By Kevin Ford, English Department Chair and English Teacher
“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”
- Maya Angelou
“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way”
- Ernest Hemingway
“Don’t be a writer. Be writing.”
- William Faulkner
There are a few questions that every good English Department grapples with annually.
Regarding the first, I’ve written that our “Living English Curriculum” allows teaching teams to select compelling, timely, and intentional texts without blindly adhering to literary canon or prescriptive curriculum. Instead, whether canonical or not, our literature sparks inquiry and inspires interesting connections for our students. Each day, young readers can be found in the cozy corners of our campus reading and annotating assigned books, ranking their favorites, and arguing about the questions raised.
But what about the writing? What about the productive challenge? What about joy in the work?
With generative AI, these questions take on a more acute dimension, demanding innovative solutions.
In this new era, students are asking themselves (subconsciously, if not out loud):
Why pursue excellent (and challenging) self-expression for school—for homework, no less—if mediocre (but easy) products are shockingly convenient?
Looking to the future, schools must wonder:
If students’ lives outside classrooms will be AI-supported, how can we ensure our graduates still produce human-centered, joyful, original work of meaning to others?
In response to these challenges, the English Department at The Field School developed a new course. Its development was guided by 5 hypotheses which, about 3/4 of the way through the first year, appear valid:
Inspired by the great writers’ rooms, like those at The Atlantic and The New Yorker, we have broken away from the traditional, one-dimensional model of English analytical writing to embrace something more student-driven, exploratory, and original. To date, students have explored units including:
Each unit is structured in two halves: 1. Close Reading: Literature and Exemplars; and, 2. The Writing Process.
In the first half, students are guided through a cornerstone piece of literature. This selection invites skill practice, such as annotation and close reading. Readers unpack themes, track character development, and more while developing their traditional literary analytical skills. At the same time, they maintain a metacognitive focus on the kind of writing they will ultimately produce.
For example, in our second unit—Capturing a Special Place—students read Foster by Claire Keegan. Thematically, they tracked an increasingly complicated sense of father-child relationships while, metacognitively, taking careful note of how Keegan’s words conjure summertime in the Irish countryside. She is a master of atmosphere and imagery, the writing challenges students would reckon with in developing their final piece.
Commingled with this literary study, students interrogate short exemplar pieces—model texts from all kinds of sources. In this work, students surface, through their own investigation, the style, structure, evidence, tone, and other elements most appropriate to the piece they will ultimately produce.
In the second half, the writing process, students are organized into groups of three, where each is a Writer, but also Editor and Project Manager for their peers. Using digital portfolios, students receive feedback on each step of their writing process from their partners, beginning with several “Pitches,” organizing original evidence, outlining, and drafting.
This orientation decentralizes the notion that students are writing for the teacher. Instead, they are conceiving wholly original projects—ones that interest them. Their primary readers are their peers.
The writer’s research is based on the project's needs. They conduct interviews, track down facts from reliable sources, and capture the essence of photos in expressive language. The same is true for the structure and tone of their pieces.
Instead of meeting their teacher’s preferences, our students are making informed choices. Each submission contains original student responses to the questions:
In the Capturing a Special Place unit, students selected a wide array of places: grandparents’ living rooms, restaurants visited with family around the world, favorite museums, and of course, “home”. They used vivid imagery to conjure setting and atmosphere. Most importantly, they used their words to articulate affection for places through artistic implication, not just bald statements of fact.
By the end of these units, students don’t just produce an essay. They produce an artifact of their abilities; a symbol of their industry and passion; a work to be shared beyond themselves.
Just as we value the planning and drafting process in writing, we believe in the iterative process for our teaching and curriculum development. Our English 9 units will likely change, as will the literary and mentor texts that students read. Our students will change. And it’s possible that even newer questions will arise, demanding newer solutions.
But for now:
Our students are reading. Our students are writing. And through English 9: Writer’s Workshop, our students are discovering joy in their work and power in their voices.
