Tiny Lines: A Friday Invitation to Make Writing

My Friday Substack Series is especially for writers and those who teach writing. I say more about this here, if you’re a new visitor.

I’m calling this week’s craft move object as class. So much can be revealed about entire people and their lives, their economic circumstances, and their ways of being at ease or on edge through the concrete objects the writer chooses to put in the reader’s field of view. This is a very specific way of showing rather than telling, and I found it particularly useful when writing about my experiences inside of my own family.

Object as class is a move that you (or perhaps your students) already recognize in the stories we read or watch or listen to, even if they don’t have language for it just yet. And we don’t need to have the language in order to begin writing because writing is far bigger than print. No one needs to be print comfortable in order to begin composing rich, relevant, meaningful, authentic, and compelling stuff.

And those kids who present as reluctant or resistant writers? Sure, they aren’t typically aren’t as print comfortable as those who begin spilling rough ideas across a page the minute they come to mind. That’s a privilege most writing teachers like me tend to protect, and honestly? That problematic. Those print comfortable writers are able to free up cognitive space to generate additional ideas. Their drafting actually pulls them deeper into their alphabetic writing process. All of those kids (and adults) who are not print comfortable, though? I know from experience that they make great strides when we invite a multimodal process. When we encourage people of all ages to represent their ideas using modes and materials other than written words, what emerges is typically quite more sophisticated. When we invite them speak their intentions aloud, audio record them, and then listen back…one small bit at a time? Transcription is far better supported as well. Structured literacy skills matter—of course they do. But when we “make” writing this way, we situate that explicit instruction within a process that honors identity, ability, and each writer’s interests, strengths, and choices.

Writers are not deficient simply because they are more capable expressing themselves using modes other than written words.

They’re devalued by writing teachers who grew up privileged, print comfortable, and unwilling to check their own biases.

We don’t need to wait to engage these particular writers in deeply creative and rigorous work. Too often, we tell ourselves that once they have the code, once they have a level of phonetic finesse or print comfort, once they’ve achieved a level of automaticity with their handwriting…THEN they are ready to lean into actual authentic and rich writing. Until that happens, we perseverate on shallow, prefabricated phonics practice and a process that is so tightly structured and limited that it looks nothing like actual writing.

We are ruining writers with this deeply limited and quite honestly—privileged— perspective.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

People of all ages—including very young children—are capable of defining their interests, purposes, and audiences as writers. They’re capable to composing real things for real audiences multimodally. And we are capable of situating explicit, structured literacy instruction inside of that affirming, learner-centered culture.

I will die on this hill.

And I will continue inviting all of you who follow me here to have a closer look at what I mean and even experience this yourselves.

So, follow me after the jump today. I’ll walk you through a multimodal process that’s meant for grown writers like you and me. I’ll also share some ideas that might help you serve young writers better, if you’re a teacher.

And next week, those who are subscribed will gain access to fully developed lesson plans that you can take back into your own classrooms, too.

Each season, I open a free webinar for paid subscribers. This fall, it will be a three hour experience scheduled at a time that’s convenient for most. I’ll share my process for designing authentic writing experiences with K-12 ELA and English teachers. I will include a bunch of case studies as well—places where our efforts to design MULTILITERACY curriculum and leverage multimodal assessment practices has helped us move the needle on performance. This has been my work for over twenty years now, and I’m glad to share it with those of you who are realizing that writing is far bigger than print, too. That invitation will be tucked into next week’s post for paid subscribers. I hope to see you there.