Teaching Writing is Love Plus Precision
Teaching and writing is love plus precision: an Interview with Abe Louise Young
WKCD interviewed Abe Louise Young about the links between writing and teaching as practices, and how to become a better teacher of writing. Poet Alan Shefsky conducted the interview.
WKCD: What makes a good teacher of writing?
YOUNG: I think it’s important for English teachers and writing teachers in schools and colleges to be writers themselves. When I say “be writers,” I don’t mean “publish books and get praise and recognition.” I mean have a relationship with words that’s loving, excited, and special. Take the time — make the time — to be engaged in a creative process. There’s always struggle — the fear, the blocks, the breakthroughs. Being a writer means participating and putting words on the page.
If teachers can’t remember how powerful, scary and liberating a process writing can be, they may not be good guardians of that door for younger people. A teacher who is defeated about their own writing might inspire children to torture themselves over words or have a loud inner critic. A teacher who’s excited about writing will be a conduit of electricity, hope and happiness. Students might either grow in self-discovery or self-reject when they see their words on the page. It’s up to teachers to set the emotional tone of positivity. It helps when teachers have a living relationship with the writing process, ourselves.
A good teacher of writing invests in relationships. The human relationship is the primary vehicle for learning about expression. How do we learn it is safe to take risks and try saying something new? We try, and we share it with someone. At home, it may or may not be safe for children to speak their inner thoughts, take risks and be seen. Knowing this, we remember that the nervous system is always in charge in the classroom and should intentionally create a trauma-informed space. Remember the adage, “I don’t care what you know until I know that you care.” Good teachers always show that they care deeply about the student as a person.
To work with a piece of student writing is to illuminate possibilities. Rather than just put a comment or grade on it and call it a day — invest in a relationship on the page. Or kneel down beside a silent student and ask them what’s wrong, then when they tell you, say: Why don’t you write about that today instead of the assignment? Students respond to caring relationships above any academic instruction. There’s a spectre of digital software systems replacing human teachers, but a computer has no nervous system with which to comfort a student and let them know they are safe, or to inspire bravery.
Teaching writing requires showing unabashed love, giving ready praise, sharing your appreciation of precision and specificity. Be unafraid to tell young people what you think is wonderful about their ideas and work, and what could be stronger. Just be gentle and do it with respect for whatever limits they’re working within.
WKCD: What are some things that you’ve learned from your students? Anything completely surprising?
YOUNG: With students, I learn about my own limitations, fears, and potential. I’m learning with them.
When I walk into a classroom, I see a group of strangers and register all of my stereotypes and projections about them — try to bring that conscious, and then defuse these ideas. Just like we do walking down the street and seeing people we don’t know. Teachers make assumptions about students. This one’s peppy and helpful, this one’s maybe too depressed to reach; this one probably hates me; that’s a highly obedient girl dreaming over by the window. I register these assumptions and stereotypes informed by race, class, gender, etc. and then I invite them to depart.
When the writers start sharing their work out loud, those stereotypes shatter. Then students become people with their own stories, who so badly want to be heard and understood. I’m always surprised at people’s complexity. And willingness to be vulnerable, in hopes of being heard. I’m grateful for the opportunity to cross the threshold of the classroom — a field of possibility — to encounter it.
I’ve learned that people have very different audiences in mind when they pick up a pen. Being schooled in the Western literary tradition, and having broken away from that in search of feminist thinkers, Global South voices and anti-racist voices, I have a distinct audience of literary ancestors and contemporary radicals that I’m hoping to please and converse with. Other people start in totally different cultural traditions, with different imagery, different audiences, different goals. A teacher should be aware of what these are for their students. For example, if a writer is steeped in the tradition of lyrical hip-hop, the teacher should educate herself on that culture so she knows the conversation the student is participating in.
I’ve learned that the less I impose my own expectations (beyond the general expectation of hard work), the more freely students explore their own audiences and inner worlds.
