Putting the Heart Back into Writing: Nurturing Voice in Middle School Students

Abstract

The authors share five areas of inquiry that emerged as the result of a voluntary weekly before-school writing program.If you pay me a million dollars for me to stop writing, it would never work.- Carrie, 11-year-old middle school studentFor many middle grades students, writing facilitates a search for meaning; writing can foster self-expression and self-discovery and can help students cope with economic and family issues that are out of their control. Susannah [pseudonym] captures the voice of a middle school student perfectly in her short story:Zodiac grabbed an apple. There's not much to tell. Okay, you wanna hear? Fine. am now best friends with a slut with a rock for a brain. My science teacher is a hippie. My history teacher is a hard-ass army freak. My math teacher is a rainbow Madonna. My social studies teacher is a freakin' Calvin Klein model. My Spanish teacher is a hopeless romantic. My wellness teacher is a douche bag with 7 sons AND a divorce. And my language arts teacher is an air-head rag city ghetto girl. Zodiac cried loudly, I have a crush on my new friend's BOYFRIEND! Zodiac got out five pages of homework Mrs. Brown had assigned her. Zodiac wiped away her tears. Now leave me alone. Ryuzaki nodded.In our experience working with a team of adolescents, we witnessed young authors using writing as a vehicle to explore their innermost thoughts, their struggles with identity, relationships, cancer, love, religion, and fears. Their voices rang true as they wrote by choice, within the loosely structured setting of a before-school writing team.Many researchers have reported the adolescent years mark declining motivation for some students to write (Anderman & Maehr, 1994; Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998; Romano, 2007). Much of the research reveals that adolescents do write for their own authentic purposes, but this usually happens outside school (Yost & Vogel, 2012). Our experience as before-school writing team instructors contradicts these claims. At a high-poverty school with troubling test scores, students clamored for the opportunity and space to write. Our students responded enthusiastically to school writing time that nurtured their search for meaning. They wanted a quiet, safe venue to write, with support, about topics of their own choosing.Faced with expectations of increasingly higher academic standards and accountability, along with extreme budget cuts, school districts have narrowed their focus to raise student scores on statewide literacy and math tests. Teachers nationwide are increasingly pressured to use class time for test preparation in core subjects linked to high-stakes tests. Writing is not always considered a core subject (Applebee & Langer, 2006; Dillon, 2006; The National Commission on Writing for America's Families, Schools and Colleges, 2006). A key stance in the philosophy of The National Commission on Writing (2006) is that effective writing instruction is time-consuming for students and teachers, and students are not spending enough time writing at school. If writing is addressed in the classroom, it is often in preparation for the statewide writing assessment, not for its benefits to the whole child-nurturing curiosity, exploration, integrative thinking, and problem-solving. Applebee and Langer (2006) noted how state and district writing assessments limit the scope of a broad writing curriculum in favor of coaching students on how to respond to narrow prompts or questions in limited genres. With a focus on high-stakes test performance come more restricted tasks, often centered around structural concerns and a correctness mindset, not focused on inquiry or synthesis of a student's classroom life with life beyond the classroom.Even in classes where teachers make time for writing instruction, Applebee and Langer (2006) found, Students seem not to be given assignments requiring writing of any significant length or complexity (p. …