June 6, 2013 Dear Miss Hayes, You see, I really enjoyed our Holocaust unit writings.

You know the one where you like let us write from the perspective of someone affected by the Holocaust. You wanna know why I liked it so much? Because we had so many choices. Like the perspective, the gender, the background of the person, and what kind of writing we wanted to do. That was a totally great assignment and I really liked writing it. You may have noticed that I got a better grade on that assignment than I did on the characterization essay. Not to use school inappropriate language, Miss Hayes, but formal essays suck. Probably I got a better grade on the Holocaust assignment because I liked writing it. So that brings me to the characterization essay and the Romeo and Juliet theme essay. (Did you like my transition in my topic sentence, Miss Hayes? Be proud, be proud. I even remember what a topic sentence is.) Theyre boring. Really boring. And theyre so hard to write its like, I dont know what William Shakespeare was trying to teach me in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare is worms meat, so its not like I can get into his worm-eaten brain. (No Miss Hayes, Im not going back to my textbook to look up the citation for this quote. Its just two words, so I dont really care.) Unless Billys a zombie, I cant talk to him. And you know, even if he was a Zombie I couldnt talk to him. Zombies cant talk, Miss Hayes. They just moan and groan. Except in Warm Bodies. I actually enjoyed that article we read in class about that movie; and okay, so yeah, it made me like Rom and Jules more after I realized Warm Bodies is very similar to Billys play, but still. (I think by now Miss Hayes, you are thinking Ive gone off topic. Id like to point out t hat maybe I have, but its still a lil bit on topic because its about the play.) Back to the essays. Like I said, theyre like really boring to write because you dont know what to write about. I mean I dont really care about love at first sight. Then theres all the fricken steps and things to

remember. MLA header. MLA running header. 3 different kinds of paragraphs. Each paragraph has specific parts to it. Citations. Miss Hayes, it makes my mind want to explode! I know, I know. I have to know how to write formal essays for Mrs. Bushs class and for college. (Im going to college, but not everyone is.) But why do we have to write two of them? Cant we just write the characterization one in English 9A and then just have creative writing to do in English 9B? Please, Miss Hayes? Im asking, no begging, on behalf of the incoming freshmen. Well, Ive laid out my arguments. I even proofread this letter, you know. I hope you find them convinching. Sincerely, Sally Smith

June 7, 2013 Dear Sally, Thank you very much for your letter and for thinking of the incoming freshmen. You made several good points, and you gave me a lot of think about. I agree with you that creative writing seems much easier and more fun than writing formal essays. One of the reasons why is because you do have more choices, at least on the creative writing assignments in this class. You do have choices in your formal essays as well, such as which transitions to use, which quotes to embed in your paragraphs, and what specific aspect of love at first sight you want to explore in Romeo and Juliet. (Remember, you only need to use italics for play titles!) I do understand that these choices do not seem quite as fun or creative as creating your own character for your myth or Holocaust perspective assignment. With this in mind, I have been thinking about ways to incorporate more choice into the formal essays we write in the hopes of engaging more students and inspiring more students to enjoy writing of all types. For example, I am considering allowing students to choose one story from two or three stories to read for their characterization essays. That way, perhaps if they choose a story that appeals to them more tha n The Black Cat or A Sound of Thunder, they will be more excited to write about it. Also, I think that next year when we get to the Romeo and Juliet essay, I will give the option that students can write about a different theme topic than love at first sight. I know that several students, like you, were interested in the idea of the family grudge and how if the families had shown each other forgiveness, it wouldve been a very different story. Perhaps, had I allowed you the choice to write about that, you wouldve been more engaged in writing it. I completely agree with you that not all students will go to college or want to go to college. Even if a student is not going to college, learning how to write formal academic essays is still useful because much of what you learn applies to other types of writing and communication as well. For instance, when we were writing our formal essays, we talked a lot about what is meant by the formal voice. What you learned about differentiating between formal and informal word choice will be useful when you write your resume and cover letter for a future job. When writing these, you want to impress your potential employer, so you want to stick with formal word choice. Youll also need to pay attention to word redundancy, spelling, punctuation, and good grammar. After all, do

you remember that article we read about the Grammarly study that found that people with fewer grammatical errors on their LinkedIn profiles were more likely to get promoted? This study reinforces that idea of good grammar and writing skills being important. If your resume is rife with errors, a potential boss could interpret that as you being lazy or sloppy. You definitely dont want that! Writing formal essays also forces you to focus on the coherence of your thoughts in writing. Communicating clearly is an important skill because you will communicate in all spheres of your life from the professional to the personal. It is imperative (note the vocab word!) that you work on this skill because any job you have in your future will require that you clearly communicate with people. This communication may be verbal or written; in either case, you have to be able to get your thoughts out there so that others can understand them and respond to them. Failure to do so could cost you your job or even a friendship. You asked if we could only write one formal essay in English 9. The answer to that is a negative. Because you learn so much from writing formal essays and because these essays are so complex, we need to write two (and ideally if we had more time more than two) formal essays in English 9. Practice makes you a better writer and part of my job is to help my students become better writers. I know the real world is a few years away for you. You still have to finish high school and go on to college like youre planning on doing. But its good to start thinking about things like resumes, cover letters, and your future so that you can start making connections between what youre learning in scho ol and how it applies to other areas of your life. Youre responsible for your future so you need to start thinking about it now! I hope that you have found this letter to be a satisfactory reply to the one you wrote me. Please feel free to respond. See you around next year! Best, Miss Hayes

