Archive for the ‘Tips for Teen Writers’ Category

Email: Thanks Anne for sharing!

Julie-

When my 16 year old daughter showed me this earlier today I HAD to send it to you so you could be encouraged – BRAVE WRITER works!! (But you already knew that.) All those lessons that were erratically joined together after I would sit and read the directions a few minutes before administering- All the “Quick we are going to do a 10 minute FREEWRITE” so I could try to get organized as to what we were doing that day- They are PROOF that Brave Writer really does work. All we have to do is “JUST BEGIN…” anywhere.

After I read this article my daughter showed me I got excited and very, very encouraged. Funny, I had been nagging her to start a BLOG thinking this would get her writing… Meanwhile, she is using her MY SPACE to do just that. Sometimes (most of the time) we just need to get out of the way of LIFE and let our kids LIVE IT and share it.

Thanks for helping me see that what my kids have to say is important and for encouraging me to tell them that what they say is important.

Annette Tyrrell
Elyria, Ohio

Monday, March 03, 2008
The Worst Event In Human History

You probably don’t notice it, don’t load it, and don’t care. Yes, I am talking about the dishwasher. Well ours broke, and in a family of 6 who never use the same cup twice, this is no light thing. We kids called it “The First Day of the Dark Ages.”

At first we just stood there, staring at the white lid smudged with finger prints and peanut butter. When we opened it, there was a puddle of water in the bottom that just seemed to say, “Good Luck Now!!” I recall tearing up, not of sadness, but of fear. A million things went through my head. I hated LOADING the dishwasher, and now I would have to wash all the dishes by hand? Now I’m not just talking about pots and pans—I’m talking about plates, cups, bowls and yes, silverware. I could just see it, one by one by one: washing and rinsing and drying. It was horrible, but we had to do it.

“What were you thinking,” you might ask, “when at the end of the day, you faced that mountain of dirty dishes two feet high and stretching the span of the counter?” Then you looked at the helpless dish rag, lying limp on the counter and you knew it just wasn’t capable of doing this job. Well… we went out and bought some ammo: heavy duty soap, scrubby pads and even a steal threaded rag. We knew it would be tough, but we were a tough family.

Our first mission was to decide who would wash when. Of course nobody spoke up, too frightened to say a word. All we knew was that we had to begin, just begin, and hopefully it would all work out. I remember that first time, soap up to my elbows, hands wrinkled and pruned and the front of my shirt soaking wet. But, as the days passed, it got easier. I began to develop strategies and methods for washing and rinsing. I even had a preference of dish soap. I also began to love this time of solitude—not having to worry about anything (except how to get off the burned lasagna). I could just exist, just me and the dishes. But this was not always the case.

Now, when it’s just one person, it’s easy because they can do it how they want to and nobody else cares. But when you have two or more people, that’s different. I am a very controlling person and when someone tells me that I should do the mugs, then the utensils, I get grouchy. One opinion that I am unflinchingly rigid on is “the soak.” That phrase is non-existent in my vocabulary. I do not “soak.” I believe there is nothing that I can’t get off NOW. In fact, I enjoy incredibly stuck-on food. I consider it a challenge for which I am always well-prepared. It just takes the right combination of rag/scrubber, cleaning solution, and raw muscle power. It’s simple: I’m a beast at the sink. So…I guess…it’s not SO bad; maybe not the worst event in human history.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, Email, General, Tips for Teen Writers | 12 Comments »

Email round-up: Praise and Research Papers

Email Q&A

Praise for Brave Writer

Julie-
First, my children and I just finished the Kidswrite Basic class with Jean Hall… Thank you so much for making these classes available. My children didn’t turn out marvelously witty or poignant works, but they did write something and without too much complaining and they learned that they CAN write. And that is with suffering from the flu for most of the class. I no longer fear teaching them writing… I just have to figure out what kind of assignments to give them.

Second, I’ve always thought canned writing programs were fluff and the assignments were drivel…but it wasn’t until I found your website and read The Writer’s Jungle that I realized others felt the same way. Most of the other homeschool moms I’ve talked with have looked at me as if I’d lost my mind but I know what works for my family. Since I discovered your website last summer, we have incorporated into our school routine Teatime Tuesdays (my 4-year old’s MOST favorite part of the week), Friday Freewrites, and this May we are taking your One Thing Workshop: Shakespeare… We (well, I) can’t wait. Thank you so much for inspiring me to make the most of the time I have with my children, learn to love writing, and only focus on one thing at a time!

