You've Been Kittled

This year my district is using the Readers/Writers Workshop model in the Language Arts classroom. This curriculum is amazing! I gets kids reading. It gets kids writing. It gets kids engaged. And until I get the hang of it, it is going to be the death of me!

Today I wrote the same essay about fear six different times because part of Writers Workshop is that you write with your students. So, I did ... the same essay ... six times. Maybe there is someone out there who can give me some pointers on this because I feel like a crazy person by eighth period. Is it better to write virtually the same essay so that I can discuss similar points with each class as I model, or think about my sanity and write a different essay each time? Furthermore, do I even have it in me to write six different essays on the same prompt? See? It's exhausting!

Penny Kittle, one of education's Readers/Writers Workshop gurus, says you should write for fifteen minutes every day. Kittle does this. Kittle, God love her because, truthfully, I want to be her best friend (or at least her Facebook friend), has older children. Children who can fix their own breakfast, do their own laundry, give themselves a shower, drive themselves to dance, and turn the TV on without any assistance whatsoever. Bottom line ... I am using my kids as the very good excuse reason I don't always write fifteen minutes a day. However, when your best friend tells you to get it together and write, you listen. Because honestly, your best friend is starring you in the face judging you with that you-are-so-ridiculous look, while Kittle is only mostly judging you from the cover of a book you can just turn face down on the desk.(Seriously, Penny ... Facebook.)

So today, I wrote. A lot. Way more than fifteen minutes. The crazy thing is it felt good. It's been a while sisnce I wrote from a topic, winging it, in front of a group of teens, and I liked it. I also learned that when I told students it wasn't difficult to brainstorm and write, I was lying big time. That is HARD. (If you are reading this and used to be in my class, I would like to formally apologize to you at this moment for lying to you on accident.) And if I expect my students to write and share, I should be able to write and share.

So, since I have now been Kittled, and my class has been Kittled, we will write ... a lot ... excessively. And while I may not get in fifteen minutes every single day, I'll get my time in there where I can. Who knows, maybe one day I could write for a living ... or at least for fun.