One of my favorite “new year” writing activities to do with students was inspired by this tweet from #disrupttexts co-founder Tricia Ebarvia.
We read the poems together and then I ask them to quickwrite about five things they would metaphorically burn from the old year and five things they would keep going into the new year. We turn these quickwrites into poems, and with a super simple flame outline graphic borrowed from Jessica Salfia at the #teachlivingpoets blog (who has a whole lesson outlined there as well), we make beautiful art for our classroom walls. (This is my best and only classroom decor hack, people: have the students create all the pretty things.)
In that spirit, here’s my list of four and five:
Four Things To Burn from 2022:
- Imposter syndrome. In a year packed with examples of rich and powerful leaders in government, tech, and business failing publicly and spectacularly, there is truly no reason for us “normal” people to feel inadequate.
- “Because-I-said-so” in the classroom. I’ve decided to stop requiring students to follow so-called “academic writing”/formulaic writing conventions without explaining why or when they are useful or meaningful.
- Deficit thinking about student achievement or maturity related to the pandemic. The narrative about “learning loss” is getting old. I’m letting go of how other people think young people should behave or be able to do and I’m choosing to meet them where they are right now.
- Feelings of guilt for prioritizing my physical or emotional health. I’m taking the mental health day when I need it, and I want to make it safe for my students to make these choices for themselves, too.
Five Things To Keep into 2023
- Meaningful and fun class/group/partner conversations. If the last few years have taught me anything about what’s essential about school, it’s that learning is social. We should embrace this, not try to invent ways to work around or replace it.
- Reading and writing poetry. We all need space to reflect and express ourselves with honesty and vulnerability. Beautiful language helps us do that.
- Authentic student choice in reading and writing. I want my students to own their identities as readers and writers, even if (especially if) they don’t see themselves as future novelists. Those who create can reimagine the world how they want it.
- More digital assignments, less paper worksheets. Fewer trees cut down and fewer lost assignments are both good things!
- Enjoying my teenage students. There’s a lot of serious discussion right now about the mental health of young people right now, and while it is super important and long-overdue and there is much we can do to support them better, teenagers are, as they always have been, still funny and earnest and clever and perceptive and brilliant. I love spending most of my day with them (on most days), and I want to remember this as much as I can when the day-to-day gets tough.
What would you keep/burn from the old/new year? How can you make space for your students to reflect and share and feel empowered to change right now and all throughout the year?
Ashley Yap
Born and raised in the Phoenix area, Ashley Yap earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona and master’s degrees from Arizona State University. Ashley teaches English Language Arts in Chandler, AZ, where she currently works with 10th and 11th graders and serves as Newspaper advisor. She is proud to be a Teacher-Consultant with the Central Arizona Writing Project since 2013, which has created opportunities for her to learn, teach, and present with and for some of the best educators across the country. She has also been a fellow of The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (TOLI) since 2018. Her professional interests include social justice literacies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and youth participatory action research, amongst many, many others. In her non-working hours, she enjoys traveling, live music, podcasts, and hunting for her next food adventure.