Ink By The Barrel: A Writer Writes

The thoroughly modern me finds it a surprise that the old description, “the three R’s,” is so valid in education today. I am no basics-only advocate. But reading, writing and math are the core of 'Planet Education' and influence, like gravity, everything else. Math is required to move into sciences like physics and chemistry, and writing to answer questions in those subjects as well as all the social sciences and humanities. Reading is required to prosper in any of them.

It’s of greatest importance we get it right when we teach the big three.

Last week, I , Pearson’s Investigations in Number, Space and Data. This week, I want to describe the outstanding writing program we have in kindergarten through fifth grades.

First, let me tell you a story about the best teacher I ever had, Mr. John Rehl. The scene: a classroom in the English wing of John Jay High School in East Fishkill. The time: spring of 1976. The set-up: as a sophomore, I had already decided I was going to be a writer. I was looking for the short-cut, the secret sauce, the easy answer.

Me:  What do I do to become a writer?

Mr. Rehl:  You want to become a writer?

Me:  Oh yes, definitely.

Mr. Rehl:  It’s easy.

Me:  Tell me.

Mr. Rehl:  Write a thousand words a day.

Me:  No, seriously.

Mr. Rehl:  Write a thousand words a day.

Mr. Rehl, who was taught by Vladimir Nabokov at Cornell and introduced me to the power of Eugene O’Neill and other greats, was, in fact, correct. You learn to write by moving words around. Trying sentences on. Failing. Trying again and connecting with language that connects you with the reader. A writer writes.

However, a thousand words a day sounded like a whole lot to a short-cut seeking high school sophomore. To a second grader, it must sound like War and Peace. So how do we get kids to write, if that’s how they will learn to write?

Easy, celebrate it. The genius of the Pelham program, developed by Teachers College at Columbia, is publication and celebration. The kids don’t just finish their work, turn it in and get a grade. They publish. And then parents are invited in for readings of all the work, with applause (the silent kind I learned at my first celebration), juice boxes and donuts.

(Okay so it wasn’t easy to come up with. I certainly didn’t. But because people read something I’d written, with my name on it, and then told me they liked it. Publication and celebration. At my son Patrick’s very first writing celebration at Colonial, I knew Pelham had found the secret sauce for getting kids to write.)

If you are busy, driving your thriving career, a Blackberry clenched in your mitt, then I’ll recommend the one elementary school event you get to this year: a writing celebration. Because it shows how dedicated a parent you are? No, not all. Go because the events will motivate kids to writing more. And I’m convinced the rapt audience of all the parents magnifies the effect. You’re not just helping your kid write, you’re helping all the kids. Not a bad return for a 45-minute investment.

Writing is solitary and hard work. An audience for it is the first, and in the end, the last reward for spending all that time alone in your own head.

In a pilot of a method to further celebrate, we published the Colonial fourth-grade non-fiction projects on the Colonial Times website at the end of last year. I don’t know yet if it had a direct impact. I do know stories were emailed by family members to others. I do know kids that didn’t join paper last year, nonetheless, had articles published in it.

Celebration and publication are not the only components of the writing program. It begins with brainstorming ideas and includes graphic outlining, story conferences, rough drafts and revising. Teaching kids it’s okay to rough draft—to get it down before it’s perfect—is critical. Ditto for the idea that revision is as important as the writing. The program is smart in the way it lets kids try different genres each year: memoir, non-fiction and poetry. This keeps the kids intrigued and lets shine those with different interests and talents.

So much of what makes the writing program work is a mirror to what happens in the real world. I wonder sometimes at the aversion I see in education to “teaching it the adult way” (). Grown-up writers and wannabes like me talk about story conferences and work shopping our fiction. We spend lots of money to be in places with other writers and get a reaction to what we’ve written. We write to be heard. So do kids.

You want your son to write? Read what he publishes. You want your daughter to write? Celebrate her work.

Investigations Update

I’d been researching Investigations for a long time, but had my concerns about writing about the curriculum. Math is like vegetables. I expected people would mouse on past looking for something more exciting. I was wrong. By the only measures I have—comments posted and Facebook recommendations—it was the most read column I’ve written, by a long ways (very mathematical, I know). Clearly a nerve was hit.

A day later, The Economist posted a great article on Khan Academy and flipping the classroom. I recommend it.

And on Wednesday, Patrick came home with long division for the first time in his career. He’s in fifth grade! I remember learning it in third. After forty-five minutes, he was gripping his head in frustration because he didn’t get it. He started writing on an index card (see the second picture above). Those hieroglyphics are the product of an Investigations education. Defenders of the program might say he’s trying to “discover” his way to long division. He’s not going to get to it that way. His teacher and an 11-minute Khan Academy video got him there.

I later learned his teacher was surprised to find a bunch of kids in the class had not yet encountered long division. I believe Patrick’s grade is the first to spend all of elementary school with Investigations. To use a math term, what they don’t know is the end product.