Steve Zemelman - Author of Founder’s Corner

As Founding Director of IWP Steve has worked on writing instruction and school reform for many years in Chicago and across the country. Among many activities, he helped found an innovative high school in Chicago, and served on the Steering Committee of the Consortium on Chicago School Research. His most recent book, “Teaching for Racial Equity: Becoming Interrupters,” was written with partners Tonya Perry (Director of the Red Mountain Writing Project in Birmingham) and Katy Smith. He’s promoting student civic engagement through this book and on his blog, Civic Action in Schools.

Founder’s Corner

Entry No. 1

Written by Dr. Steve Zemelman

As this is the first episode of IWP Founder’s Corner, let me, as the founder of IWP, introduce myself for website visitors who don’t know me and/or haven’t been previously involved with IWP. Just over a year ago I handed off my IWP director role to the talented Tim Duggan, after 49 years of starting and shepherding this outstanding group of teacher-leaders. I’ve been very fortunate to get to write or co-write (with wonderful partners) many professional books for teachers, the latest being Teaching for Racial Equity, which I’m especially proud of, but which landed, sadly, at such a fraught time in our country. I’ve spent scads of time in teachers’ classrooms and helped start a number of innovative small schools in Chicago. But enough bragging. Since this is the Illinois Writing Project, how about I share a story of a kid learning to write that might help us reflect on our work as teachers of writing.

I have one grandkid, just turned twelve. They are nonbinary, independent minded, and excited about school but long resistant to writing – a stab in the heart for a teacher of writing like me. So on my wife’s and my most recent visit (they live on the East Coast) as we sat around on a Sunday morning, they announced that a writing assignment was due the next day, and they needed help. Out of the several teachers in the room, they chose me as the helper. As we sat on the couch, looking over the piece, they explained that the kids were to write a story and apply quotation marks and appropriate punctuation for all dialogue. I quickly realized that they had not used an omniscient narrator to tell the story, but had written as if it were a diary or a daily log kept by an adventurer of some kind – so the text didn’t call for quotations. But the piece was long, especially for a kid who hates writing. Meanwhile, how did they conceive of this structural idea? Of course! They’re a Dungeons and Dragons fanatic, reading all the D&D guidebooks that come out steadily at $39.95 each. They’d drawn on their personal enthusiasm to find a way into writing. However, there was this problem: why would a diarist put quotation marks around his or her writing? Except for a few quotes by D&D-type creatures there was no place to insert them. We laughed as we agreed to put in a few anyway, just for the teacher to see. Looks like we share a bit of rebelliousness. As you can imagine, this was a moment I treasure.

Object lessons for a writing teacher: 1) There’s no way to create the perfect writing assignment. There will almost always be a student for whom it doesn’t work. 2) Learning to write (authentically, anyway) is a highly individual process, no matter how you try to automate it. These are two of the many reasons IWP leaders value writers’ workshop, where each student develops his or her - or their - own voice.

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Dear readers: If you have questions or comments on this story or anything else about IWP, please share them with us. And perhaps you have topic suggestions (not assignments!) for me to consider, so let us know those as well, at iwp@neiu.edu.