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There's a very real sense in which nearly *all* children's work is just busywork — they're expected to treat it like it matters, but ultimately it just gets marked up and tossed in the trash. How is that not demoralizing? The sooner kids can do things for real reasons, the better
What if an English teacher genuinely thought of & presented himself as a broad, eclectic editor/publisher of children's work? What if, from the beginning, kids got real feedback & iterated + built on their work until it was consumable? What if they had to say things worth saying?
Would require motivated students and teacher with time to spend on each student. I had a dear friend who did that for 15 years. RIP Melanie Plesh
Only if you expected to extract the same volume of words that you get now with pointless soundbite mini-essays — if anything, teachers create excessive work for themselves by expecting too much throwaway work. I suspect slower, gentler pacing would work better for everyone
But how do you do that without inadvertently killing some literary promise, which needs to go through a phase of not saying things worth saying?
Things people want to/feel compelled to say are to my mind "worth saying." I'm imagining the inane prompts many kids force themselves on, e.g. "write five paragraphs on what you did this summer." IMO we're training kids to create sentences whether or not they have anything to say
My daughter’s first grade class had been writing and illustrating their own books in small teams of 2-3. She brings each iteration home for me to see how it is going. I love that they are editing each other’s work and can be comfortable with sections that are harder/not yet done.
Putting my 2nd grader to bed before summer break, I asked about her day. She began SOBBING! Concerned, I gently asked what's wrong. "Ms Fox threw away the workbooks that were in our desks." Lesson: Although she may thrive with that teaching method, kids who care less may be lost.
I heard a great kid in high school who wrote custom children's books for littler kids. Bam, audience right there. Doesnt exactly scale, but those conversations can start 1:1.
I like the idea of writing projects specifically addressed to and read by a trusted peer. If we can have lab partners in chemistry I don’t see why we can’t have an English partner.
Your tweet reminded me of a couple children’s books I hadn’t thought about in years: “Frindle” and “The Landry News” by Andrew Clements, and perhaps unsurprisingly, his Wiki includes an anecdote about a teacher who performed that role for him.pic.twitter.com/IiUsEBaRYD
I only read “Frindle” & “The Landry News” once — and Clements has written other books — but stood out because they’re not comically anti-adult / anti-authoritarian like Roald Dahl’s books, but realistically depict kids responding to adult indifference with productive initiative.
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