In the 1972-73 school year, I was very busy: I was teaching English/Language Arts full-time to 7th graders at the Aurora (Ohio) Middle School, Joyce and I were dealing with our little boy (born in July 1972), and both of us were part-time students in grad school.
So it's no real surprise that one day that year--one Friday--I arrived at school without a lesson plan in mind or on paper.
But as I was walking to my first class, quaking, I got an idea. And after I entered the room, took attendance, quieted the kids down, etc., I unloaded my idea on the kids in words like this: "Today I'm going to ask you to write about anything you want to."
Strange looks.
"Anything?" asked one boy who already had some naughty ideas.
"Anything that's rated G or PG," I said. "Nothing more." The boy's face faded.
Lots of questions about grades and length.
Then I surprised them (and me): "And I'm going to do it, too."
Looks and sounds of surprise.
"We’ll write for about 30 minutes," I said, "then volunteers will read aloud."
And thus was born what soon we were all calling "Friday Writing." And it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable days of the week--for most if not all of us.
Let's back up now. As I said, I was working on my master's degree at Kent State--and soon my Ph.D. I was writing scholarly papers for class--the kind of pieces that were predictably arranged: thesis statements, topic sentences, introductions and conclusions. And I have to say that I didn't like that kind of writing. I didn't know what I did like, but I knew it wasn't that.
So that first day we all sat at our desks, notebooks open, and slowly began. I started writing about my boyhood and found the words flowing out as if I'd turned on a spigot. Most of the kids were seemingly having the same experience. A few were having trouble, and one of them asked me, "I can't think of what to write about."
And I replied, "Write what it feels like when you don't know what to write about."
And so he did. (And so I did a number of times.)
I have to say I was often dazzled by what the kids did. Some wrote diaries; some wrote continuing stories; some wrote letters; some wrote poems.
And then I did, too.
I started a YA novel called Bob the Slob, finished it about a year later, and, later on, I revised it and published in on Kindle Direct, where it still abides. Lonely.
In 1978, Ph.D. complete, I took a job at Lake Forest College, decided I missed middle school kids a lot, resigned, tried to get back to Aurora: no openings. So both Joyce and I took jobs at Western Reserve Academy until a job back in Aurora did open up; I snatched it.
Right away I started Friday Writing again, but didn't always do it on Fridays, so I began calling it Free Writing, a practice I continued until the mid-90s, when Ohio introduced a "proficiency test" in writing, a test that was very formulaic, and so I could no longer devote 20% of our week to the "free" kind.
I was near retirement by then and decided I would take it ASAP: I just didn't like what these tests were forcing me to do--and be.
Anyway, all those years had really relaxed my writing, had shown me that I could entertain and instruct my students--and vice-versa.
From their examples, I learned to "loosen up," to find what sort of writing I was good at and to try to get better. (This blog, really, is a result of their alteration of the Writing Me.)
Oh, and I almost forgot: In May 1976 I published the cover story "When Kids Are Free to Write" in English Journal, the official publication of the National Council of Teachers of English--and (brag, brag) won their writing award for the year. My mom was thrilled: She had published in that journal, too!
Oh, and I almost forgot: In May 1976, when that journal arrived at our house in Kent, my wife drove it and our three-year-old son over to Aurora Middle School and brought it to my classroom. I stopped class. Told the kids what it was. Not one of them had ever heard of English Journal.
And so it goes as one begins to understand modesty, humility. My students had to teach me.
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