Writing is one of my passions. It’s been one since I was a little girl – and yes, I have stories I wrote from the time I entered school – and it’s been one I’ve wanted to share with students since I became a teacher. That’s one of the reasons my school’s focus on literacy, and specifically writing, thrills me.

I teach writing using a writing workshop format. When I began, I used Nancie Atwell’s Lessons That Change Writers extensively; as I’ve developed as a writing teacher, I’ve begun to go my own way a little more. There are still incredible lessons there, and incredible ideas, that I use every year, but I tend to tailor my writing program to the needs of my students a little more, and give them more examples from my own writing.

Yet the exploration my staff did of the Writing Essentials book by Regie Routman today during our professional development session reminded me that I still can improve. I still have to improve if I want to be the best writing teacher I can be.

There are a few key ideas that we noticed running throughout the chapters (in partners, we read through a chapter, noted the big ideas, then debriefed with the group). One of these is the fact that writing traits – conventions in particular – are significantly less effective when taught in isolation than they are when taught in the context of students’ and teachers’ own writing. Another is the need to teach explicitly what writers do, to model the entire process as a writer.

Two big ideas, however, particularly stood out for me; two ideas that for me are linked: the idea that we should only be marking around twenty percent of student writing (just as we don’t evaluate student reading every time they do so) and the necessity of holding writing conferences with students frequently. Routman conferences with her students every week.

I used to do writing conferences regularly. It allowed me to talk to students about their writing, to articulate my interactions with their writing as a reader, and to help them develop and measure personal goals in their writing. I’m not sure when I got away from that, but I suspect it was after I became burned out on the amount of marking I would do in teaching writing. See, the writers’ workshop process with my students has them draft, self-edit and -revise, peer-edit and -revise and then hand it in to me to be edited and revised before it is handed in to be marked. Multiply that by twenty-eight students – many of whom are writing four to five pages single-spaced – and that’s an incredible amount of teacher writing homework. An overwhelming amount, in fact; so much so that I began to use the time when the students were writing to do some of that editing and marking.

On the one hand, I still strongly believe that the students need my input in their writing, particularly at the beginning of the year. Their understanding of the conventions, of flow, of description and detail and the importance of word choice, all of this is something that most students grasp lightly if at all, even in grade seven. They need to be taught explicitly what makes good writing, and by doing it in the context of their writing, I can make those lessons relevent for them.

On the other hand, however, I know that engaging with my students one-on-one, having these conferences with them, is immensely valuable to them as novice writers. So many of them do not read the comments I put on their pieces, comments I spend ages thinking about and writing out. Perhaps having those conversations in person can be more effective. Then some of the common proof-reading errors can become part of a mini-lesson at the beginning of a Writers’ Workshop block.

I don’t know fully how to balance my time (and making the most of it) with being an exceptional writing teacher. But I think being part of this book club, reading Writing Essentials will help me begin the conversation with my peers.

Who’s in?