“Doing all those assignments -- it kind of felt empty to me.” – Music Student, From the Top Radio Show
When I was a volunteer in the public school system I had a third grader who needed help writing. The teachers were struggling to support him, and I was tasked with the assignment of getting him to write something – anything – in his composition book. For 45-minutes we pretty much got nowhere, and I was about to send him back to class – feeling like I had utterly failed him – when a thought occurred to me.
“What do you like to do when you’re not in school,” I asked.
He looked up at me, paused, and then slowly said baseball. For the last ten minutes of our session this student – who had practically been shut down just now – suddenly had absolutely no trouble expressing himself. I heard about everything baseball – positions, uniforms, and equipment – on paper.
Some students may not like the typical school writing assignment, but they will, nevertheless, be able to complete the assignment and move on. Other students, for a whole host of reasons, will not engage with such assignments, and worse, will associate all writing with such assignments.
These are the students to catch and connect to, with fun engaging work, so that they don’t development a future fear of writing.