Writing as a grandmother to

her granddaughter, the

author reflects on her

wishes for the kind of

writing classrooms she

hopes her granddaughter

will experience when she

goes to school.

Dear Stacie,

I know you won’t read this letter formany years yet, but when you do, Iwant you to know I was thinkingabout you today. This week you’llcelebrate eighteen months in ourfamily and you’ve already been“reading” for over a year. You havean extraordinary love for books.With a house full of toys to playwith, you’ll often retrieve a bookfrom a large pile of board books. It’snever just any book and it’s notalways the same one, but it’s clearlythe one you want to read “rightnow.” Then you’ll crawl back to me,hand it to me, and plant yourselfnext to me or on my lap with anexpectant attitude that says, “Readwith me.” Then, two weeks ago, Isaw you using a pencil. Your Dad

was sitting at the kitchen tablemaking notes for himself when aneighbor came in and engaged himin conversation. While they weretalking, you crawled into his lap,listened to the conversation for abit, then took the pencil and beganto write. I realized that you not onlysee yourself as a reader, but you al-ready see yourself as a writer.

When I read that Language Artswanted articles about writing, Ibegan to think about my hopes andfears for you. I reflected on what youalready know about writing andwondered what kinds of experiencesyou’ll have in school. Will you find acaring, listening community in yourclassrooms? Will you have teachersand peers who recognize and ac-knowledge your ideas—even help you

discover reasons to write what youfind important? Will your teachersprovide you with the time you needto prepare pieces worthy of yourreaders? Will they provide you withthe resources and the instruction tohelp you achieve your purposes?

You already have the solid founda-tion a writer needs. You live in anatmosphere that promotes learningof all kinds. You live in a close-knitcommunity. All of us love you un-conditionally. And you know welove you. We support you in every-thing you do. Even when we haveto suggest alternatives, we explainwhy, we ask for your input, and wetry to find solutions that will meetyour needs yet keep you safe.None of us offer you false praise.You don’t need praise; you need

About Writing: A Letter to Stacie

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About Writing

Janice Hartwick Dressel

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response. Living in this environmenthas led you to be confident, consid-erate, full of ideas, full of energy,and able to compromise. So, whatdo I wish for you during yourschool years?

I want you to be able to think foryourself. Many employers and politi-cians argue that businesses and gov-ernment need workers who can readand write, but what they really seemto demand are writers whose writingis technically correct. They are criti-cal of schools and teachers becausethey insist that education isn’t meet-ing that need. No one will argue thatour society needs readers who cancomprehend and writers who cancommunicate effectively. But, it con-cerns me when reading and writingare perceived only in terms ofpreparing people for the workforce.Today, many people are more con-cerned about spelling and punctua-tion than with meaning. We needthat, but we also need authors whocan make us laugh and cry, authorswho can challenge us to think criti-cally about important issues. And, Ithink, we need citizens who can readand write poetry and citizens whoare willing to challenge the statusquo. I want you to be one of them.

I want you to have time to pursuethings that are important to you—purposeful things—that have mean-ing for you. We provide time for youto pursue your interests even whenwe aren’t sure why you are doing

what you’re doing. I want you tohave teachers who design classroomsin which you never run out of excit-ing things to do. Right now, I can’timagine you ever running out ofideas to write about. You certainlynever run out of things to talkabout—but then, you always have areal reason for doing what you do. Ihope that your classrooms are filledwith activities that stimulate you tobe intensely interested in what youare doing and teachers who lead youto write about those interests. I’m notsure yet what reasons will be impor-tant for you, but there will be many.

Do you know thatover a third of allfourth graders in theUnited States spendmore than three hoursa day watching tele-vision? So far, youdon’t watch muchtelevision. Sometimesyou and Daddy watchcooking shows to-gether while youdrink your bottle.

Once in a while youwatch Dora the Ex-plorer, and your eyesalight with fascination.But most of your time isspent reading togetherwith us, working withyour toys, and talkingto those around you. Idon’t think that’s goingto change much as yougrow up. But I do thinkyou are likely to useyour computer and theInternet much morethan school childrenever have in the past. Infact, I’m pretty sure ofthat because severalyears ago I read thatpeople in the UnitedStates spend twice asmuch time online and25 times as much time

with electronic media as they doreading books. One teacher, Mr.Baines, used his students’ fascina-tion with electronic media to helpthem improve all aspects of theirwriting—rhythm, syntax, vocabular-ies, and style. First, he had themwrite and design PowerPoint presen-tations that incorporated concreteimages, both visual and auditory.When they were finished, studentsshared their presentations with theirpeers. Then, as a final step, the kidsused the sensory images in theirPowerPoint programs to help themrevise their writing so that peoplewho couldn’t see the presentationswould be able to “see” and “hear”the meaning from the words alone.How exciting that whole experiencemust have been for those students.While I want you to have benefits ofreading, I also want you to haveteachers who delight in what’s newand who find ways to help you usewhat’s new to improve your writing.

