How Students Went "Outside The Box" As Writers This Semester
Three different ways students challenged traditional structures in their writing
Back in December, I wrote a reflective post about ways I wanted my classroom to be better in 2023. And while I definitely am still troubleshooting on some of those goals (example: my recent piece on chronic student absences), one of the shifts that I do believe came to life in our classroom this past semester came in the form of student writing: students found their way outside of the traditional structures of writing far more often to a lot of really cool successes.
I probably will hunker down this summer and devote more time to the processes that led to these different rebellious writing wins, but with several still fresh in my mind I wanted to go through three ways that students thrived “outside of the boxes” they normally are confined to as writers.
Success #1: Synthesis and Support (and Exemplars)
In the excerpt above, a student moves from analyzing a poem of their own selection (“Vespers” by Louise Glück) to a single-sentence paragraph—“Oh, the duality of loss”—to a contextualizing of the poem against the major focus of their essay: Shakespeare’s King Lear. That interruption with the single-sentence paragraph injects voice while also foreshadowing the thematic reflection they would eventually end the paper on. Pretty cool to see happen!
Another student chose shorter, more abrupt paragraphs for their ending as they sequenced between another Glück poem (“Telescope”) and a very-different reading of Lear, as they ultimately step back to reflect thematically on the implications:
The single-sentence “And then he steps away” is another flourish that begins this culminating sequence as it builds to theme—with all of this broken from what originally was one long, clunky paragraph.
Again, pretty cool to see happen!
So how did these very box-confined writers get to these final products back in February? Admittedly these were skilled exemplars worthy of sharing, but they were also representative of a class-wide trend towards more experimentation structurally—which was our goal going into that process!
Reflecting back on this process (including through conversations with students), there were three critical steps to arriving where we did:
Setting Intentions and Purpose from the Outset: After building skills within more-structured writing in the first semester, we went into this writing process with a clear intention of students creating their own structure from Day 1, including the rationale behind such a move—given the already-here world of artificial intelligence that can replicate so much of formulaic writing already. Rather than adding in the idea of going “outside the box,” we began by making it core to what we were doing as well as why.
Exemplars, Exemplars, Exemplars: Students were offered multiple exemplars for this (as well as outline exemplars for each) to learn from instead of just the classic “here’s the example to refer to” (you can see them here and here); within the samples are also comments explaining the process of each piece, giving students different visions of what “outside the box” could look like—a critical scaffold early in the process for students who have almost always been confined to boxes as writers up until this point. (And if you want to read more about the value of multiple exemplars in my perspective, here you go!)
Adding and Amplifying Support: Especially for a full-scale writing project, building in layers of support was essential in this process. Along with a formal email proposal to begin that helped me know where every student was intending to go, we built in a formal “draft” checkpoint with peer review and teacher feedback before moving into the final stage with synthesis (more on that in next section). Of course, this takes time as a teacher—but how we afford our time/support throughout the year matters, too, and I feel really good in hindsight about targeting it to “outside the box” writing far more than in previous years.
So if I was going to give my immediate takeaway for how this happened, I’d recommend A) setting intentions, B) offering multiple exemplars, and C) layering in different stages and amounts of support.
Success #2: Synthesizing with Other Genres
However, the task itself matters, too.
One of the things that unlocked the students who wrote the excerpts in the above section was the push to synthesize multiple texts across genres—in that case dramatic literature and poetry. When you put one text in conversation with another, particularly of a different genre, it almost automatically rebels against the type of formulaic writing structures we have long asked students to work within.
And then there’s one extra, potentially-empowering step: asking students to step outside of the genre of analytical writing themselves.
With upperclassmen, for two years now this has taken place with our “Write Something Meaningful” project—with students asked to bring in five separate ingredients into their 2023-word culminating project.
This means literary analysis (of at least two different texts) alongside narrative writing, which takes another step beyond that “box” students have long adhered to (often as a result of us teachers demanding them to adhere to it!)
I’m in the middle of reading through this year’s digital pile of submissions and already falling in love with new styles and structures students have created—as students tend to do things I would never have even considered before with this task.
I mean, check this out!
[1] Narrative about quitting softball to [2] a quote from a Don McClean song to [3] a deeper reflection on change to [4] a new section on HBO’s Barry. (Which I then ended up watching last summer on this one student’s recommendation!)
Good stuff exists outside the box. Really good stuff!
Success #3: Bringing in Audio
“Outside the box” doesn’t just mean writing, either.
Many, many times over the years, I have recommended to students that they read their work aloud, start-to-finish, before submitting. Not just for grammar errors, either, but to get a feel of exactly of what their piece sounded like.
This year, we brought in a multimodal (audio/visual) requirement to final projects in all classes—with one of the more-popular options being students recording themselves reading their piece in the entirety and attaching that to the beginning. I helped students a bit with the recording process—most just used their phone to record audio then emailed it/uploaded to their Google Drive—which sometimes was as simple as writing students a pass to step into the hallway to spend 10-15 minutes taking care of once they were finished with writing. Nothing major, right? (Here’s the sample sophomores were provided for their project, which was much more efficient/focused on narrative than the one described in the previous section. )
And then I began to grade. And listen.
I don’t know how to convey this in writing adequately, but the shift it is to hear a student’s voice telling their own story is transformative. You get transported from “grading mode” as a teacher to listening to the full impact of the story they are telling—and I can tell by listening that this elevated the student writing, too (including some quick comments about needing to fix X or Y in their piece while recording!).
Next year? Everyone’s doing the audio recording.
Some final thoughts
I think many of us as teachers want to “outside the box” writing, but there are so many quite-understandable limitations. Not only as far as timed, regimented assessments that incentivize “the box” but also as far as student skill levels. If students struggle writing within boxes, often in my experience “outside the box” can be even more overwhelming.
Throw in the lack of adequate training as teachers of writing (though I know there are many tools out there, such as this great starting point here from John Warner), and I think the rhetoric around pushing writers beyond the box often surpasses our capacity.
So as someone just tiptoeing into the water himself, even after some major step forwards this semester I’d offer to give yourself grace and find purpose in the tiptoeing. Sometimes you find the water is warmer than you anticipated, after all, right?
In one of our end-of-year conversations recently, students were adamant, however, about this being something worth moving towards. The whole-class poll revealed as much, too, and was a confirmation to me that this is a direction we need to go.
As one student reflected, “writing ‘outside the box’ was harder but better, the process of doing it helped me think far more, and I really want to do more of it going forward.”