The most important thing that young writers can do to develop their skills is write, write, and write some more.
In conjunction with writing, young writers should read great writing: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, jokes, text messages…. The form doesn’t actually matter. The more great writing they read, the more the rhythm of language will take root in their heads.
But finally, young writers can be really inspired by books about writing and reading. Below are a few of my favorites for young writers of a variety of ages.
The two adult writers of this book address kid writers as equals: fellow writers struggling to find out what they want to say and to say it well. My students love the advice in this book and they love the “I Dare You” prompts sprinkled throughout.
This is a book full of fun, inspiring prompts. My students love it. But I do ask them not to actually rip the pages…
Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity
Ray Bradbury was probably the single most inspiring writer to me as a young writer. I didn’t discover this book until I was looking for a good book on writing for my more advanced writing students. This is not for novice writers or readers, and at times Bradbury can be a bit bawdy. (One of the pieces is entitled “Drunk, and in charge of a bicycle”!) But my advanced students love it as much as I do. It would be a great one to read along with reading the books that Bradbury references in his essays.
It often takes a whole semester before students realize what all these stories have in common: they are all about books and reading in one way or another. There aren’t many contemporary short story collections for kids that don’t focus on “classic” stories. Although I love the great writers of the past (see Little Worlds below), some kids just aren’t ready to read past the antiquated language and into a world that doesn’t connect well with theirs. The situations and characters in Shelf Life are accessible and inspiring.
There aren’t a lot of great collections of classic stories for kids. I have to say, most of these stories require a high school reading level. I would also venture to say that most middle schoolers wouldn’t have the depth of understanding needed to really “get” these stories. For that reason, I always have to apologize about the book’s title to my teen readers, who may think that it’s a book for “little kids.” But of course, few of the stories in this collection were actually written for kids. They include many of the greatest short stories that have inspired writers for generations.
One of the consistent misunderstandings I see amongst parents, other teachers, and even students themselves is how working on creative writing skills translates to improved skills in “serious” or academic writing. Most people seem to consider creative writing “extra-curricular” and therefore not academically important.
However, research has proven many benefits of “extracurricular” study, such as the link between musical study and improved math skills. Similarly, creative writing embeds important skill-building exercises like the medicine in Mary Poppins’s “spoonful of sugar.” Here are some of those lessons.
1. Any writing is good writing
Writing is a ‘practice.’ No matter what the task, whether it’s texting with friends or writing a poem, using words develops the brain just like lifting weights develops muscles. Exercise is a great metaphor because it’s something that many people detest just the way people detest writing. The common advice you see about getting more exercise applies to writing: find a way to make it social, do it in a location that you enjoy, chart your progress, reward yourself.
Creative writing is something that is attractive to many kids in part because of its social character. No one is going to want to read your book report on “Little House on the Prairie” (apologies to my third-grade teacher), but there’s an audience for your Pokemon fan fiction or your poem about autumn. And creative writing shows progress in a pleasurable way. My students have chosen to write everything from an encyclopedic description of sports cars to a NaNoWriMo dystopian novel.
2. Creative writing uses the same skills as academic writing
Good creative writing features specific, appropriate word choice. Good academic writing features specific, appropriate word choice.
Good creative writing features strong, varied sentences, clearly written. Good academic writing features strong, varied sentences, clearly written.
Good creative writing is well-organized and offers the right amount of information to lead the reader through a story. Good academic writing is well-organized and offers the right amount of information to lead the reader through an argument.
Good creative writing makes the writer’s world come alive in the reader’s brain. Good academic writing makes the writer’s argument come alive in the reader’s brain.
But while many students resist “working” on their writing, they are very open to developing their creative writing skills.
3. Creative writing opens the door
Pretty much every reluctant writer I’ve ever worked with has come to me after someone has “taught” them to write. Usually that someone thought that kids need to learn to write the way they learn to make a cake: Give them a recipe, tell them to follow the rules, expect them to enjoy the product.
But that’s not how writing works. For most people, writing isn’t inherently pleasurable, and introducing it as a bunch of rules to be followed to produce a bad-tasting result doesn’t work. It’s like asking a kid to make a cake out of overcooked broccoli—why bother following the recipe if no one is going to enjoy the product?
When kids are excited to share their work, that excitement translates to a permanent, solid base of enthusiasm that fuels enthusiasm for future academic writing.
Forget the work—let’s “play”!
Recently, one of my online creative writing students expressed great pleasure at the end of class for having spent an hour “not learning anything.” I let it slide, happy that he couldn’t see me at my desk, laughing at the success of my pedagogic deception. My students are learning—they just don’t know it.
It’s hard to educate a child who is profoundly asynchronous, as many gifted children are. While a young gifted child may have a high school level vocabulary, they may struggle to hold a pencil. And the disconnect becomes even more pronounced as the child grows and seems to become more mature. When a child can read and discuss a history text at a high level, we expect that they should also be able to write an essay at the same level. However, it’s an unusual gifted child of 10 years old that can write a coherent essay; even more unusual for a 10-year-old to want to write a coherent essay.
