Using Writing to Teach Self-Advocacy

When do students with special needs who have been supported in all aspects of their educational experiences become active participants, instead of passive bystanders? When do they transition into being self-advocates, instead of being the reason for teacher advocacy?   How does this transition happen, and how can writing help?  These questions were on the forefront of my mind as I launched an investigative journalism unit in our 8th grade writing class while also recalling the mantra of our special education team- “No decision about me without me.”  How do I teach both advocacy and grade level writing standards without forcing a connection or having students merely regurgitate my ideas?

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In an effort to address barriers with engagement for the writing unit, students were encouraged to investigate an issue that mattered to the community but also to them as individuals. Many students chose the Boston Public Schools high school selection process wherein an algorithm determines a child’s future.  Boston Public Schools holds an annual lottery wherein families rank their high school options and a computer generated program determines their high school assignment based on location, ranking, sibling school placement, ESL codes and Special Needs codes.  There are also schools that require an application process and/or an exam score for the opportunity to attend. The high school process in Boston is similar to applying to college in terms of selecting from various options and having different requirements for admission. In the case of students with IEP’s who receive educational support either in an inclusion setting or in a sub-separate classroom (80% of their school day), these students have less school options that go into the algorithm.

At the outset of the unit, I conferenced with students who were struggling to identify a relevant issue, and when meeting with one of my inclusion students, Andy, I mentioned the high school process and asked how he was feeling about it.  I explained that he would get fewer options and asked which options he hoped he had.  At the time, Boston Public Schools was not able to provide the inclusion seat options to students and families so the discussion was based solely on what we hoped we would see on his list of school choices even though non special education students were aware of all of their options.

This fact that he had less options and something different from his peers was life changing for Andy.  As a student with language based learning disabilities who uses English in school and Vietnamese at home to communicate, one could argue he spends a great deal of his day working on using his language skills for self-advocacy, especially since his expressive and receptive language skills are low in both his L1 and L2.  Language does not come easily to him.  He is often quiet and frequently relies on his peers for expressive language  and his teachers for receptive language.

When he learned of the inequity happening to him in regard to high school, he found his voice.  I was nervous to name the issue because I worried about his self-perception and wanted to protect him from the harshness of a system that, for the fourteen years of my teaching career, has continued to disappoint me when it comes to supporting transitions for students from 8th grade to 9th grade.  Was this more about my feelings than Andy’s? I had to name for myself that I was only giving him facts, and it was Andy who generated the real feelings that mattered the most.

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Andy surveyed his classmates to gauge their reactions to learning students with IEPs get a reduced number of high school options.   He interviewed his assistant principal in person and also  interviewed the head of the Boston Public Schools Guidance Department via e-mail.  Andy then participated in high school research—studying websites and visiting schools.  With teacher support, he created a multi-paragraph news article highlighting the inequity that exists within Boston Public Schools for students with specific special needs.  The fact that he produced multiple paragraphs that reflect grade level standards of including claim, evidence, and reasoning in his writing exceeded his IEP goals and highlighted his potential that had previously been unseen.   

However, perhaps the biggest transformation that occurred is that for the first time in Andy’s life, he exercised his power through language and independently completed the application to his most desired high school.  He had to complete a paper application that included family input, to request his transcripts and to generate an essay explaining the characteristics of a good school and a good student as well as detailing why he wanted to attend this specific school.  It was the first time Andy was independent with a task involving multiple steps.  He found his voice, and it was one of power.

I didn’t have to speak for him. He was able to speak for himself. Through discussing, thinking and writing, he was able to exercise his independence for the first time. I realize I don’t need to be advocating for him, I need to be advocating with him.  How do I increase student voice and advocacy from those who need it most?  This is the question I will continue to ask my students so that together we can be agents of change for a transition process in Boston Public Schools that is in desperate need of updates.

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Andy reads his news article draft out loud with pride so he can receive feedback from his grandfather at the GPA Writing Celebration on December 16, 2015. 


Facilitating the Writing Process in Early Career Teaching: When Students Lack Confidence

I will never forget the first major writing assignment I gave back to my 7th grade history students. It was late September, and we were mid-way through a unit on the local election for the new mayor of Boston. Students had drafted a letter to the new mayor presenting their concerns for their communities. They had spent several days typing letters full of passionate ideas and suggestions for the new mayor. I burned the midnight oil to return their drafts promptly so we wouldn’t lose momentum in our unit. I wrote all over their papers in brilliant fuschia, mint, teal, and tangerine hues, thinking these colors would evoke more positivity than the dreaded red markups I remembered receiving from teachers when I was their age. I underlined persuasive phrases and wrote encouraging comments like “Wow! This suggestion is so innovative!” and “What an awesome insight into your community!” I also looked for places where students could elaborate on a need in their community and inserted questions to prompt further explanation.

Sleep deprived from staying up so late providing written feedback, but excited to give them my thoughtful suggestions, I stood at the door, smiling, and enthusiastically welcomed my students into class. What transpired next could not have gone more differently than what I had envisioned. I handed back my students’ work, and even before I could utter how proud I was of them for producing their first draft of the year with as much creativity and passion as they had, one of my students threw her paper on the floor, pushed back her chair, and with a large “humph” sound, buried her head on her desk under her arms. This young lady’s response to receiving her work knocked the wind out of me for a moment. And she wasn’t the only one! Looking around the room, I saw many faces fall, a few students began to well up with tears, and some students tore their papers into confetti sized pieces, scattering them across the floor in their haste to get rid of the revisions. In hindsight, handing back student work without prefacing my takeaways, process for providing feedback, and introducing what we would do with the feedback, was a “rookie” mistake.

