Margin Notes

Here at Margin Notes we are loving the importance teachers are placing on sharing their reading and writing identities with their students and the many ways in which they are doing so.

The 30 Day Writing Habit created by Jill Davidson provided another opportunity for teachers to jump-start their writing for 2020 and share their writing experiences with their students . Beginning on January 6^th, approximately 70 teachers in ASD-W received 30 consecutive days of writing inspiration and were invited to share their writing using the hashtag #ASDWWrites. For teachers already using a writer’s notebook this helped in developing a more consistent writing habit, and for teachers wanting to experience the process of writing and sharing it with their students for the first time, this created the opportunity to do just that.

Here is a sample of  writing inspiration from day 17:

After completing the 30 Days of Writing, teachers were able to share their feedback on the experience. Here is some of what the teachers shared:

“Writing is hard and is a journey that you need to commit to if you want to see improvement. I like feeling how my students may feel in the writing classroom.”

“It’s tough, hard, vulnerable, thought-provoking, heart-wrenching, frustrating, beautiful, insightful, and creative – all on one page sometimes! I cannot expect it to come easy or be easy for my students. But it also cannot be something that we all avoid – it brings much more to us as writers and is worth the temporary agony.”

“The thing that stuck out the most was the importance of building writing stamina. Even though I was engaged in the topics, the amount of time I spent writing grew with each day I wrote. I also learned that I needed to take breaks after writing, especially if I wrote for long time.”

For further reading on the importance of writing when you are a teacher of writing, we suggest the following:

Sharing Our Vulnerabilities as Writers: Writing and Revising Even When You Don’t Want To by Jeff Anderson

On Joy, Teaching, and the Deep Satisfaction of Writing by Penny Kittle

Teacher to Teacher: On Being a Writer and Establishing a Writing Identity by Lynne R. Dorfman

It is only appropriate I share Nic Stone’s Dear Martin in  February, Black History Month in both Canada and the United States, let alone during the current political climate.

Justyce McAllister is a young African-American who excels in academics and aspires to attend Yale after graduation. He participates in a debate club with a small group of friends, notably Jared, a white student with skewed views on race relations, and Sarah-Jane (SJ) Friedman, a confident speaker unafraid to challenge Jared in the club meetings. The story follows Justyce, his friend Manny, SJ, and Jared’s crew through a series of social situations and events in which discrimination rears itself, leading to tense, even violent incidents. From Justyce’s wrongful arrest, through a tasteless costume party in which a member of the group dresses as a Klansman, to a street confrontation, the reader is taken on a jarring and unsettling journey through the day-to-day life of a young black man trying to move beyond societal stereotypes without losing touch with his community.

Throughout the story, Justyce writes letters in his journal to Dr. King, presented in more of a conversational tone and handwritten-style font, where he is free to rhetorically ask Martin why he still has to endure racism decades later. From his friends’ aloof attitudes to his mother’s disapproval of his romantic interest in SJ, Justyce feels he has no one to whom he can turn.

The author presents a remarkable writing style. Typical of modern YA fiction, the perspective is present tense, a technique conducive to readers wishing to immerse themselves in the moment. Dialogue is often presented without tags, as though in a play—character name: spoken line. The debate sequences flow organically as a result. Stone’s style of writing should appeal to reluctant and enthusiastic readers alike.

Adolescents today have a general knowledge of Civil Rights, who the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was and how equal rights are not yet guaranteed. While many of our cultural icons are African-American/Canadian, there remains a lack of true understanding of the daily hurdles young black people face.

This story succeeds for precisely this reason. Young adult readers will invest in a narrative that relates to them. Stone masterfully conveys the complexities of race relations in a way young people from all cultures can understand. Most notably, the young characters reveal through talk what text books and lectures cannot. There is a lot of heart in this story; be advised you may find yours broken when it reaches its climax. As it should, before true understanding can be found.

Brandon LeBlanc is an English, French, and Social Studies teacher at Stanley Consolidated School.