Laura

Answer:

Thanks Laura for sharing with us. I’m so glad you have begun this journey one thing at a time.

–Julie

Question about research papers:

Hi Julie,

I really value & trust your opinion & wonder if you have a chance to answer a quick question for me. At what age would you recommend having a child do a research paper? My son will be 12 next school year. We do a copywork/dictation passage each week (courtesy of you next year) & also a creative writing assignment each week. At what age should I begin thinking about research papers?

Kim in Venice, FL

Answer:

Hi Kim.

I have lots of thoughts about research papers. First of all, it’s not possible for a 12-year-old to actually write one. He may be able to write a long report (which is usually what is meant by the term “research paper” when you read about them at the junior high level). A long report means that your child will study a subject using multiple sources and will then compile and paraphrase the information into his own words. He’ll organize the material by sub-head (subject heading). At the end, he’ll include some type of bibliography that itemizes his sources.

Just to be clear. That kind of writing is not a research paper. A research paper takes a specific point of view about a topic (a thesis-based paper) that is controversial (or at minimum, that provokes a counter-argument). These papers engage the academic community. What that means is that the papers are analyzing the academic work done by experts in the field. Students (particularly those who are in high school or who are college undergraduates) attempt to synthesize and analyze those arguments by taking a risky position, paraphrasing and understanding the arguments made by the experts, and then bringing something of their own insight and perspective to bear on those arguments (either agreeing or disagreeing or nuancing the positions). They use multiple sources (usually the rule of thumb is that you will have consulted the equivalent of one source per page based on the total length of the paper – so 15 sources for a 15 page paper).

For a 12-year-old, writing a long-ish report is fine. But don’t call it a research paper. I have a chapter in The Writer’s Jungle called “The Dreaded Elementary School Report” that gives blow-by-blow steps of how to put one together that doesn’t drain the soul-life from your child. Most reports are tediously long, encourage flat-footed writing and kill anything resembling peaceful writing relations between parent and child (or teacher). The main benefit of the “long-ish” report is that your child learns how to use the library’s computer catalog system, sorts information into categories and learns how to make a little bibliography at the end. All of these can be achieved without writing a report, but if you are set on writing one, then exploit the experience for these aims rather than thinking about it in terms of “quality writing instruction.” Make sure that you keep the writing portion of the process to a minimum.

For the record, two of my five kids have written elementary school reports. Our ratio of how we organized our time: many months of reading and research and about a week of writing. 🙂 None so far has written a research paper before college. Jon and I have worked with our high schoolers (three of them) on crafting solid, 4-6 page essays. They are all very good at these now. When the older two went off to college and had to write longer papers (what would technically be called a research or term paper), they were both able to do it! They just expanded the essay format, lengthened the depth of their analysis for each of their points and voila! Research papers.

So I think the “research paper” as an academic goal before college is overblown. What we really want isn’t the ability to string together enough words for 15 pages. We want to cultivate rhetorical thinking and the skills of analysis in writing. We want to expose our kids to multiple points of view about a topic and teach them how to critically think about those viewpoints and how to offer their own. Most junior high kids aren’t mentally mature enough to do that kind of thinking yet. But in high school, kids are. Tackle that skill then and research papers will take care of themselves in college.

Julie

Write for Fun!

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How the six principles apply: Writing and teens

I’ve elucidated some of the ideas that have been meaningful and useful to me in raising teens and working with them over the years. What I wanted to do now is to move into how these ideas connect to writing (and by extrapolation, perhaps, other subjects you are teaching).

I’ve suggested that teens need adventure, they aren’t lazy, but bored, they have interests that interest them, and that teens deserve a social life and live in a wired world.

These principles have to do with honoring your teens’ evolving sense of personhood. As we know from all the Brave Writer writing advice given over the years, the place we start in writing is with the writer, not with writing forms or skills. We begin by recognizing that the writer is someone whose mind is already brimming with experiences, ideas, thoughts, hopes, information, insight and humor that deserve to be recorded and shared with others. We yield to the process of nurturing writers, not requiring writing. We look for ways to validate that emerging writer’s voice. We celebrate successes, we minimize errors fully confident that over time, fluency will come through repeated excursions into written language, just like we saw spoken errors as passing phases on the journey toward fluency in speaking English.

