction?

Earlier this year, the General Education Leadership Network published a handbook of “Essential Practices in Early and Elementary Literacy.” Though the document focuses on early literacy, it includes three practices that can establish equity and support for secondary readers and writers as well.

1. “Provisions of abundant reading material in the classroom”

As reading teachers, we must create spaces dripping with literacy. It’s in reading widely that a reader truly grows.

At the elementary level, this might look like readers’ workshops and students’ regularly “book shopping.” At the secondary level, this might look like daily independent reading and encouraging students to read appropriately leveled texts for pleasure.

In both scenarios, the key comes down to choice.

The idea of choice tends to drift off as students leave elementary school, and as class-wide texts become the bread and butter of ELA courses. Yet by incorporating independent, student-selected, teacher-approved texts, many of our resistant readers begin to feel a sense of empowerment.

2. “Intentional and ambitious efforts to build vocabulary and content knowledge”

Many high school students arrive with a rich bank of academic vocabulary to draw from, while some do not. Many may require explicit instruction on domain-specific vocabulary in order to access the content.

Here are some ways to instruct vocabulary:

As students work through vocabulary strategies, the Essential Practices in Early and Elementary Literacy see the value in encouraging “talk among children while learning and reading.” Talk allows for processing time and prompts students to use the vocabulary in a disciplinary context.

3. “Activities that build reading fluency and stamina with increasingly complex text”

In my work as a literacy interventionist, I see students struggle with complex texts on the daily. But I have noticed that when reading is a shared task, students are more willing to dive into this challenging work.

At the elementary level, this may look like paired reading. At the secondary level, the needs  often move beyond fluency and into comprehension. That’s why a strategy like reciprocal teaching works well when students read collaboratively. In this strategy, students are assigned roles to model effective thinking moves.

Another way to build stamina with challenging texts is by using other text types as supplements. Students will define reading by what we assign to them. Suddenly, a challenging and irrelevant text from the canon represents all of reading, and may feel unreachable to a struggling reader. But by exposing students to multiple genres and text types, alongside a more challenging text, we breathe relevance and resonance into what students may perceive to be beyond their grasp.

Teaching multimodal texts is an effective way to build understanding, particularly for students with weak literacy skills. Multimodal options encourage students to read about the same idea, but in a more relevant way. And after all, increasing relevance breathes life into learning, and positions even resistant readers to be lifelong readers.

Lauren Nizol (@CoachNizol) is an MTSS Student Support Coach and Interventionist at Novi High School. She has eleven years of classroom experience, teaching English, IB Theory of Knowledge and English Lab. Lauren completed her undergraduate degree in History, English and Secondary Education at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and her Masters in English Education from Eastern Michigan University. She is a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and an advocate for underperforming students and literacy interventions.  When she’s not teaching, Lauren often runs for the woods with her husband and their three sons/Jedi in training and posts many stylized pictures of trees on Instagram.

How We Standardize Our Students’ Voices, and Why It’s a Problem

Notes from the Classroom


“So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity–I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.” – Gloria Anzaldua, from “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”

As a teacher of language, I find that I’m often caught between contrary instincts about how to teach voice. I think voice done well is one of the most powerful elements of writing. This applies to all writing, not just what we tend to label as “creative writing.”

Here, though, I’m talking about argument writing, because that’s what I teach.

In my classroom, my first instinct is to follow the rules that were drilled into me by almost all of my teachers. That instinct tells me that I should push traditional rules of writing. These rules say your voice must be neutral, third person, and use standard grammar. Following these rules, the idea goes, highlights the power of one’s argument.

That’s what I was taught. And that approach is still taught everywhere.

But I’m caught between that and another instinct.

This second instinct comes up when female students persist in using the male pronoun, or when I read something that is so bland I can barely stay awake–and my eyes drift to the top of the page and see the name of a student who I know isn’t bland. I look at those names and I notice that they are often female, people of color, kids who speak two or more languages.

And as I circle non-standard usage, I wonder if what I’m really looking for in that neutral, standard voice is actually me: white, male, bland.

It bothers me that we’re stuck, my students and I. They want to get good grades and be successful writers. I want the same for them.

But not at this price.

When I ask them to be tradional, what I’m really asking for is whiteness. Think about those words: traditional, standard, neutral. They’re all pointing in the same direction.

Why do we read, teach, and celebrate the distinctive voices of Zora Hurston, Jamaica Kincaid, and Gloria Anzaldua, only to turn around and tell our students that they shouldn’t write this way for the exam? That these brilliant writers and their voices should be relegated to the “creative” category, rather than using them to show our students that serious arguments don’t always come from “neutral,” “traditional,” “standard” writers?

I hear the words above from Anzaldua every time my classes talk about voice, every time I circle something. And I know she’s right.

RICKRick Kreinbring (@kreinbring_rick) said many, many years ago that he would become a teacher because “English Major” didn’t sound like a job, and his father really wanted to see him get a job. Rick liked to read and he wrote a little, so he got his teaching certificate and he’s been working at it for over 20 years. Most of the time he’s at Avondale High School, trying to stay one step ahead of his students.