Writing and Teaching

I’ve written three graphic novels that will be published this August. In a strange way, this led to a Graphic Novel unit on Heroes at my school. It’s been a truly worthwhile venture so far. My students are learning a lot about the editing and revision processes.

There’s nothing–and I mean nothing–like modeling your own writing for students. I’m fortunate to have these books coming out, but I frequently model whatever type of writing we are doing for my students. As they watch me struggle with word choice, sentence variety, leads, closings, and everything in between, they come to realize that writing is a process for everyone, including teachers and professional writers.

Sometimes I use exemplary student writing that I’ve saved from previous years as a model, but I still try to do my own spur-of-the-moment modeling at each stage of the process.