WKCD: How do you encourage students who are reluctant to write, who say they “aren’t creative” or that just don’t have anything to say?
YOUNG: I love this challenge! Slide in the psychic back door with something easy, silly or unexpected. Break it into bite-sized pieces. Making lists, or list poems, is a good way to start. Everyone can generate a list. I might ask that student to make a list of everything in their room, or all the red things they own, or what cooking in their house smells like. Things they hate or love. Then, tell me everything you know about that.
Atmosphere and the energy you create in the space is important in inviting students to grow. Make it feel like something that’s theirs. Make it special. Turn down the lights in the classroom and put on soft music, or go outside.
Another strategy with students who are alienated from writing is to have them record themselves talking, or interviewing someone — then transcribe it. Sometimes the gap between talking/thinking and writing is overwhelming. The mind isn’t always connected to the hand. If their words get onto paper a different way, then they’ll have something to work with. They may be very surprised to see what their words look like written down. And that you start to build that pathway between the brain and the fingers, the talking self and the writing self.
If the block is emotional — I’m not a good writer, I suck, people will laugh at me, I’m stupid — then I think that the carefully facilitated workshop process helps, whereby students read each other’s work and give positive feedback.
To make a workshop, set up the classroom at a certain time to celebrate and hear each other’s writing. People write, then read aloud, get applause, and some flash responses that point out interesting things in their pieces. At this stage, listeners respond to what was strong and what they could relate to — no negative feedback allowed.
One session of seeing others read aloud and get positive feedback will often cure a fear barrier; even people who don’t identify as writers want to be recognized and clapped for. This workshop time doesn’t replace concentrated feedback and critique. It’s not meant to make everything roses, but to fertilize the soil so that new vines grow. Then the training, pruning, day-in and day-out work of becoming better writers and thinkers is rooted in a sense of purpose and audience. And improvement can be driven in the private dialogue between teacher and student.
WKCD: You must also have students who share stories that are very personal, perhaps very painful. How do you handle these kinds of situations?
YOUNG: These situations are really precious. When one person shares a painful story, the class deepens and everyone feels more permission to be real, to stretch themselves. With high school students especially, who carry a huge amount of emotional turmoil, when one person sticks their neck out and gets a caring response, then everyone else feels safer. Usually, the other students will do the work that’s needed there: recognizing the writer, supporting them empathetically.
As a facilitator I’d ask, Can anyone relate? I’d also work to keep focused on the piece of writing as a crafted work, and not a reflection of reality. Bring it back to the page, or places that we need more information, or a metaphor that was moving. That takes the pressure off the writer, and returns the focus to the work.
It’s also important to stay alert for students who may disclose experiences of abuse, suicidality or other traumas. Talk with them about it and to be ready to make a warm handoff to a social worker or counselor, if necessary.
WKCD: How do you tailor your teaching to the particular needs of the students and the particular settings?
YOUNG: I use poems to start off teaching writing — poems are like portholes into deeper communication. They’re short, intense, and the language has energy, and there’s a window to a higher message. If the students are dancers, I’ll bring in poems about bodies. If they’re incarcerated youth, I may bring in poems written by people in prison or about different meanings of freedom. If they’re elders, I’ll include poems about the passage of time, memory, or family relationships.
There is a poem or book about everything under the sun. It’s improvisational. The poems are just kick-offs — I don’t analyze them much at the start, but guide folks to dive through the porthole that’s opened in the room. We start writing after reading a poem out loud together.
It’s important to bring poems written by African-Americans if the students are African-American, or by Asians if the students are Asian, or by LGBTQIA+ people if the group is LGBTQIA+. Since writing is communication, there’s something similar about every setting. The questions: Who are you? How do you relate to the subjects at hand? What do you want to say? How do you want to say it? These are questions we’ll never stop finding the answers for.
Teaching and writing are two of the most satisfying ways to inquire.
