I have been reading Peter Elbow’s work and commentaries since undergrad. I have always appreciated his candid and direct opinions. When reading “The War between Reading and Writing: And How to End it,” I really appreciated when he said, “most schools and colleges emphasize reading and neglect writing” (10). Ever since I started teaching I have always forcefully suggested to my English team that we lighten up on the novels and start really spending some time focused on writing. In the three schools I’ve taught in it’s been the same song and dance. Read a novel, write something. Something can mean a brochure, a paragraph or and forced five paragraph essay. What I find most disturbing about this continuous cycle is the fact that essays or paragraphs went through one quick draft and then we moved on to the next novel. No more growth-one, two drafts if we have time and then it’s on to the next novel. In college I always had amazing writing teachers who incorporated reading and writing nearly everyday-very different from the “write the essay or something at the end of the novel unit.” I wanted to do that same approach with my students, but with PLC (professional learning community) enforced at our school, all the 9^th grade teachers taught in step. That meant that even if my kid’s essays needed more than one draft, Dana and Evan’s classes were ready to go, so we moved on.

This year is the first year I finally put my foot down. As a writer, I am never content with one draft before I produce a final product. It just seems wrong. As my 9^th grade team mapped out the school year in September I took it upon myself to take out two novels. I simply told our team leader I just wasn’t going to teach them. To me, three or four novels, a handful of short stories, some nonfiction essays, and poetry were enough. Five or six novels were just too much. To be honest, I am only teaching two novels and one play this year. But the good news is that my students just spent nearly four weeks revising and editing one essay. Each kid went through at least four drafts and they learned the value of revising. When I had to teach six novels in addition to the other literature, I felt like I rushed through writing and to me, writing is an essential skill that students must have in order to be successful and functional adults. Elbow wrote, “we need to respect writing with similar flexibility-by also having low stakes, supplementary, and experimental writing instead of being so rigid and one dimensional about it” (19). My students weren’t graded on each draft, in fact, we conferenced so much that they were excited about writing more. Once we discussed a new possible angle, or idea, they felt more comfortable ditching their initial topic and moving on. I also gave them an open assignment that related to the novel we were reading. I was so impressed with what my students wrote and how much their thinking had evolved in one month. To this day I haven’t graded the final. In fact, the most valuable lesson I think they learned was when I asked them to attach all their drafts to the final. They were amazed at how much writing they had done. I also don’t feel the need to grade the final because we conferenced on each draft and by the end of the four weeks, I knew each word was well written, all the textual evidence was relevant and the ideas were original and well thought-out.

I am so glad that I let go of a novel for a month. It felt so good to let them know how much I valued writing in the classroom. It took about a week for them to stop saying, “all we’re doing is writing today,” but soon they were like busy little bees finding out ways to expand and explore topics they chose. In the past I was exhausted with reading. It seemed as soon as we finished one novel, we were rushing to start the next so we could meet the “novel quota” for the year. Bringing writing to the same level of importance as reading felt wonderful and I don’t think I can ever go back to an existence where I am cramming novels down their throats and assigning really thoughtless and short writing assignments that are abandoned as soon as the novel is through.

Right now my kids are writing slam poems and they spend and have spent at least an hour of class for the past two weeks just conferencing with me and writing their short poems. I thought it would be boring. I thought the kids would write crappy poems and waste the rest of the hour, but they didn’t. They really impressed me with their willingness to read out loud to the group and request suggestions and constructive criticism. They practice reading the poems out loud and listen to which words or phrases they need to emphasize and it amazes me! If a line doesn’t sound right, they revise and add. I credit their willingness to chuck portions of their writing because that’s what I encouraged them to do with our previous essay. For the first time in my teaching career I feel like a writing teacher-one who also teaches her love of reading.