Teachers Write: Humbled and Renewed

I’ve taught AP Language & Comp for the past four years, and I’ve assigned my student to write a lot. In the process of all that assigning, I knew I needed to model if I had any chance at all of becoming a good writing teacher. That’s when I created a blog. Then I got my students to create their own blogs– to use as online portfolios of their work, with a hope of getting them to build a readership other than me. My love of language grew, but the time I had to write was minimal with all that reading of student work, among other teacher and life duties. I’d make the time every once in a while to write a snippet I could use as a mentor text, or to write a quick pedagogy piece, but I’d forgotten the WORK it takes to write. The taunting of the blank page, the words that pour out different than the thinking, the reading and re-reading just to get the sound right. And the revisions. Tortuous revisions. This week, in virtual writing camp, has been a beautiful hardship. I am humbled and renewed as a writer and as a teacher of writing.