Struggling Writers: The Writing Community

     The writing community with a classroom is a huge component in helping struggling writers become the writers they were meant to be. It is vital to help students feel a part of the writer community. As a student in middle school and high school I never felt comfortable with my writing or with my classes, I never wanted to share anything in class. It was overwhelming and I doubted my abilities against my classmates. I did not feel like my writing was important or needed. While seeking to create a strong sense of a writing community may not solve all struggles, helping students to feel a part of something important and greater than themselves boosts their confidence in their own writing. Feeling confident with your writing is a major foundational block to then be able to really embrace further learning to writer.

      Creating a write's community requires the creation of a classroom that feels safe and like a place where students’ know there is trust. No matter where a student falls on the scale of writing, if he or she is not comfortable and does not feel safe, then they are not going to be able—or willing—to write. Belinda McGuire continues in her essay (which is mentioned in this earlier blogpost) to discuss this idea as well: “we cannot achieve higher levels of performance and learning if our basic needs for security and trust have not been met” (17). Writing is an extremely personal affair—good writing requires vulnerability—and writing as well as sharing that writing requires that there be a feeling of safety for the students. As Stacey Shubitz has described it, part of creating a writing community is creating rules and expectations. In doing this we can help create an atmosphere of safety which encourages sharing or writing.

      After this feeling of security is created, it is natural for students to begin to feel a part of that community of writers which encourages further writing because there is a greater purpose behind it. In an article by Chris Street, he discusses his own class and experience with struggling readers, and touches on this very subject: “If students see themselves as contributing members of a writing community, then the motivation to sustain and enhance that community may well cause students to value and contribute to their newfound identity” (640). Every student as an identity as a writer, every person has an identity as a writer, and through the writing community, teachers can help draw out that personality from within their students. Another way that teachers can help students feel a part of a writing community is by addressing the students as writers. As Stacey Shubitz explains about her own classroom, “I called my students writers…and you know what, the kids began to think of themselves and call themselves writers too.” Students need that kind of positive attitude; it helps promote that feeling of safety that is needed to truly write. Calling them writers students writers helps build this relationship with the writing community, and then we can help to increase a student’s confidence to write because he or she feels that their writing is important and that what they have to say is of value.

Academic Sources (Not other blogs/websites):

McGuire, Belinda "Where Does the Teacher Intervene with Underachieving Writers?" The English Journal 79.2 (1990): 14-21. Web. 10 Oct. 2016.

​Street, Chris "A Reluctant Writer's Entry into a Community of Writers." Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 48.8 (2005): 636-641. Web. September 23 2016.