A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Hi Julie,

I know you are super busy but I have a question if you have time.  I have a 7th grade girl who is now in her third year of taking my writing class at our co op using the Brave Writer philosophy.

I feel she is not growing as a writer.  The following is a freewrite that she just turned in this week (they were given three words to include in the freewrite: baby, gym, and computer):

Once thair was a Baby wose big sister loved gymnasticks. So The baby alwase stayed to wach her sister pre form. So one day she desided to Let her baby sister on the balance beam so she puts her sistr on the balance bean a stands her up her sister gose so fast to the other side of the balans beam that she flys all the way to the gymnasticks in struckeders arms and the gymnastics instructer sayed wow you are good at beams so then he talked to the babys mother abought letting the baby on the team. The babys mom sayed yes but on one condition thay don’t make her do anything she dose not wont to do. So the gymnastics in struckder rote her name in the computer and she was afishaly in the team.

Do you have any thoughts?  Am I wrong to expect more by this time?  How do I go about getting more from her?

Thank you for your time,
Kellie

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Hi Kellie!

Great to know you’re using the Brave Writer philosophy to teach writing in a co-op. Let’s take a look at this freewrite and walk through the steps in Brave Writer to see what can be done with it.

First of all, freewriting means that you’ll see all the ugly spelling, punctuation and grammar. It’s free. That means a kid is focusing exclusively on content. (Right now, there are legions of mothers exhaling as they discover that someone else’s child makes all those mistakes too.) These are fairly gnarly spelling errors, but if you can shift your focus for a moment, you can see that the content isn’t so weak. It’s a little story that has a beginning, middle and end, uses two out of the three words you assigned (I don’t see computer in the piece) and her idea could be developed further for more detail. As her teacher, I’d suggest affirming all of the good things you see.

The next step (since you are probably most disturbed by her mechanics) is to ask her to make as many spelling/punctuation corrections as she can on her first pass. Often, kids can identify their spelling errors even if they can’t correct them. See if she sees what’s wrong before marking up the paper. If she can identify the error, then ask if she can correct it. If she can’t, those words go on a spelling list and can be targeted in copywork and dictation passages that include those words.

She also can benefit from copywork and dictation that target capitalization and apostrophes, for instance. But these are to be taken one at a time. Don’t overwhelm her with too many things to correct.

Finally, as far as getting more from her—the key in Brave Writer is to focus on exactly that: more. Ask her for more. You can ask for more detail about the baby (name, gender, pigtails or short hair, leotard of what color, how many months old?). You can ask for more detail related to the move the baby made on the beam. What was it? Can she describe it so I can see it? Can we paint a word picture for how the instructor caught the baby when the baby flew off the beam? These are the kinds of follow-up comments to make in writing or orally. You might want to chat with this student’s mother about it to see if she can follow through on these kinds of issues/questions.

The goal is to always start right where a child is, not to compare her too much to her peers. This freewrite is creative enough for revision and has the possibility of really growing. Don’t let the punctuation and spelling distract you. Keep those issues separate. If you have to, retype it error free and then read it to see how you could help her grow the content. The goal you need to have is to help her access more vocabulary, detail and insight that she can add to the original.

Hope that helps!

Julie

Dear Julie,

How do you inspire a child to want to improve, become better and enjoy the challenge along the way?  A couple of my children seem to always choose the easy way, because it’s simply too hard to do something that is a little challenging or because the situation is uncomfortable (i.e. won’t be with others of the same ability because these people are older and not as familiar to them as the regulars).  This occurs not only in academics, but just about any aspect of life… anything that involves “work”, effort or the like.

Your insights would be very meaningful if you have any time to spare.  You are also welcome to use this on the blog if you feel it is appropriate.

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,
Dona McGuire

Hi Dona.

It’s a great question and I don’t know that I have a specific answer that addresses all the possible permutations of a question like that. So let’s look at a few principles and see how that goes.

What causes people (kids and adults) to exert effort in any situation?

• Pride in the achievement
• Competence
• Responsibility for the outcome
• A stake in the project
• Financial reward
• Fear of punishment
• Understanding the purpose in the greater scheme of life
• Competition
• Entertainment
• To get attention

Of course you can think of others, I’m sure. You can also remember times when as a kid you felt disinclined to exert effort (perhaps in keeping your room neat) and then as an adult, you suddenly felt ownership over the space and wanted it to look good since it felt like a reflection on you. Sometimes we resist something until we have enough competence to enjoy it (think of playing an instrument or learning a sport – the learning curve is tedious but once you are beyond “beginner,” it starts to get fun). Sometimes we will do something if it helps another person. Sometimes we exert effort if we realize the project is a part of a larger goal we value.

For kids to commit to excellence and perseverance means that on some level they “buy in.” They see the value. I’ve seen amazing dogged commitment to beating levels on a computer game (where the whole action is dragging and clicking for an hour or more), to mastering a kind of throw with a lacrosse stick, to riding a bike, to sewing a skirt on a sewing machine, to uploading and posting 125 photos to Facebook (with captions and tags). Somehow when kids want something, they do put in the tedious effort to get what they really want.

If they aren’t exerting themselves, the place to go back to is, “Why?” It takes a little investigation on your part, but I think it’s a worthy inquiry. You want to know if they know why they aren’t invested. Can they give meaningful descriptions of their experience? Can they assess their mental framework? This matters because it is the key to overcoming that inertia that settles in. If the task is too hard, that requires a different kind of support than if they say they don’t get the point of working on that particular project. If they give up because they don’t see the value, even after you explain it, then you will want to think of other sources of motivation. Does competing with other kids help? (a class) Would it help to tie a reward to it? (“You finish this and we’ll go get Cokes afterward.”) Is there an entertaining way to get it done? (turn on the iPod while working) If the problem is that they feel out of their context (age bracket, no friends), then look for other ways to get the experience/class. Can private lessons be had? Are there tutors? Does the child want to wait a year or two until older?

The key to all effective learning is caring about the outcome.

The carrot and stick methodology have limited power in homeschool anyway. When in doubt, talk to your kids and brainstorm. Don’t start with the idea that you want to ‘get them’ to think or act differently. See if you can simply ‘get them’ – that is, understand how it feels to them. From there, you can begin to create solutions that take those concerns into account, even if one of the solutions is to just can the experience in this context for now.

The reasons you cited for why your kids don’t want to do something are legitimate. Even adults feel that way (don’t like the social context or don’t feel competent). They choose not to do things that stretch them, too, on that basis. So that means there has to be some attention given to creating a different over-riding motivation.

Does that help?

Julie