With our teens, then, writing at this stage of development ought to be (if at all possible) the flowering of greater and greater self-awareness and ease in the act of writing. In other words, just like your 10-13 year old never thinks about speaking (does so easily, in his or her own voice, speaking what’s on his or her mind freely), so your high school writer ought to be more and more able to use written language to communicate ideas, thoughts, arguments and insights. Fluency (ease) comes earlier than competence (effective argument or communication), just like in speaking. Kids can talk easily even if they can’t yet enter a debate or give a speech or teach a class.

Teens need adventure, they need not to be bored, they need stimulation in areas that interest them. Use these principles to your advantage in writing. It’s easier to write an argumentative essay about animal rights when your teen volunteers at the local zoo or vet, than it is to write about the death penalty, a topic he’s never studied. Literary analysis goes better when the teen writes about an author that she loves. If Jane Austen is her favorite, why write about Hemingway? The same skills can be learned using the material she knows best.

Remember the value of direct experience in adding depth and insight to writing. Trips to foreign countries, service to others, working in a political campaign, a part-time job, serving on the library literature board for teens, varsity sports, musical performance… these experiences contribute to your teens’ growing expertise and competence level. Allow these to show themselves in their writing.

Likewise, don’t forget the value of peer relationships and technology in nurturing your writers. Writing and literature discussion groups create natural spaces for sharing writing. Classes (whether in person or over the Internet) offer opportunities to mix with peers as well as to compete with them while working on writing. Writing also benefits from teenagers’ hunger to master technology: skillful use of search engines, reading other writing online, facility with Word and PowerPoint, online courses and so on.

What it all boils down to really is this: see the world through your teens’ eyes. Don’t forget what it was like to be a teen. While they may do “dumb” things occasionally due to the underdeveloped frontal lobe, they also benefit immensely from deep engagement and investment into ideas, people and experiences that cause them to make connections between their world and the larger world around them. Writing is one tool that serves to integrate those disparate bits of information into a more thoughtful whole. When your teens take what they know (or think they know) and put it onto paper, they are required to slow down, examine their ideas and submit them for examination to others who can guide them in the process. Teens who feel the support and enthusiasm of their parents during this odyssey are the lucky ones.

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, One Thing, Tips for Teen Writers | 2 Comments »

One Thinging High School: Principles 4-5

One Thinging Highschool Principles 4-5

We looked at the first three principles for keeping your sanity while raising your teens. Let’s add to the list.

4. Teens deserve a social life.

A few weeks ago at our homeschool co-op, I stood in front of the white board with a green marker in hand. I asked my 9th and 10th graders to throw out terms often associated with homeschool. Our goal was to compile a list of cliches or stereotypes to then rebut in writing. These kids were passionate in expressing the commonly used terms that were intended to malign them. Almost as one voice, the words they see associated with homeschool were ‘nerd,’ ‘social misfit’ and ‘backward.’

I asked them if these were words they used to describe themselves or if these were terms applied to them by others that they rejected. That’s when class opinion split. Half felt that these terms were unfairly applied to homeschoolers. They explained that after all, homeschoolers have friends, they have activities that bring them together with their peers. But the other half of the class argued that in fact, they sometimes did feel like social outcasts. They considered the world they lived in smaller, less populated, less engaged in common teen activities.

In my experiences of working with teens (and having some of my own), it’s clear that by 14, most of them crave peer relationships. Homeschooling protects young kids from negative peer influences in some cases (though I have to admit that my oldest son was bullied in our neighborhood from age 6-10 because he was homeschooled, because he was different than his peers… a very painful experience for all of us). High school is often seen as a scary place where bad things can happen to our kids (some adults know this from personal experience).

Yet it’s during the high school years that our teens first flex their maturity wing span. These test flights include:

  • hanging out with peers
  • spending what looks like tons of wasted time gossiping
  • flirting
  • checking out each other’s facebooks
  • texting three different friends all at once over dinner
  • sending photos to each other

Today’s teens live in a networked world the likes of which we parents have never seen. They are enrolled in a sophisticated socialization program that requires a level of expertise and etiquette that can only be learned by jumping in.

