Young Writer's Column

There is a notation from April 30, 1982, that I want to check with the Mt. Pleasant News about a young people’s column. Then on June 2, I note that I have approval from Roger Williams from the school district and Bill Epperheimer, editor of the newspaper, for a monthly column of children’s writing. Roger, Sue Wilson, a junior high teacher and Dave Brown, a high teacher agree to help with the selection of writing to be published.

The project lasted for three years. I saved every column in a folder and still have them. Each column begins with the introduction I wrote at the time:

The intent of this column is two-fold. First it offers the beginning author an audience larger than his/her teacher or immediate family. Young writers work hard if they know many people will be reading their writing. Second, readers have the opportunity to catch a brief glimpse inside the head of our young people.

The stories are often simple, but always refreshing. Reading these stories might remind you of your childhood or give you an opportunity to meet some of our young people in a new way.

From time to time throughout the school year we hope to publish student writing. It should be an enjoyable experience for both the reader and the writer.

I saw this as a way to inspire young writers, engage parents and the public, and generally raise the level of awareness about the power of writing. I, secretly, hoped teachers would start having students do more writing. Many of my colleagues were very open about not teaching writing or even allowing their students time to write. They just didn’t see it as important.

I knew if parents saw the writing of other children in the paper they would want to see their own children’s writing there, too. The parent pressure would ultimately produce more writing. The first column, published in the Mt. Pleasant News on November 18, 1982, had nine pieces of elementary student writing. It was a huge hit with parents and the general public.

The next month we published high school writing and then junior high writing in January and back to elementary writing in February. We had eight columns that first year.

As time went by it got harder and harder to get teachers to submit student writing. I felt guilty just using my own students’ writing all the time and pieces from the same few teachers who submitted them all the time. I was frustrated with many of my colleagues. For whatever reason some of them just refused to participate. Maybe it was jealousy over the success and attention of the project or maybe it was something else. I don’t know, but even some of my close colleagues refused to participate.

Sometimes teachers can be very narrow in focus. I can say that because I was that way to. It’s both good and bad. Good because they are deeply involved in what they are doing in their classrooms. Bad because they sometimes miss the forest for the trees.

Graduate school, teaching and other projects got in the way of continuing the project after three years. The newspaper wanted to continue, community members asked me about it, and the district administration supported it.

Gathering the pieces and organizing them took time. Even though teachers were supposed to submit them typed they seldom did so that was left to me. I urged teachers to continue submitting their student writing directly to the newspaper. That got me out of the middle. Some did for a while but eventually it disappeared.