conferring · drafting · literary essay · teacher of writing · Write: It's good for you! · writer's notebook

Writing Things That Make Me Happy

Stacey Shubitz

1. Noticing the growth in a young writer: I conferred with one of my students today who fought with me tooth-and-nail at the beginning of the school year when it came to elaborating. Today, he had six pages-worth (double-spaced) of writing for his literary essay draft! This makes me happy. 🙂

2. Having a student hand me her fourth, FILLED writer’s notebook saying, “Can you store this with the other’s Ms. Shubitz?” File it? OF COURSE! These are the notebooks I have in her jam-packed file:
This makes me happy. 🙂

3. Conferring with a student about her literary essay on my entire ride home from work. It felt like I zoomed home tonight since we were talking about writing from my cell phone to her home phone. She had questions and needed feedback and I had time. This makes me happy. 🙂

4. Having students who ask me for a conference when they craft their plan box at the end of a writing minilesson. This makes me happy. 🙂

5. Even better… watching them work productively until I have the ability to meet with them. This makes me the happiest. 🙂

It’s days like today that make me happy to teach writing. 🙂

Published by Stacey Shubitz

I am a literacy consultant who focuses on writing workshop. I've been working with K-6 teachers and students since 2009. Prior to that, I was a fourth and fifth-grade teacher in New York City and Rhode Island. I'm the author of Craft Moves (Stenhouse Publishers, 2016) and the co-author of Jump Into Writing (Zaner-Bloser, 2021), Welcome to Writing Workshop (Stenhouse Publishers, 2019), and Day By Day (Stenhouse, 2010). I live in Central Pennsylvania with my husband and children. In my free time, I enjoy swimming, doing Pilates, cooking, baking, making ice cream, and reading novels.

8 thoughts on “Writing Things That Make Me Happy”

  2. Hello again! I just wanted to let you know that this post inspired me to blog about the “four notebook” issue. I have some thoughts on why our volume went down, and I am looking to bump it back up. Thank you again for the inspiration.

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  3. Hello! I just found your blog. I love what I see so far. I am a graduate of Teachers College at Columbia and am teaching in one of their “project” schools. It has been a great experience.

    Today we were talking with our staff developer, and I mentioned that the volume of writing in notebooks has gone down since Lucy Calkins started pushing units of study and basically did away with the open cycles. In the past, we used to fill many notebooks per year. However, nowadays, we are lucky if we fill one. What is the secret to filling four? How many days do your kids write in their notebooks before going to draft? Do they write at home? Please consider a dedicated post on building volume. If you have done one already, please point me to it.

    Thank you!

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  4. Pingback: Plan Boxes Defined « TWO WRITING TEACHERS

  7. I love these days that are celebrations, not because of any fanfare, but because of what happened due to the literacy routines in place in our classrooms! Lots of wonderful celebrations for you today! A good teaching day, indeed!

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