One way to look at the growing need for peer relationships (and providing space for these to occur) is that in encountering other viewpoints, personalities and life experiences, your kids develop their ability to value and evaluate their own previous experiences. Sometimes the sense of lethargy or negativity aimed at you or the structure of your family is simply the absence of contrast. Kids who have been in the homeschooling world for their entire lives find it harder to individuate since their world has been controlled by home and parents with much more attentiveness than those in school.

By giving your teens the chance to broaden their experiences through outside relationships (whether those come through parttime school, working at Starbucks, volunteering in a vet’s office, dancing in a studio, acting in a theater troupe, playing on a competitive sports team, hanging out at the local gaming store), you encourage them to discover differences between what they’ve had at home and what they find elsewhere.

You also help them discover how to manage themselves in their relationships. These friendships give them the chance to test their values, to imagine the world through someone else’s life experience, to figure out how to balance responsibility against the temptation to spend all free time hanging out at the mall. College is one huge dose of unsupervised, peer-drenched experiences. To put a tightly supervised homeschooler into that environment without previous experiences is like asking your teen to go to college without enough math or writing… and perhaps worse.

So make time for your teen to broaden his or her world so that while they still have you around, they can sort through the complexities of emerging into young adulthood and the wider world.

5. Teens live in a wired world.

Len Sweet wrote in one of his books that today’s teens and young adults are the “natives” and we (their parents) are the immigrants in this technological world they inhabit. The kids speak the language fluently, naturally, without an accent while we parents sound like we just got off the boat. It’s a mistake to imagine that because we can get through our days with small doses of technology that our kids should do likewise. Similarly, limiting access to the Internet or computer to protect teens from seeing things they shouldn’t doesn’t wind up achieving the effect of protection. Instead, these teens end up behind the curve in terms of learning this complex, vital language that is driving the world they will enter.

I’ve had a couple of local students who have grown up without the Internet. One of them was a senior in high school last year. I use the Internet all the time to send vital course information, to receive drafts of papers, to send grades and so on. This student could not receive any of that information. When I asked her mother why they didn’t have the Internet, she told me it was because her husband had a pornography problem. The irony here is that while the home had no Internet, the husband’s work place did. So as a result, he had Internet access all day away from the home, while the family at home all day had none.

I explained to the mother that she was severely handicapping her college-bound daughter. Today’s colleges and universities use the Internet and computer programs to conduct everything related to enrollment, tuition, grades, housing and class work. Students today are expected to know how to create PowerPoints for their oral reports complete with accompanying music, they participate on discussion forums to discuss material in class, they often turn in papers via email, they work in small online groups for group projects using the project managing software offered by the school, and of course they use the Internet for research for writing projects and e-reserves. In short, everything college kids do is tied to the Internet.

Additionally, the Internet provides a way for kids to stay in touch when they leave home. Those special homeschooling friends will be a source of real strength when your kids move away to a world of all new people. Keeping up with friends through facebook, for instance, helps your kids maintain the relationships that were anchors to them. I recommend getting your own facebook account to be able to stay in touch with those young adults and teens. There’s a lot to be said for that tool in the parent-child relationship too.

Today’s entry is really summed up in one word: risk.

It feels risky to put our teens out there into that world where bad things can happen. We have worked so hard to make home a safe, nurturing, healthy environment. Additionally, the world of technology feels like a leap into the unknown for some families. One of the best things you can do to lower your anxiety (if you have it) is to ask your teens to teach you about that world. Find out what they need to thrive (cell phone? digital camera? facebook account?). Provide them, and learn from your teens how to use them and what they do. As they get involved with new friends outside the network you’ve cultivated, learn those new names. Have the kids over, if your kids will let you.

All of these new connecting points create more opportunities to talk about the things that matter to you, too.

Consider “friendships” and “technology” as two of the vital courses of study your kids need to make it in the adult world. Don’t see time spent in these areas as wasted, but as critical to healthy growth and maturation. Teens are amazing. I’m in awe of how much they can juggle successfully.

The Homeschool Alliance

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One Thinging High School: Principles 1-3

One Thinging Highschool

Previously I shared about our two oldest kids (Noah and Johannah) and their very different approaches to their teen years. Today, let’s talk philosophy. Let’s extract a few principles. We’ll look at these principles in sets of three until I’ve exhausted what I hoped to share. So without further ado, here are the first three principles.

