Last year there were eight. We may have started out with a few more, but eight spent nearly every recess with me, typing every day and sticking with it to the end.
This year, I hemmed and hawed for far too long over whether or not I should even add this to my plate, until it was nearly too late to start. At that point, I wasn’t sure if any students would be interested in repeating the challenge with me, so I opened the gates, a bit too widely perhaps, and found myself with not only several of the eight that took the challenge with me last year, but fifty more that thought it somehow sounded like something they wanted to try.
58 students crowded on my classroom floor with Chromebooks in their laps on Friday afternoon with little more than the promise of working with me to write a draft of a book. They typed away with all the speed two index fingers can muster when you are still young enough to have to search for the letters on the keyboard. Heads down, they focused on their task and the room sounded like an office of secretaries from the 1950’s. Too soon to start the challenge, they were typing nothing in particular, just to get an idea of how fast they could type so we could roughly determine a word count goal. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack went their keys for the five minutes I timed them for. We multiplied this word count out and set personal word count goals for we begin the challenge in earnest.
The challenge, should they choose to stick with it, is to write a book – a chapter book – during the thirty days of November. A take-off from National Novel Writing Month, the Young Writer’s Program allows students of all ages to participate in the writing challenge, but with a self-determined word count goal, (instead of the daunting 50,000 words that we mere mortal adults will attempt to achieve).
The room is mostly fifth graders, due to the fact that my participants from last year were spread out over six fifth grade classrooms, so when their teachers asked if anyone wanted to try it again with me, new recruits, more likely naïve recruits, were eager to join in. I invited my current fourth grade students as well, and there are more of those than I had last year, bringing our total group to a bit more than my classroom can comfortably hold, but it’s a number that I expect to dwindle over the course of the month, so perhaps it will become more manageable as we go.
On Friday, I stood in front of the crowd, and explained, the concept. Draft a story. A long story. A longer story than they have probably ever written before. And with nothing more to promise at the end than it will most likely be quite lousy and it will still need an enormous amount of work to become anything good, but, and this is the real hook of the challenge, but, I told them, you will be able to forever say, “I wrote a book,” and I emphasized the power in that statement.
Today, the first day of November, my number of my crowd of authors is down to 47, with one teacher who forgot to send her kids down to my room. As I call off the students’ names, several times their peers respond with, “Oh, they quit already.” It turns out, the promise of a near-empty fifth grade classroom is more enticing than the idea of joining a large mass of typists on a quest to become authors of mostly crappy chapter books. That’s okay with me. I’m not trying to mass produce lukewarm writers. I’m trying to give those students who have a passion for the process an outlet for their ideas. I’m trying to hand a blank page to those with ink dripping out of their fingertips so they might capture the words in their hearts and see their stories unfold before them.
A half hour isn’t even close to enough time with these kids. I will email every day my words of encouragement and my less than helpful suggestions for overcoming writer’s block, but I don’t share a recess time with fifth grade and so many of the students will miss out on the collective, daily writing like we did last year. It will do, for now, though. Perhaps next year my life will be slightly more stable and I’ll be able to commit some time outside of school hours to supporting these young authors in their quest. Perhaps by then I will have learned more about how to cultivate young writers, to help muster enthusiasm and motivation when the word count feels insurmountable, when the blinking cursor feels like a pulsing reminder that we don’t have a clue of what we are writing. For now, I will do everything I know and can do to model, encourage and support these kids.
After our all too brief meeting ended today, a student in my afternoon fourth grade class confided in me. “Mrs. Koehn?” he said to me quietly and with grave concern. “There’s just no way I can write 14,000 words!” Having just finished reading a book about perseverance, I respond by saying, “You don’t have to. All I’m asking is that you write 460 words today. Can you do that? Just focus on today. 460 words. Tomorrow isn’t even here yet. One day at a time.” He nods back at me, “I can do that, Mrs. Koehn. I can do 460 words.” It’s his goal. It’s what he set for himself. And my heart will absolutely soar if he hits it. Crappy first drafts or not, these kids are going to learn so much more than typing and story telling along the way.
This, is what it feels like to be a teacher. Today, in this moment, surrounded by kids choosing to put in extra work, choosing to give up the opportunity to do something else, choosing to spend time at school and at home working on a writing, choosing to push through difficulties, choosing to be writers – this, this is the moment I live for in my classroom. When students are so eager to participate in learning that they willingly choose it, join with enthusiasm and dive in to the task with complete abandon.
Last year, one of my students who participated in the month-long challenge with me, exceeded her word count goal and wrote a first draft with enormous potential. Copying the books she devours day and night, she wrote a dedication page on her November novel and thanked me for introducing her to NaNoWriMo, the writing challenged that pushed her to finish her first book. I could end my career today knowing that was enough. That was enough to set her ball rolling. I don’t know where this challenge will lead for any of my crowd of authors, but I know this: it will change them. Just as it does me.
To the National Novel Writing Month Young Writer’s Program, my floor of two-finger typists and I send a resounding, “Challenge accepted!”
See you in 30 days.
Teaching at 3am 