I attended our local homeschool conference. I haven’t attended a full day for a few years but I was interested in a few of the workshops. One piqued my interest. “Teaching the Reluctant Writer” by a representative from The Institute For Excellence in Writing. I’ve only heard good things about this program and have it in my basement but never used it because I thought I was missing some component of it.

The presenter was a veteran homeschool mom who started using the program with her then 5th or 6th grade boy who was her “reluctant writer”. She made a few points that were revolutionary to me.

#1 Teaching writing is like teaching an art. (This is not her idea-it’s a principle promoted by the creator of the program but I never thought of it this way). Asking a student who doesn’t have the foundation of life experience, vocabulary, spelling, language, etc. to sit down and write on a blank piece of paper about a topic (“How I spent my summer”) is like sitting a child in front of the piano and expecting them to play a song. The idea of lack of requisite foundation wasn’t news to me, it was thinking of writing as an art rather than a skill.  But now I see it as an art that requires skill and practice, along with other things. She used a funny example. A teacher might say to a child, “pretend you’re a reporter and write a newspaper article about your summer vacation.” Journalists get a college degree to do what they do. We wouldn’t say to a kid “pretend your a concert pianist at Carnegie Hall and play this piece.” Admittedly, I have asked Hannah to write about an incident in a story as if she were writing a newspaper article. I have to say, though, it was pretty good-then again, she’s not a reluctant writer.

#2 Helping a child who needs it is not cheating, it’s teaching.  As homeschool parents, we can tend to feel like we’re cheating if we help our children with certain things related to their work. Another shift in perspective for me. As homeschoolers, we also have the luxury of helping a child with whatever skill, concept, word, idea as long as they need it.

#3 Using a pencil is almost as distressing to a reluctant writer as the assignment, itself. A pencil only stays sharp for a few lines at most. Children, boys in particular, prefer the visual contrast of sharp, black lines. Which is why some children suffer from the cramped hand and broken points or they’re up every few minutes sharpening the pencil. The program advocates using ink for everything but the final draft. Have the child write on every other line. They can cross out words or phrases that they want to change and add words on the blank line above. This also aids the mental process of writing because they can see the whole progression. Again, a revolutionary concept, but one I can really relate to.

If you’re as old as I am, on the first day of school, you were issued a No. 2 pencil and a yellow tablet. You know the kind, with that soft paper and the blue lines. I remember the horrible feeling of writing on a fat tablet with a dull pencil.  If the pencil was too sharp, it tore the paper. I did love the feel of a ball point pen on this type of tablet and it was a tablet, not a “notebook”. Erasing was out of the question. It either smudged or tore a big hole in the paper. I couldn’t wait until junior high when I could use spiral notebooks or looseleaf paper and pens! To this day, I love the feel of writing with pen on a clean sheet of paper. I also prefer certain writing tips and inks to others. Writing is a total sensory experience for me and I wonder how much more I would have enjoyed it if I had been encouraged to use pen and cross out mistakes. Come to think of it, writing a draft or several was never part of the process.

Armed with these few principles, I feel empowered to dive into the program and help the kids become more confident and proficient writers. The truth is, none of the kids are reluctant writers, they all have a desire to write and love stories but some of them have not felt confident no matter how much I’ve tried to encourage them.