My students’ parents have been asking me this question for years: How can I accelerate my child’s writing to match their analytical abilities? My answer is a multi-step one. Hopefully this will be helpful both for homeschooling parents who are frustrated with their child’s writing output, and school parents whose children are being held back from accessing classes they seem ready for.
1) A disconnect between input and output is completely normal for gifted kids
For homeschooling families, this can seem like a personal struggle. You may not notice other homeschooled kids having similar difficulties, but the fact is, it’s extremely common (within our uncommon demographic), and will require some patience on your part.
If your student is in school, you may be frustrated that educators generally understand little about gifted children and may use this disconnect as “proof” that your child isn’t gifted. It certainly isn’t proof that your child isn’t gifted; however, it may be evidence that your child is not mature enough yet to access advanced courses which require high-level output.
2) Forcing gets the wrong result
One of the first instincts when homeschoolers and teachers sense a lagging skill is to push on it. However, issues of asynchronous development don’t go away if you push on them—they tend to be exacerbated. Especially in writing, it’s important to remember that good writing never comes from being forced. Students need to develop fluency in writing things they want to write before they can be challenged to write academically.
3) Focus on success
I borrowed my “focus on success” approach from teachers in Special Education. They have to accept that some of their students will never be able to function at a high level, so it doesn’t make sense to focus on the things these kids can’t do. Instead they focus on making the kids feel successful at the things they can do, then work on improving their lagging skills as best they can.
How this translates to gifted kids is that if you focus on the lagging areas too much, the kids start to think of themselves as having a problem to be addressed. Then they start to think that the problem “defines” them and they may start to try to avoid confronting it. Especially if they are perfectionists, which is common in gifted kids, they start to shy away from “working on” the “problem” because they don’t feel successful at it. Then they develop a block, and once that happens, you have a lot more work to do to get back to the place where they can work on their skills.
4) Remember that maturity is important
Our gifted kids can seem so mature, but that’s only because certain parts of their brains are developed beyond what is expected for their biological age. The other parts of their brain show age-appropriate (and sometimes lower) development. In some areas of education, you simply have to have the patience to wait for maturity to happen. As long as your child is progressing and is happy and healthy, you probably have nothing to worry about. Waiting for maturity is the right approach, as frustrating as it can be. (The exception is if your child is indicating the presence of a disability such as dyslexia or dysgraphia. In that case, you need professional help.)
There is nowhere I have noticed the importance of maturity more than in developing academic writing skills. Even my best, most fluent creative writers balk at writing essays before they are mature enough to see the need for them. Sometimes the change is almost as sudden as flipping a switch: A child who refused to do any academic writing is suddenly a teen who writes, edits, and takes pride in a serious academic essay. Sometimes the process is slow—and it often happens too late for the comfort of parents and teachers.
5) Input almost always develops before output
I have heard of kids who love to write before they can read, but this is extremely unusual and not necessarily something you should want. Avid young readers who resist academic writing are simply not ready for it, and pushing them won’t help. If input is what they are enjoying, and if their output is keeping pace with their biological age, then you’re doing fine.
6) Adapt as much as you can so input progresses while output develops naturally with maturity
While you are waiting for maturity, you can help foster a love of writing by not pushing writing assignments that are meaningless to them. As long as writing is meaningful, most students will want to do it. Read “Approaching Formal Writing” for tips on how to work on writing skills in age-appropriate ways.
As I explain in my article “Adapting Curriculum,” there are many ways outside of formal writing to continue to engage with advanced materials while not expecting advanced output. For example, if you are reading college-level literature, you can:
Have lots of verbal discussions about the book
Make it social by taking part in a book group
Make creative projects based on the book—visual art, videos, creative writing, comics
Ask your child to dictate their ideas while you type or use dictation software
Watch movie adaptations and do comparative analysis
Go on field trips related to the book’s subject
You can do these sorts of activities for pretty much any subject. Don’t discount the importance of creative output in demonstrating a child’s understanding of a text—this is a natural way for children to interact with their studies.
7) Be patient and realize that much of maturity is biological
No matter how advanced our kids are intellectually, they are still, like all of us, one with their biology. In time, their bodies will grow, their hormones will mature, and it will all sync up. Remaining patient and trusting the process is one of the greatest challenges in parenting gifted children. We need to keep our eyes on the goal: producing happy, healthy, productive adults.
This photo is of a group of students who met for the first time. They are members of a long-running writing group and it was as if they were old friends…because they are even though they’ve never met IRL.
In my summer off from teaching online at Athena’s, I didn’t stop working. I read books, updated my classrooms, emailed with students and parents, consulted with our wise Athena (a.k.a. Dr. Kirsten), and sat in a circle on a lawn with some of my longtime students.
Wait, don’t I teach online? Isn’t online teaching all about being separated from your students?
Yes! And No!
Teaching is about connecting
One of my most important jobs as an online teacher is finding ways to connect with my students personally even though we are not in the same room, the same state, and even sometimes the same country. It’s a tricky part of online teaching.
This summer I got to see the fruits of my labor when I was hired to speak at a conference that, it turned out, a good number of Athena’s students would attend. I declared a time and place for the meeting and then, well, decided I’d have to wing it.
