“I remember when I was in 7th grade, getting ready for my first school dance…” Even if your students were nodding off, sneakily texting a friend, or daydreaming about whatever kids daydream about, the second you interrupt your lesson to tell a story, you will capture their full attention.
Everyone loves stories – and students are always curious about their teachers’ private lives and experiences. Why not write a carefully crafted narrative that aligns with your most challenging lesson concept? Print it out or share it with them in an online journal. Let students read a little about your life, while at the same time, understand how your tough content connects to your real-world experiences.
You teach welding? Tell them about the time when you almost burned your…You teach 3rd grade? Share with them that when you were in 3rd grade you struggled with…You teach math? Tell them how trigonometry ended up being…
Why write when you can just say it verbally? Writing will help your students understand the content in substantial and compelling ways.
Consider these three points:
Your writing will help students learn your content – mostly because YOU are the writer, and you’ll capture their attention. They’ll want to read what you wrote – especially if you give them your personal experience and examples about the content. You will be the expert you want them to read. You will be your own mentor text.
Your students will be more encouraged to write if you write, and writing will help them in the following ways: They will 1) think more about what they’ve read or what you’ve said 2) focus their attention and concentrate to greater degrees 3) improve their communication skills 4) ask good questions and anticipate what a reader wants to know 5) be grounded to the data, research, facts, details, and information 6) review and remember what they’ve learned 7) see issues from multiple perspectives and try to describe and explain them 8) choose what is important and organize it in a way that is clear 9) clarify and condense their thoughts so that they are more apt to remember content 10) understand themselves better because writing unpacks their thinking
Your writing will last forever. Students can reread and ask questions about the content, and embroil themselves in the essential understandings that you want to impart. The wisest teachers taught using stories: Jesus of Nazareth, Socrates, Khalil Gibran, Aesop, Lao Tzu, the Griots, etc. Thankfully, they were written down.
Writing is hard and scary for most people. It’s right up there with public speaking, snakes, and spiders! But as the leaders of your classrooms, your students will respect your courage to be vulnerable with them. Yep.
Writing makes us vulnerable because writing makes us real. Our writing doesn’t have to be beautiful; it just has to authentic…and you know your kids will see right through you if you’re not being real with them. Even if you make up the whole story so that it magically connects to your content (don’t tell me you haven’t verbally done this already) – just tell them that your narrative is a gift of fiction, wrapped with nonfiction intent. 🙂 They’ll love your honesty and respect you even more because you cared enough to write your experience with the content down – so they could know your personal connection to it, remember it, and learn from it.
If you already write for or with your students, share your techniques, strategies, or habits of mind. Let’s continue to build our writing community.