I was confused by their reactions, given that much of what I had written on their papers was positive acknowledgements of what they had done well as writers. When had their relationship with writing gone wrong? Was this developmental? Did they take feedback as a sign that they were poor writers? Did they know how to respond to or implement feedback? Was this my fault? All of these thoughts ran through my mind, as I quickly strategized to salvage the block of time and also their fractured scholarly egos in that moment. I told the students to put their papers in their desks for a moment, asked each of them to look at me, and told them how proud I was of them. I also told them that we all need at least a second set of eyes when we are publishing work. I said something like, “We want the Mayor to respect our voices when he receives our letters and thus, we need to make sure that our voices are as professional and polished as possible.” I told them that we would spend the next day working on revising our work. I told them to read my comments and circle three comments of praise they agreed with and two revision suggestions where they were going to further their work.

Once the majority of the room was focusedon the task I had given, I was able to work on soothing the few students who were still visibly upset. In talking to the young lady who physically shut down when she received her work, I realized that she had been unaware there would be more than one draft of the writing assignment. She had panicked when she saw all the writing on her paper because she thought it meant she had done lots of things wrong. She couldn’t remember ever writing more than one draft of a piece of writing. As a side note, it should be acknowledged that this cohort of students experienced a lot of schooling disruptions during their 6th grade year. I know from cross-grade collaboration with herprevious teachers however, that she and her peers had experienced the steps of the writing process in earlier grades. The more students I talked to, the more a trend began to emerge. Although students had completed steps of the writing process in previous grades, the majority had not internalized or engaged in metacognitive thinking about the steps in the process enough to implement them with independence and confidence.

Over the course of the remainder of the year, I tried different peer and teacher feedback protocols. I tried a 3, 2, 1 peer revision protocol where students use the rubric to choose three things their peer writer did well, two copy edits, and one suggestion to add or delete a piece of their writing. I used different types of rubrics, both teacher generated, and student created through examination of mentor texts and class discussion. I ended the year with one major question: How could I build a classroom culture where students had confidence in, internalized, and were able to apply the steps of the writing process to a myriad of content related writing tasks? Experiencing moments of frustration, confusion, and struggle are essential for student growth, academic confidence building, and transference of skills. I wanted to ascertain how to provide the conditions for productive struggle, not defeat.

Example of feedback provided for student on assignment rubric.


This article is the first in a series of articles that will address facilitating the writing process in early career teaching.

Internalizing the Writing Process: The Planning Phase

How can educators ensure that students internalize the writing process? High quality writing instruction provides students with not only compositional skills, but also teaches writers a process that they can use to complete any writing project from the blank page to a published work. Internalizing such a process empowers students to complete any type of assigned writing tasks as well as how to begin their own writing pieces – allowing students to independently write about whatever they might choose and to transform into authors, journalists, poets, and bloggers outside of the classroom.

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A sixth grade student at the Gardner Pilot Academy reads and takes notes during the planning stage for an essay contrasting a police shooting in Boston to the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

I have adopted the mnemonic P.O.W.E.R., and I find it  extremely useful as a memory aide for the writing process. P.O.W.E.R. stands for Plan, Organize, Write, Edit and Revise, and Rewrite. This mnemonic is introduced to the students during the first weeks of school, and it used for all of our process writing work throughout the year.

I usually select a project centered around the theme of identity for our first process writing piece of the year. As I model writing about my own identity for my students, it allows them to get to know the human side of their teacher, and their published pieces serve as a platform for sharing their own identities with their classmates, myself, and the wider school community.

Seventh and eighth grade students from the Lilla G. Frederick Middle School plan for script writing at local writing center 826 Boston.

As I guide the class through these initial writing process pieces, I explicitly teach lessons around each step of the writing process. I begin by assigning a quick write focused on the following question: How do people who can write have an advantage over people who cannot write? Student thinking and responses to this question inform a class discussion focused around the essential question “How can writing give you power?”.  This initial discussion tends to focus on practical examples from students’ personal and family experiences, such as being able to write a note to a friend, a job application, a check, or an e-mail to a teacher. However, as the year progresses, this question is revisited in the context of reading, discussing, and writing about current and historical news articles, ancient and historical texts, and class novels.

As we progress through each stage of the writing process, I offer explicit lessons that unpack each stage from Planning to Rewriting. Two years ago, the assigned identity piece was writing a “This I Believe” essay. During the planning phase, students listened to, read, and took notes on “This I Believe” audio and writing examples online. Then, the class and I discussed the characteristics of “This I Believe” pieces.

I explicitly unpacked the planning stage by ensuring that each student understood and was able to complete the following sentence stems:

  •   I am writing in the following genre: ____________________ ____.
  •   I am writing this (genre name) so I can ______________________.
  •   I am writing for an audience consisting of ____________________ .

At the end of the planning stage, I ensure I have received each students’ Planning Statements. They tend to be more or less the same for each student:

I am writing in the following genre: “This I Believe” essay. I am writing this “This I Believe” essay so I can express how a life experience shaped my beliefs. I am writing to an audience consisting of my classroom and school community.

Knowing that students have participated in the planning process ensures that students begin their work with the end product in mind.The sentence stems for planning are posted on a chart paper in a classroom, and we refer to them throughout the year as students move through writing projects across a variety of genres. This practice and repetition allows for students to internalize the writing process, committing the steps to memory, so more attention can be given to the finer points of their words as opposed to the steps they take to get them on paper.

This article is the first in a three part series on the topic of “Internalizing the Writing Process”.