Through to My Soul: Teacher Writing in the Classroom

Today, I shared a very important and deeply personal essay with my students. Now, sharing essays with my students is certainly not a new thing. Because I believe in modeling expectations, I have shared all kinds of essays with them. But this essay was special. It talked about my concurrent absence of my birth father and my obsession with Barbie dolls. I have been married to my childhood sweetheart now for 11 years, and he has gone through the drama with my father and me, and I have never talked to him about it. When I read the essay to my husband prior to sharing it with the students, he remarked, "That essay explains...everything." YES. I was that deep in that essay.

I was slightly reluctant to share it; again, I was opening a world up to them that hadn't been exposed to them since I started teaching them 2 years ago. Nervously, emotionally, I began to read the piece to my students. As I read, holding back tears, I could not help but notice how captivated they were with my story. The room was so silent, with just my voice bouncing off the walls. Not even a sniffle.

When I finished reading, the room stayed silent. A few shook their heads, and others just stared at me with jaws dropped. They were practicing peer editing with my paper, but they mostly praised my paper and specific diction and syntax I used. A few couldn't help but comment on the tone of sadness in my essay.

As with any lesson plan, the objective is to make sure the students take away something from that day. Generally, my expectation was for the students to get a model for their essay. I think I got much more out of that though. They eventually shoved off the essay and started asking me about my life! We chatted the rest of the period about me. The students said I should write a book. I just might.

Any teacher who does not share some kind of writing with their students is truly missing out on building a classroom climate of respect in that classroom. When teachers share their personal writing with students, they allow to students to see that teacher as a person. A human being with feelings, emotions and pasts that would blow their socks off. Today I was human to them. I was a person who had suffered. I was a person they could relate to. I was a person they felt they could respect because of my struggle. I was something else other than a teacher to them today.

Just as I learn who has lived through abuse, who has no home, who joined a gang, and who stole from a store, they get to know me as a human in return through my writing. Not only do they have better writing because they have an example, it helps me to also build a relationship with them. It is definitely a classroom game changer.