Discussion

I love your North Star metaphor, Brian, and you are preaching to the choir in terms of the value and power of encouragement throughout the writing process. Writing can be a lonely office, and we all need encouragement along the way. As a teacher I often lost sight of the importance of the journey through process versus valuing the finished product. Finished products, of course, have their place, but if we as teachers want finished products to be pleasing to the eye and ear, we need to provide a safe context for working towards finished products. You model this beautifully with your examples of dialogue student to student, and teacher to student. Certainly, putting our money where our mouths are by writing with students and sharing our own writing foibles with them, we provide encouragement and model the risk-taking that we ask of them. I like your metaphor of taking off the crown. In doing so we also model humility.

LikeLiked by 1 person