Response

The overwhelming response I got to my letters asking authors to offer advice to young writers inspired me to write to others. What started out to be an inquiry to few suddenly involved many.

On of the things we learned about in the Southeast Iowa Writing Project (SWIP) was that the use of the red pen was counterproductive. It put a damper on writing and discouraged many to not write at all. SIWP suggested that in response to student writing you focus on what the writer was doing right and the time will come to work on polishing up what was wrong with the writing. Grammar and spelling could be taught in the context of the student’s writing.

Every writer longs for response to what they have written. They want to know that someone read it and agreed or disagreed with them, someone laughed, or someone cried when they read their writing. Absent the promise of some kind of response a lot of writing wouldn’t have happened. Oh, I am sure there are some exceptions. Writers may not want or expect response to their reflective journals but generally they do want it for almost everything else.

The response I was looking for when I wrote letters to authors was advice for my students and boy, did I get it! That prompted me to write to others and the collection was born. But, there was more! When I saw and felt how powerful letter writing was for me, how it made me want to write more, I realized it would work the same way for my students.

I began collecting addresses of sports teams and figures. I bought an address book full of the addresses of TV and movie stars. I collected addresses of politicians and public figures. The next step was to take the students through a lesson on letter writing emphasizing the form a letter takes and, of course, the importance of following all the rules so the reader is sure the get the writer’s message. Suddenly, spelling and the other rules had a real purpose. I let each person choose to whom they wanted to write. Everyone sent out one letter and we waited. It was not long before the magic began to happen!

With in a week or two students had received a reply. It worked like wild fire. Other students wanted a similar response. Hayden Fry wrote personal letters to everyone one who wrote him. George Raveling sent autographed posters of the Hawkeye basketball team. Dan Gable did the same. It was all from sports teams but I will say they were very responsive. Students wrote to authors of their favorite books.

They wrote to celebrities and others. Suddenly they were asking me for stamps almost everyday. I didn’t provide it until I had read the letter and looked over the envelope to make sure they were in good order. I had two students who wrote to presidential candidates and received good personal responses. George H. Bush actually read aloud one of the letters in a speech and another invited the student to a rally.

The bottom line is the kids were empowered to write by writing and response. The students could directly connect to writing for a purpose. Many students told me years afterward that they saved and cherished the responses they got. I did, too! My classes continued to write letters the rest of my years as a teacher. I gave presentations at conferences about the effectiveness of letter writing as a tool to get more writing from their students and increase their comprehension skills.