LMWP Summer Camp
For the past few weeks I have been writing curriculum for one of my favorite weeks of the summer, the LMWP summer writing camp.
I have been a member of the Lake Michigan Writing Project (affectionately known by us insiders as LMWP), which is a chapter of the National Writing Project. The LMWP serves to provide a community and professional development opportunities for teacher-writers to grow in both areas of their world.
I’ve led LMWP summer camps for nearly a decade, first with middle schoolers in grades 6–8. More recently, I’ve been working with a younger group—rising 3rd through 5th graders. My co-teacher and I, both more experienced with older students (she teaches AP at Hamilton High), walk into the week with what we call “organized chaos” and a healthy dose of humility. We fake it ’til we make it, and somehow it always works.
What I love most about this week is that all the writing stakes are off—for the kids and for us. In schools today, writing has become a high-pressure subject. From an early age, students are taught that the final product is what matters most. Rarely do they get the chance to enjoy the process or discover who they are as writers. Writing is graded, and grades quickly become labels.
By time they arrive in my Developmental English class at the college where I teach, most of them tell me the same thing on the first day: “I’m not good at writing.” When I push back and ask them to tell me how they know, they refer to low grades or negative comments from previous teachers. But none of them actually know if they’re “bad” writers, and as I find in my class over the course of the semester, it’s not true. They’re not bad writers. Perhaps a bit unpolished, most lacking in confidence.
Historically, writing has been a form of punishment. Staying in at recess to write lines, writing forced apology notes. That’s a quick way to strip the joy out of it. It’s similar to how making a kid run laps can take the joy out of running.
On the fourth Friday of each month, I offer a writing prompt or a story starter. And I wonder how many of my readers actually take me up on my invitation. I often wonder how many of you actually write from them—or if not from those, how many of you carve out space for writing at all. I wonder how many of you find joy in writing. In the simplicity of putting thoughts on paper. In the beauty of creating a word or phrase that sings to the ear or resonates with the soul.
I don’t expect the twenty campers I’ll teach this summer to all become lifelong writers. A few show up for the wrong reasons—one was sent because she got in trouble at home. Another came “to become a better speller.” (Spoiler: we don’t do spelling lists.) But most of them will walk in on Monday morning with a new pen and a hope that writing can be fun again—light, expressive, and pressure-free.
Just the way it should be.
