022: Building Resilience in Our Young Writers

This week's blog is written by Resonance Ed's Creator of Coaching Content, founder of Plan Z Professional Learning Services, and co-author of the book The Minimalist Teacher, Tammy Musiowsky-Borneman.

In last week's newsletter, we shared several ways to support resilience; it depends on which kind of resilience we need to build. Students need support building resilience in academic areas, which can be a real challenge. However, with a growth mindset and some positivity, we can support students in this process.

I love teaching writing. As an elementary school teacher, I find it to be such a fun and creative adventure. It's exciting to bring students into the process of exploring who they are as writers, even when students have a hard time viewing themselves as such. I've taught many students who held beliefs that they weren't good at writing, thought they would never write well, and even more than that, thought they didn't have anything to write about.

When students tell me they have nothing to write about, sometimes I'll make an exclamatory statement like, "What? Of course you do!" or "You have tons of things to write about!" This often elicits the response "I do?" or a quizzical look.

Even students who are seven years old have so many things they can write about. So we have to help them build their know-how and writing resilience muscles.

A few years ago, when I taught second grade, a student in my class had lots of stories to verbalize during brainstorming time but wasn't interested in writing what he was talking about. I wasn't about to force him to write for fear of turning him off writing. It wasn't that he couldn't write. It was that he didn't know what was worthy of his time. So we eased into writing sessions by exercising pre-writing options first. He and I spent time talking about many things he could write about, and sometimes I would scribe what he said, and he would illustrate. Sometimes a few of his written sentences would transpire, but his page still ended pretty sparse at the end of class.

After wondering if I was making the most of our writing time, one day, I asked him what he wanted to do instead of writing. He responded by pointing to the Legos. The boy did have the stamina to build with Legos for an extended period, so I told him he had 5 minutes to make something and bring it back to the table. When he had something built, he brought it to the table, and I asked him to tell a story about his Lego creation as I scribed. He was pretty excited to know that he could build with Legos first and then write about it after. The next day, he created something new and asked if he could write about it. I didn't scribe for him that day. I let him be, and he was focused and writing when I checked in on him.

Sometimes we need to test out different kinds of writing or look for opportunities in unlikely places. But we have to keep trying, brainstorming, reflecting, and checking in. That's when we see how resilient they are and can be.