June 18, 2013 Dear Miss Hayes, So, seeing as I know you so well, Im thinking you were probably a little crushed by Sallys letter. Ill be honest though-- I think you handled it pretty well. You didnt drop into the depths of despair and wallow in what you perceived as failure because of her criticism. So what? You didnt get a wonderful Thank-you-so-much-Miss-Hayes-you-are-the-best-teacher-in-theworld-letter. I bet youre feeling a little like our dear friend Anne felt when she describes jealousy. Youre not jealous of Sally clearly, but you are doubting your skills as a teacher of writing. As Anne says of jealousy, You are going to feel awful beyond words. You are going to have a number of days in a row where you hate everyone and dont believe in anything (123). Again, youre not jealous, but the same concept applies. Im glad you didnt spend days, just minutes, where you hated everyone and everything associated with being a teacher. Im glad you didnt doubt yourself for long because you shouldnt. You were able to put a cap on your emotions and really see where Sally was coming from. I know you want to be a perfect teacher and to inspire a love of writing and good writing skills in all your students, but I also know that you understand that this is, in a word, impossible. To use a very old clich, nobody is perfect. You are no exception. Im going to rephrase some of Annes words here for you: The bottom line is that if yo u want to teach, you get to, but you probably wont be able to get very far if you dont start trying to get over your perfectionism (31). You need to think of this first year of your teaching as a shitty first draft. And honestly, it wasnt that shitty. You had some good days, some bad days. Some effective lessons, some less effective lessons. But you know what? Just like you always learn from your mistakes in your writing, you learned from your teaching mistakes this year as well and your second draft, next year, will be better. So heres the deal. You do need to inspire your students more when it comes to writing. To do that, you need to remember why you love to write and what your teachers did to make you want to write in their classes. You need to take a deep breath and dive into the swimming pool of your writing lessons to figure out where improvements can be made. (Youve actually already done quite a bit of that in your reply to Sally.) In case youve forgotten, let me remind you why you love to write. You love to write because of the emotion and the exploration. Like our good friend Anne Lamott says, Reality is unforgivingly complex (104).

Aint this the truth? What she didnt say was that it can also be a bitch. Because reality is so bitchingly complex, you need to write to make sense of it, to explore the complicated corners from which many people would shy away. When you get down to the nitty gritty, isnt this what you do with your formal essays? Think about this: for the characterization essay, you ask your students to look deep into a character to see how the character has changed over the course of the text and why they have changed. The characters you focus on are complicated and quite honestly, not very good human beings. You ask your students to explore that reality, that humans are prone to errors and flaws. In the case of A Sound of Thunder, students explore Eckels who is full of cowardice, cockiness, anger, and fear. If youre using Poes The Black Cat, students enco unter alcoholism and abuse. They see the consequences of a characters actions in both stories. And then you have them write about it in detail and with support to further examine these traits which are so prevalent in their worlds whether they realize it consciously or not. When they write about Romeo and Juliet, you ask them to consider the effects of love, a seemingly delightful emotion, and to figure out what is good love and what love is tragic. I agree that you should definitely give them more choice here, as the love at first sight topic can be a bit mundane for some of them. But in the end, these assignments can be made applicable to their lives because of the topics they explore. So what other suggestions do I have for you? First of all, consider the index card idea of Anne Lamotts. Im not saying you have to use index cards, but what if you had students keep a list of possible thesis topics to write about for Romeo and Juliet. There are so many themes in this text that students are bound to pick up on different ones. If they are generated by themselves, this could create more buy in for writing the essay. I seem to remember you enjoyed formal writing much more in college than in high school because the professors left it open to you to decide your thesis statements. This was also more challenging, but remember your philosophy: without struggle, there is no learning. Another idea you might consider is doing a few shorter assignments, as Lamott advises. Students are probably intimidated by longer essays because they seem so large and are so time consuming. What if you had them do more mini-writing assignments, like journals, short narrative pieces, or even poetry, that connect more personally to to their lives. This would add some authenticity to the texts as well since the writing pieces would be tied back to the reading being done in class. . For instance, you could have your students analyze the ways in which their own

personalities are dynamic and also which of their traits have remained static over time. This self-reflection could lead to deeper thinking and also having them be more aware of their identities. But what if you challenged yourself and turned it into an argumentative narrative? Students could make an argument about whether they have a dynamic or static personality based on a self-chosen trait that they think is important in themselves. They then would have to support their argument with anecdotal evidence. The drawback here is that there would not be any quotes to include unless, of course, you had them interview their friends and family members and then cite quotes from interviews.. This interview also covers some speaking and listening standards and forces your students to think about crafting effective questions; not only that, but it forces them to have meaningful conversations. You could even have them turn this into a digital essay of some kind because they could record the audio from the interview and have to incorporate it in their digital essay somehow. You should probably finish Troys book and then think more about this; Im on summer vacation, so Ill let you do the reading and thinking further on that. Ive kind of impressed myself with this idea though, so I hope you use it. Well, thats all Ive got for you...Ill be in your brain if you need more from me. Best, Alexa