Why “Engaged Writers”?

As a teacher entering Year 30 in the classroom, I’ve seen all kinds of changes in our profession. For example, I started out filling out Scantron-type worksheets to submit grades when gradebooks were still notebooks instead of online spreadsheets.

With more online tools available, it’s become much easier to create robust activities that provide dazzling visuals. I can use AI tools to create — and even grade — essays. On the student side, it’s become much easier to generate answers.

However, the distractions are mounting. As Rebecca Winthrop, co-author of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better, indicated in a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show, as students learn to depend on AI to complete assignments without developing what she called the “meta skills” connected with doing work (brainstorming, researching, pre-writing, building lines of reasoning, revising, editing, and the like), they fail to develop “muscles of doing hard things” and to learn the “art of thinking.”

So what are teachers to do? As Winthrop also notes, “Schools are not designed to give kids agency. Schools are designed to teach kids to comply.” What if we focused on engagement and choice without sacrificing rigorous standards for students as they work to understand what they read and develop consistent, convincing arguments in their speaking and writing?

That’s what this blog is all about — connecting teachers and students with content that is both high-interest and rigorous and with activities that will help them build the tools to think and communicate with excellence. Thank you for joining us on the journey!