I want you to have knowledgeablepeople to talk to and to work with.Now, we read to you—or maybe it

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would be better described as youreading to us. You choose the time,you choose the books, you choosethe page, you point to the pictures,and we respond. Today you pointedto a cat, and I told you it was a cat,but a little cat so maybe it would bebetter to call it a kitty. On subse-quent pages, you pointed to the catand I repeated my explanation, eachtime in a little different way. Soon,when you pointed at the cat, youtentatively said, “Meow?” “Yes,indeed,” I replied, and we continuedto read, with you providing a“meow” for every cat and kitten thatappeared. Sometimes, though, youinsist that I take the lead. Yesterday,you were making marks with yourcrayons, but you wanted input. Justas I had seen you do earlier withyour Dad, you handed me each newcrayon and watched to see what Iwould do. Your Dad had drawn youpictures; I wrote you some words. Icouldn’t help but wonder what partsof our “minilessons” you found mosthelpful for achieving your goals andwhat parts you were saving up forlater! A Russian researcher namedVygotsky wrote that whatever achild can do with an adult today,she will be able to do by herself to-morrow. He called this time of coop-eration, when teaching is mosteffective, the zone of proximal de-velopment. Seems to me you arealways in this zone—I just need torecognize how to be there, too!

I want you to be part of communitieswhere listening and respect arepresent. Right now, all of us talkwith you. Not to you, with you. Youexpect us to reply to your jabbering,and we do even though we can’t un-derstand your words yet. You taketurns, you tell us about excitingnews, you ask questions, you engagein monologues and in dialogue. Weanswer you; we care about youropinions. If we don’t understand you,we ask questions to be sure we’veunderstood what you mean; we offeralternatives for you to think about.And, you in turn treat us that way.Your teachers will probably call thisconferring, but conferring means justwhat I’ve been talking about. I wantyour teachers to respect you andyour peers as capable, sensitive, andcaring people. I want them to offerdevoted attention to each of you, notjust to those of you who write well. Iwant your teachers to model this re-spect for you in their daily actions soyou never forget the value of anyperson. And I want your teachers todemand no less of you and of everystudent in your classroom.

Stacie, I have a dream for you—adream that one day, you’ll be able togo to school with children from dif-ferent backgrounds and dif-ferent abilities and that allof you will learn to writeeffectively, that you’ll learnfrom each other to be com-petent in a variety of voicesand dialects, that educa-tional privileges and oppor-tunities will be available toall of you. I have a dreamthat your schools won’t belabeled good or bad, profi-cient or deficient, rich orpoor, underperforming orexcelling, but that teacherswill be encouraged and sup-ported to teach all of you towrite better than you everdreamed. I’m afraid for you,though. It scares me to

death to think that pretty soon you’llhave to take a test and somebodywill decide how good a writer youare by looking at the scores from onepiece of writing, written on one par-ticular day, about an assigned topic,for an audience of unknown adults,with no input from anyone else. I’mafraid that your school—and others—will be labeled by the scores on thosetests. And I’m afraid that you andyour mom and dad will have tochoose between a school like theone I want for you and one that issegregated by privilege, advantage,and money.

Instead of having teachers whospend your class time preparing youto take a test or teachers who focusprimarily on skills and conventions,I want you to have teachers whohelp you recognize the incrediblesignificance of the everyday hap-penings in your life. I want them tohelp you see those things and en-courage you to write about them. Ofcourse, only some of that writingwill be really, really good, but Ihope your teachers will never seeindividual pieces of writing as suc-cesses or failures. If they do, youmay lose your ability to take risks,because taking risks and trying new

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things isn’t possible when eachpiece of writing is seen as an endproduct. I’ve already started keepinga collection of your writing. Maybeyou’ll be fortunate enough to haveteachers who use portfolios, too.When you look over all the piecesyou have written, you will be ableto see how you developed over time,and by looking at writing you’ve al-ready done, you’ll find things youwant to learn or to work on.

I want you always to be able to en-tertain alternatives. Using languageeffectively requires the ability to betentative. Effective readers and writ-ers don’t insist on having exact orimmediate answers to every ques-tion. Remember when I talked ear-lier about how you learned thatboth cats and kittens say, “meow”?You did learn that both cats and kit-tens say “meow,” but you alsolearned that sometimes we call thatanimal a cat and sometimes we callit a kitten, and we aren’t alwaysvery consistent. Somehow you wereable to entertain both of those op-

tions without becoming confused orupset. I want you to delight in find-ing other ways to look at the world,to delight in words like “perhaps”and “maybe.”

I hope, too, that you will have allthe tools you need to write welland people to teach you how to usethem. You will need pencils andpens and papers of all kinds. Likeme, you will need things like scis-sors and tape so you can changethings around without having torewrite everything. And you’ll needcomputers with appropriate pro-grams to help you write withoutunnecessary effort. (I rememberhow your Dad hated to “copyover”!) Most of all, you’ll needbooks to use as models and peopleto show you how to use them. Youdon’t have to reinvent the wheel.Authors before you have donemarvelous things and you canlearn from them. If, as I hope, youwrite in kindergarten and firstgrade, it is likely that you’ll beginby writing stories about your own

experiences. Many authors havewritten books from their experi-ences, and my hope is that yourteachers will show you patternsyou can use.

