We Are Teaching Writers

By Jennifer Vincent, 2026 CCIRA Featured Speaker

By Jen Vincent

”I decided to switch topics, so I started over,” a student writer shared with the class.

My shoulders tightened, so I paused and took a breath before responding. “Yeah, okay, writers do that. Sometimes an idea isn’t working and you need to switch gears,” I said.

It was the end of independent writing time, and I was doing a quick check in with the class, calling on each student to share how they spent their time. Students shared that they made progress or added dialogue or added details…and then this.

This group of 6th grade student writers had already been working on their personal narratives for some time. I knew starting over was going to make it harder for this particular student to make it through their process before the quarter deadline, but I wholeheartedly believe in allowing students space to find their own way. Even though I started to feel the tension in my body, I trusted the student writer and didn’t add my stress to their process. 

With over 20 years in education, you might imagine that taking this in stride would come easily by now, but I often find myself still unlearning and re-learning, especially when it comes to time. 

Guiding Over Dictating

Take this example. If the student starts over and doesn’t end up with a finished piece or with a piece as polished up as it could be, that is a great learning opportunity for them. If the student starts over and finds momentum from the shift, that is also a great learning opportunity for them. I have a sense of what starting over might mean, but if my goal is to empower student writers to trust themselves as they learn to live the life of a writer, then I need to allow them to make choices and learn from the consequences. As a guide, I can notice and ask questions and help them learn as they reflect. 

In my book Living the Life of a Writer: 6 Practices Student Writers Have, Know, and Do, I invite you to allow me to be your guide as well. Throughout the book, I offer opportunities for you to pause and reflect on your lived experiences and how they may or may not influence you as a writing teacher. Reflection is a powerful tool that allows us to re-vision our writing instruction. In reflecting, we take an honest look back in order to make a plan to move forward. We are not simply hitting refresh and hoping for a new outcome. Instead, we are reconnecting with purpose and making changes that are aligned with our student needs. Hitting refresh in this way is reenergizing. 

Speaking of reflection, I’d like to invite you to pause and reflect now. Allow yourself to explore these questions in a free write and see how you might re-vision how you support student writers. 

A Moment to Reflect

1. Recall times in your teaching when a student made a writing choice that didn’t match what you would have done or what you would have suggested.
2. What did it feel like in your body when this happened?
3. Looking back now, what advice do you have for yourself so that you might give students space to explore their process?

Trusting The Process

Writers know that writing is a process is one of the practices I share in Living the Life of a Writer. While writing seems like a linear process, any writer will tell you that it’s much more complex than that. Sure, we brainstorm, choose an idea, draft, revise, edit, publish…but each of these might take more time than we anticipate. We might find ourselves making progress and then needing to redirect. We might think we’re almost done and then decide to scrap something and rewrite. 

Our job is to trust that writing is a process and to give student writers space to find their way (with our guidance) so that they also develop trust in the process. We know there are deadlines to meet and standards to grasp and curriculum to cover. Yes, we are teaching writing skills, but more importantly, we are teaching writers. 

Jen Vincent (she/her/ella) is a writer, educator, entrepreneur, and lover of life who celebrates the human experience through writing. With extensive experience in special education, curriculum development, instructional technology integration, teacher coaching, and working with multilingual learners, she currently serves as a 6th-8th grade Middle School Social Studies/Language Arts Teacher for Bannockburn School, a K-8 district in a northern suburb of Chicago. She is a National Board Certified Teacher in Early/Middle Childhood Literacy and an active member of the National Council of Teachers of English. In 2024, she was honored with NCTE’s Don H. Graves Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Writing. As the founder of Story Exploratory, she offers workshops, coaching, and professional development to help writers explore what it means to live the life of a writer. Living the Life of a Writer: 6 Practices Student Writers Have, Know, and Do is her first book on student-centered, inquiry-based writing instruction. Learn more at storyexploratory.com and at @storyexploratory on Instagram.