The Happy Medium

This year our principal set forth an expectation that every class will publish a piece of writing at the end of each nine week grading period for the purpose of a vertically aligned assessment. This actually fits fairly well with an idea I've been toying around with for a school-wide publication featuring student and teacher created artwork and written pieces. My original plan was a bit larger than life (as all my plans tend to be), requiring parent volunteers, editing committees, and community sponsorship to pay for a professional grade publication.

Yes, I dream big.

But with this new writing requirement, I can actually pilot my idea quite easily. I suggested to my principal that since we will all have a prompt to respond to each nine weeks -- why not make it something all grades could associate with? It might be interesting to see how a Kindergartener and a Fifth Grade student approach the same topic.

I've asked that all teachers give me a piece of writing from their class, and that each grade level choose a teacher to offer a piece for the publication as well. It's a little more formulaic than I'd originally hoped for, but a good place to start.

When I offered this idea to my principal and a few other teachers, a suggestion was made to use character traits as the prompts. Kindergarten might write about accountability, Third Grade tackling Effort, and Fifth Grade could respond to Respect. Something like that.

I believe it's of great value to teach children about character. Children need healthy role models and honest, understandable examples of what it means to have good character. My kids write about character traits and Angela Maiers' Habitudes daily. These are important discussions embedded into our daily routine.

But I don't believe that, at the beginning of the year, you can ask a student to write about what integrity means to them and expect an authentic, substantial piece of writing in return. I'm not entirely happy about having them write to a prompt at all, but if given a prompt, I want something that they can easily identify with.

I wonder though -- am I not giving them a chance? Have I decided too early what they can and cannot do, without offering them an opportunity to shine? I just know that I want them to write about things that are meaningful to them, and I have great difficult seeing Kindergarten and First Grade excited to share about respect through their writing.

This is a yearly struggle for me. Writing for the test vs. writing in the real world. We all have standards to meet, objectives to address, but don't we also have an obligation to protect the heart of a child? To nurture their gifts by allowing them to bloom in the conditions for which they are best suited? We have entire maps and books dedicated to the care and raising of plants, based on their individual needs - from optimum planting seasons to detailed sunlight instructions. Shouldn't our kids have the same opportunity to grow as the individuals they were born to be?