1. Teens need adventure.

The family home is often too confining for teenagers. Their primary need between 13 and 17 is to get out into the big world right outside their door. The truth is, they have far more energy than their parents, boundless curiosity for things we take for granted (having already experienced them), and an insatiable need to relate to peers (in order to figure stuff out, like, what it takes to be a good friend, how to manage gossip, what’s cool and what’s not, what it means to manage myself, where to find good music, and who in the world out there is like me and can join me in my interests?).

They also want to do big things, like:

  • throwing pots
  • designing logos
  • writing articles that get published
  • mixing chemicals
  • traveling to a foreign country
  • flipping burgers at McDonald’s
  • backpacking in the mountains
  • driving a car

And so on. To accommodate this need for adventure, teens deserve to go places where they connect to their peers and other adults away from the supervising eyes of their parents. It doesn’t matter if they get a job, do an internship, go to school part time, take a college class, join an acting company, participate in a sports team or band, work out at a rock climbing gym, or volunteer at a local hospital. They need time away that stimulates them.

2. Teens aren’t lazy, they’re bored.

Laziness is usually a disguise for disinterest. When your child spends hours typing lyrics into his facebook but won’t do copywork from a classic novel, laziness is not the issue. Content is.

Another example: To beat multiple levels in Sims or Halo 3 or Warcraft requires hours of sustained repetitive tasks that are tedious and mostly unrewarding at the lower levels. Somehow teens are willing to plug in all that time dragging and clicking a mouse or controller in order to get to a level that they consider more prestigious and rewarding, yet they grumble about the boring 15 math problems. Why is that? Because the teen does find that the stimulation of these games outweighs the tedium. Not so with the math homework he’s done in the same style notebook for six years.

Subjects that are especially dry and repetitive benefit the most from tutorials, classes (both in person or online), small learning groups, co-operatives and passionate competent adults.

Farm out the subjects that fail to inspire your teens so that those topics have a fair chance for success.

If it’s impossible to find meaning and/or passion in a required subject, make it as painless as possible – don’t double it up with other tedious subjects, don’t require A’s or perfect work, don’t do the advanced version of the subject, or conversely, do it over the summer by itself so it doesn’t ruin the school year.

3. Teens have interests that interest them.

I remember when I worried that Noah was not doing “anything” I could count for his college transcript. A friend asked me, “Well, does he have cool interests?” That was an odd answer to my worry. I responded, “Well, yeah. He studies Klingon, is teaching himself electric guitar, plays Role Playing Games, and acts in plays… but how is that helpful?” I found out.

I’m still discovering how these interests have sustained him. He made friends through acting and RPGs, he discovered linguistics (now his major) through Klingon, he still plays music for pleasure and he has an extensive CD collection. 🙂 Yesterday on the phone as we talked about college, his chief frustration with his schedule is that he wants more time to read books and study music apart from his class schedule. He said, “I have really strong interests and I miss having more time to put into them.” Well yeah. That’s what happens when you grow up. It is harder now.

I was suddenly glad that he took time in his teens to develop those interests while he still could. He’ll never get those years back.

Isn’t it worth it to let teens do the stuff they love while food and beds are still provided to them for free?

Don’t you wish you had had more time to do the stuff you wanted to do? (Don’t forget how many hours you spent on the phone or walking through the mall or sitting by the pool with friends. Today they call it facebook, texting and AIM. It’s how teens learn the art of relationships, a critical high school course of study that homeschooling kids need as much as any of their peers.)

These first three principles focus on seeing the world through a teenager’s eyes. Their perspective matters. Boredom isn’t something to scorn. Laziness isn’t typical of teens (they need lots of sleep, and sometimes they look exhausted), but the truth is, they are gung-ho when they’re interested. I rarely see a lazy teen on the ski slopes, in a water park, at a concert, or playing online games. Teens in most of my classes exert huge amounts of effort to write well, to turn things in on time, to execute their work with care. The ones who don’t aren’t lazy. They aren’t interested. There’s a difference. Make more space for passionate engagement and reduce the tedium of tasks that tire.

As you look at your teens, the one thing you can do right away is identify which of these principles you can act on. Don’t feel you must do them all at once.

Just start “one thing” at a time.

UPDATE: Here are Principles 4-5.

Brave Writer Online Writing Class Nature Journaling

Posted in Homeschool Advice, One Thing, Tips for Teen Writers | 4 Comments »