Pixabay.com

As a teacher, it is rare to get anything but negative feedback from students:

That’s due now? You want us to write? I don’t get it. Too hard, too long, too much. Can’t we just have this period off? Do I have to read that? Romeo and who? What’s with all these thou’s? I hate poetry. I hate reading. I hate writing. Do you give extra credit?

You have to learn to read between the lines. Right.

Pixabay.com

Part of my practice is daily writing and sharing of that daily writing. I model myself so I get put ‘on the spot’ every day just like my students. This team of freshmen I have are particularly adamant that they can’t write and they don’t want to share. I keep at it because I know eventually, they’ll see their own light.

Pixabay.com

My creative writing students have all had me, for the most part, when they were freshmen. And they were grumbly at this process for the first few weeks back then too. Now, I have to wrench them out of the silent writing time. When they shared yesterday, I was completely taken aback by one student who shared about her reluctance to write in my freshmen class. She went on to say that she’d learned so much about writing from me and that has brought her writing game to all her course work. But more, that she loves to write and she loves the space in my creative writing class to be able to write.

I could teach a hundred years on that two minutes of sharing.