30-some homeschoolers meet on a lawn…
If I’d been a classroom teacher, I would have had physical memories to draw on: I could have brought familiar items from the classroom or done activities we’d already done together. But what would we do in an outdoor space?
The first challenge was to get everyone to make a circle. School is very good at teaching kids how to form geometric shapes. Homeschool, not so much!
Once we’d done it, though, I felt like we were back in our Blackboard classroom (which had developed ninety-degree weather, well-watered grass, and slices of watermelon being passed out by a parent). All the eager hands; those familiar voices chiming in with their creative, intelligent, and wacky ideas; and the smiles, though this time they were real rather than emojis. 😊
And then we connected
Here I am presenting at the conference.
When I asked the students what they liked about Athena’s, they pointed out everything that we teachers hope to convey: a safe space for all kinds of kids; a place where they could express their ideas; a place where they could explore a wide variety of topics with teachers who love what they teach and other passionate students.
I noticed that Dr. Kirsten had to wipe away tears!
Online education fills a need
The fact is, yes, we teach online. But no, we aren’t disconnected from our students. Online learning will never replace physical get-togethers, but it it fills a need that many students have. Our students feel that they are part of a community of kids and adults who share values and passions.
For me, the experience was one of the most memorable of my teaching career. Nevertheless, I’m happy to be back in our webinar room….though it is BYO sunshine, grass, and yummy watermelon.
Homeschooling is in the news again because of a sensational story: one homeschooling family severely neglected their children.The knee-jerk response to a problem like this is to restrict, regulate, or abolish.
But have no doubt about it, homeschooling is an educational choice that is a vital one for families. Here are five reasons why homeschooling needs to remain an option for all families:
1. Different people, different educational needs
Our schools, whether mainstream public schools or elite private schools, are largely set up to offer one-size-fits-all education. The few schools that actually serve the needs of kids on the fringes are generally too expensive for most families. That leaves an enormous gap that is filled by homeschooling.
Although I know many people who homeschool largely because of their family values, a good percentage of families come to homeschooling originally because of educational needs that aren’t being served. Gifted children, twice-exceptional children, children with learning disabilities, children with specialized academic interests—it’s hard to find a single school that serves their needs. When it works for the family, homeschooling is uniquely suited to these students. Most homeschoolers in this category do “go to school”—just not one school. Their education is patched together using trained educators, therapists, and schools to meet their unusual mix of needs.
2. Promotion of family values
Back in the 80’s when “family values” became a code phrase for right-wing Christian, I would have recoiled at using the phrase for myself. However, I believe that “values” has now been reclaimed and redefined. Although many homeschoolers choose it for religious reasons, many others choose it because of family values that come from another religion or are not religious in nature.
Every time yet another article about toxic school environments hits the Internet, homeschoolers trade them around with comments such as “this is why we homeschool.” Some families value non-violence and homeschool to maintain a peaceful, vegetarian lifestyle. Other families value cross-cultural communication, and they homeschool so that they can travel, learn other languages, and provide service work in needy areas. Some families homeschool because their unusual child was bullied. Some families homeschool simply because they value education, and their children’s schools seem not to.
3. Pushing innovation and choice
Over the time since I started homeschooling, it’s happened over and over: I learn about a new educational idea from homeschoolers, and then I watch as it trickles into mainstream education. Does your school have a STEM program? No schools I knew of had one when I started homeschooling, but homeschoolers were all over it. Now it’s become a staple of more progressive schools. Does your child have a teacher who is integrating project-based and child-led learning into the classroom? Homeschoolers have been doing that forever.
When a culture allows educational choice, it encourages innovation.
4. Resisting groupthink
Yep, this sounds pretty lefty-liberal, but it’s part of homeschooling on all parts of the political spectrum. Homeschoolers of various types have their own problems with groupthink, of course—it’s only human to want to be part of the flock. But the choice to homeschool is a choice to forge your own path, no matter what your political direction is. The parents who choose homeschooling “because all my friends are doing it” are generally the least successful. It’s the parents who resist groupthink who find their home in homeschooling.
5. It’s a free world
This is something people used to say a lot when I was a kid in the Midwest, and I have mixed feelings about it because it was often used to justify bigotry. But the fact is, living in a society that controls every aspect of the citizen’s lives isn’t good for anyone. In order to take the good we get with freedom, we also have to accept the risks. Granting freedom to our citizens comes with the responsibility to maintain a delicate balance between free rights and social responsibility. Every time we face a new issue in our society, from vaccination to teaching evolution, we have the obligation to weigh the freedom to live as we wish with our responsibility to maintain a healthy, safe society for everyone.
Homeschooling, to me, is one of the risks we have to allow. We don’t require education, training, or any sort of license for parents. It’s the most dangerous occupation we allow people to practice without regulation. Yes, there are bad parents. And some bad parents inevitably choose homeschooling. But the good that we get as a society from allowing this choice is worth the risk.
Rip the Page!
Our schools, whether mainstream public schools or elite private schools, are largely set up to offer one-size-fits-all education. The few schools that actually serve the needs of kids on the fringes are generally too expensive for most families. That leaves an enormous gap that is filled by homeschooling.
