When I was in fourth grade, I wrote my first story. It was all kept in an old composition notebook I’d filled with the chapters of this book, accompanied by drawings of the different scenes that I painstakingly imagined, planned, and written. As I moved from place to place, I experienced different modes of storytelling in the different school systems I was in. I learned the art of writing speeches, the ins and outs of screenplay writing, and the different structures of poetry. When I moved to New York, I had just assumed that all schools across the United States were as focused on writing as the ones I had attended. I was wrong.
But who really thinks about student writing? When you look on social media, you see much more coverage on how K-12 students “can’t read,” and there’s no surprise as to why. With the struggling literacy rates in New York, book bans across the country, and the scare of New York City Mayor Eric Adams proposing budget cuts to libraries, it’s reasonable that people like to consider the more obvious, measurable issue. However, I have a different concern. What about their writing ability? There should be as much concern over if students can read the word “configures” as there is over if they know how to use it correctly in a sentence.
Writing is a technical skill; there are rules and conventions students must learn to become proficient in it. Mastering this craft gives students the foundation to let their creativity reign, and in our increasingly digital world, fear of children’s imaginations floundering under the weight of endless entertainment should be curbed by the introduction of various writing styles in the classroom. Yet in her 2017 article for The New York Times, Dana Goldstein revealed that students not only have little grasp of sentence structure, but they also have no confidence in their voice. They don’t know who they are and how to express themselves, and when it comes time to write their college essay senior year, there should be a certain amount of surety going into the process, but there isn’t. This confidence could and should be gradually developed through years of schooling.
Having students write also prepares them for higher education. This issue with students’ writing isn’t just with K-12 students; it has its fingerprints all over academia. An article written by the National Association of Scholars revealed that students’ writing is peaking when they are seniors in high school then stagnating. There are many reasons for this illustrated in the article such as testing and technology, which are both unavoidable facets of our society and now our school systems. Regardless, this shouldn’t stop the school system from improving its conditions for writers and watch the effect ripple.
It’s no help that their teachers don’t have much confidence in their writing either. Recent research shows that teachers feel ill-prepared to instruct students on writing because of their own inexperience. They also have valid concerns about implementing comprehensive writing instruction—especially that which does not prepare students for the kind of lifeless, rote writing they’re expected to produce on standardized exams—into their curriculums. Designing new curriculums and units of study devoted exclusively to creative writing forces teachers to reevaluate and potentially cut important material in order to make space for writing.
Chat GPT isn’t helping. As students increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to produce writing for them, teachers find themselves beleaguered by the challenge of accurately identifying plagiarism, which is difficult considering online AI detectors are notoriously inaccurate. Because it’s almost impossible to prevent students from plagiarizing, and because it’s almost just as difficult to prove that they are plagiarizing, it’s no wonder teachers are hesitant to incorporate more writing instruction into their curriculums.
However, it’s not impossible. Fort Hamilton’s English department unveiled its writing portfolio requirements in 2022: By the end of their high school career, Fort students should have a minimum of 32 writing assignments in their portfolio. Of these 32, six are creative: personal narrative, fictional narrative, descriptive writing, the college essay, and general “creative writing.” To prepare for college, students will also learn how to write three essays: literary response, “writing in response to public and functional documents” (also known as Document Based Questions), and the argumentative essay. It seems Fort Hamilton is on its way to ensuring students are well-versed in a variety of writing genres across disciplines by the time they graduate.
Writing is a tool. Knowing how to wield it and use it to your advantage introduces you to a world of possibilities, may that be more empathy, a better vocabulary, and further understanding of the world around you. Students shy away from writing because they find it clinical. It’s used in sterile testing rooms and has three forms. To implement more writing in the classroom would have a similar effect to introducing students to different kinds of literature; there’s a chance to spark a passion that lasts a lifetime.