But, I want your teachers to helpyou write more than stories. Longbefore they went to kindergarten,your Dad and your aunt were ableto argue effectively, to analyze andto use comparisons, contrast, meta-phors, and concrete details whenthey wanted to convince me theyshould be able to do something orgo somewhere that was importantto them. When they began to write,they were able to draw on all theseaspects of thinking in their writingand you will, too, because we al-ready use them in our conversa-tions with you. I want your teachersto build on what we are teachingyou at home. I want them to teachyou to use all of these, and more, todesign a thoughtful biography, tocraft a free verse poem, to put to-gether a piece of creative nonfic-tion. Then, I want your teachers tohelp you use those forms to writeabout things you care about—maybe a poem about Juan and hisbrother struggling in school be-cause they have to speak only En-glish. Or maybe a piece of creativenonfiction for the school news-paper, comparing and contrastinghow hard it is for them to learn inEnglish with how effectively theycould learn through Spanish, whilelearning English at the same time.That is something you will careabout because Juan and Stevie areyour friends. And if you care aboutwhat you are writing, you’ll learnhow to write using your chosenform effectively.

I hope you will always have whatwriters call an audience. We areyour audience now. We listen toyou. We care what you have to say.And you, in turn, value our input.We are always asking questions as

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you work at things, trying to un-derstand what you mean, what youwant—and helping you see why weunderstand or sharing why wedon’t. I want you to have real audi-ences in school, too, because if youdo, long before you choose anypiece to publish, you will alreadyknow that anything you publishneeds to be polished. Since youneed to draft many more piecesthan you will publish, I’d tell yourteachers to think carefully aboutwhy they are meeting with youbefore they confer with you. I hopethey will spend most of their timehelping you learn to make impor-tant decisions about your pieces.Time is illusive and hard to find.But perceptive teachers find timetucked away, hiding in corners.Sometimes they will be able to helpyou quickly identify where you arestuck and send you off to talk withappropriate peers instead of spend-ing their time with you. Sometimes,rather than meeting with you indi-vidually, they might choose to meetwith small groups to talk aboutthings like leads or dialogue or tobrainstorm different formats. Onlyafter you have done the very bestyou can and only after you’veasked for the help of your friends,only then should you expect yourteacher to help you correct thingslike spelling and punctuation.Those final touches are vital,

though, so that read-ers will be capturedby your ideas, notoffended by surfacethings you can learnto correct. I’m as-suming, of course,that you’ll only needto correct the finalcopy of the piecesyou publish, andyou’ll only publishpieces that are -important.

I’ve been teaching a long time, so Iknow that all classrooms won’tfunction as effectively as I hope, butI am experienced enough to knowthat children will live up to teach-ers’ expectations of them, eventhough sometimes it takes weeks,months, or years. Like you, mostchildren can learn to talk aboutwriting effectively, especially ifteachers are willing to be effectivemodels and to spend the time neces-sary to coach them until they suc-ceed. I hope your teachers have highexpectations; I hope your teachersare effective models; I hope yourteachers are persistent in insistingthat children help themselves andeach other. But, most of all, I hopeyour teachers let you write for realreasons and real audiences. Thatway, you’ll also have to live withreal consequences. When you haveto live with those, a lot of otherthings fall into place.

I want someone to help you realizethat writing about the things youcare about can help you make a dif-ference in the world. Real reasonsfor writing. That’s what it’s allabout. Because being committed towhat they are writing about is whatkeeps writers going. It’s like thisletter—this letter is important to me.It’s so important to me that I keep atit day after day after day. I hopeyour teachers don’t bow to the de-mands of pressure groups—even

parents who, understandably,become frightened—to protect yourschool from losing funding. I hopethey aren’t compelled to sacrificewhat they know about best practiceto teach all children to “color withinthe lines.” I want writing to be a dy-namic, living, breathing process ofdiscovery for you, not just a linearseries of rote steps through whichyou have to march. I want you tohave assignments that permit you touse writing for reasons that are im-portant to you, writing that willmake a difference in your world.Maybe that means finding a patternin a book you like and using it as amodel to write me a story. Maybe itmeans sending Grandpa a letterwith a riddle he can’t solve. Maybeit means, someday, writing the Stateof the Union address. And maybe itmeans, sooner or later, writing alove poem to someone you don’teven know yet.

So, those are my wishes for you,Stacie—that you always see yourselfas a writer, that you have teacherswho are willing and able to nurtureyour love for writing and help youdo it well, and that you are able touse your writing to make a differ-ence in your world.

All my love,

Grandma

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About Writing

Janice Hartwick Dressel is professor ofEnglish Education and Children’s Litera-ture in the Department of English Lan-guage and Literature at Central MichiganUniversity, Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Sheis also the Grandma of Stacie and Stacie’snew sister, Angie.

Author Biography

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