Getting the Idea

I love teaching writing. There are many things I love about teaching writing and one of those things is helping students figure out what they want to write about. This week I assigned the first writing challenge of the semester to my AP students: the experience narrative. The writing assignment takes students beyond the typical, tired narrative. They've written narratives before. The experience narrative is a narrative with a purpose. It teaches them about audience. It teaches them about argument. It teaches them that our experiences define who we are and why we think about things in a certain way.

The challenge is the argument and finding a topic that forms an argument. I know it isn't easy and they are supposed to struggle with it. Today my students worked on a freewriting activity and many were freaking out. I was asking them to think about something they had never thought about before and it was upsetting their world. But as I talked with individual students about their topics and helped them dig deeper I watched light bulbs go off. There were a lot who left my classroom without a real idea, but there were some who left knowing what they were going to do. Over the last two days I've been getting emails. Helping students find their voice and their purpose in writing is inspiring. I love to see their ideas come to life. I love to see them figure out how to express themselves. And I love that this is part of their growing process. I'm looking forward to what they come up with.