I stood in front of a room of high schoolers last week, tapped into my teacher-voice, and taught them about the writing process. It has been over a decade since I’ve heard that voice come out of my mouth, not the mom-voice calling the kids in for dinner, not my sister-voice checking in, not my friend-voice saying ‘how good to see you,” but the teacher-voice trying to project to the back, sound interesting to teen ears.
To prepare, I went to our storage unit and pawed through binder after binder of curriculum and student work I STILL HAVE. Essays and poems, with names of students I recognize from New Hampshire and Arizona—the two places where I once taught high schoolers Brit Lit, American Lit, Freshman English, Creative Writing.
It reminded me how and when I fell in love with writing: sitting at the conference table at the Connors Writing Center in the basement of Hamilton Smith Hall on the campus of the University of New Hampshire. There I learned I’d been cultivating a writing voice for some time in my journals, and that if I leaned into that voice, if I learned the craft, my writing could matter.
This is what I told the group of high school students I taught last week and this is what I want to tell you: your voice matters; your writing matters.
So let’s write…
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