What is voice, really? What does
it mean to me? And what will
its role be in my classroom?
"Voice is choice."I heard
Barry Lane say that, though he probably wasn't the first.
"Voice is personality on the paper."
I'm not sure who coined it, but when Nat said that, it hit me--I loved
it.
You have voice
if you know who you are and how to express yourself. Voice is confidence. A life that is vibrant, rich, compassionate,
sincere, and filled with humor, is a life with voice. Voice reverberates. When you believe in your ideas and in
other's responses, you have voice. So,
voice is trust too--trust in yourself, and trust in your audience.
Without voice, writing is painful, scary, foreign, and no fun.
I remember
the first time I found my voice in my
own writing. Disenchanted with
the barely competent education I was getting at our neighborhood school, my
mom sent my sisters and me to the alternative elementary school, Ohlone, which
was complete with a garden, goats, and a pond. My fifth grade teacher, Win, was my first teacher who used
the writing process. We wrote
for our writing groups where we received feedback. One of our first assignments was to write about a favorite
place, a place where we felt safe. He
shared a few examples from previous students. One stuck with me. A girl had written about a place she liked
to go during the process of her parents'divorce. It was hard for her to write about it,
and she ended up crying while reading it to her group. Win cautioned us away from topics that
were difficult for us to share. I
didn't listen to his advice, and I too wrote a story that let me get out the
turmoil of my own parents'recent divorce. I didn't know you could do that with writing. Even though I did end up crying reading
my paper to the group, it was actually fun to write. Win had kept trying to convince me to pick an easier topic,
but I was like a pit bull. It
was the first time I became attached to my writing.
Voice, though,
is not scored by the state. So
given my sense of limited time, I haven't given enough guidance and feedback
to my students'development in this area. One of my goals for next year is to find
more of my own voice as a teacher - not the voice of the state standards,
though I'll still use them as a framework, and not the voice of the latest
literacy guru, though I'll continue adapting what I learn from them.
I want to teach fearlessly using my own voice.
My hope is to help my students find their own voices by consciously incorporating it into at least one activity every day. For instance, we obviously can't ignore conventions, but practice of these skills should not be at the expense of voice. Somewhere along the line, I gave up on trying to make the grammar book empowering. So, this year I'll find more opportunities than usual to teach grammar in the context of my students'own writing. The fact is, without the confidence of voice, a student is not likely to try difficult sentence structures or use of the semicolon anyway.
More than any
workshop or class I've ever taken, the Oregon Writing Project has allowed
me to free my own voice. The
biggest opportunity for this came with all the writing we got to do.
I love writing, but, as a teacher, don’t make time for it.
That's made me feel like an imposter as I push my students towards
taking risks in creating and sharing their writing. And they have taken those leaps. They've inspired me to come back to the process myself.
I've been reminded just how much courage it takes and liberation you
gain from writing for an audience. My
last goal (for now) is to continue writing with my students as my audience.
With my goals
in front of me, I'll soon be preparing for the coming year. I'll be pulling dynamic activities from
Going Bohemian (edited by Baines and Kunkel) and After The End
(by Barry Lane)--activities that roll several writing skills, including voice,
into one lesson. I'll be incorporating
many of the writing exercises presented by my peers and guest presenters in
the OWP. And more memorably,
I'll have behind me all the experiences with the other teachers in our group--Midge's
BIG, refreshing voice, the books that Vicky suggested, Ken's understanding,
as another parent, of one of my tougher papers, Kelly G's pure excitement
over creating her web page, and on and on--experiences that embody what we
want for our students--living and writing with voice.
July 2002