Why Writing Matters

It’s true what they say-if you want the truth, ask a child and give them the latitude to just express themselves. Do not preface your question with explanation. Recently, I approached my Kindergarten students with two questions. First, I asked “What is writing?” Then, I asked “Why is writing important?” (Notice that I did not ask them if they thought writing was important. As a mother of a reticent middle schooler, I learned long ago not to ask a child a yes or no question. But I digress).

Their answers were quick, yet insightful. Of course, several kindergarteners raised their hands to offer writing as letters, words, sentences, or stories. However, you know what I found even more insightful for 5- and 6-year-olds? The fact that so many of them wanted to add numbers, drawings, and labels among other explanations to how they would define writing. They could not be more accurate; writing is pictures and drawings, letters and numbers, labels and sentences, words and stories. These forms of writing were of equal value in their mind. They did not immediately rush to define writing as the pattern booklets we’ve spent weeks learning how to write or the stories we read aloud during our favorite times of the school day. Instead, they excitedly added so many other forms of expression. It was a proud teacher moment.

When we transitioned our conversation from “what is writing” to “why is writing important,” they did not disappoint. One boy said, “Mrs. Baitala, I think writing is important because when I draw a picture it makes my mom happy.” Writing is a way to bring joy to others. One student said, “Writing is important. I learned a lot about dinosaurs, which are my favorite in the whole world, from a book my dad read with me.” Writing is a way to learn new things and discover our passions. One little girl raised her hand to add, “I think writing is important because I like it. I draw pictures. I write some sentences. My mom said she can even read it all by herself now!” Writing is a way to share our own ideas with others and feel a sense of pride and accomplishment when what we’ve produced means something to others.

When I think about how my students thought about writing and its importance, my own thinking is strikingly similar. To help you see why writing matters to me, I’d like to share an anecdote from my own childhood.

Growing up, I was the proverbial bookworm, my face nearly permanently stuck in a book. I remember fondly outings with my mother and siblings to the library. As the librarian would try to coax me to only take one or two books at a time, a smile would slowly creep across my mother’s face as she explained I was an avid reader and she simply could not get back and forth to the library to satisfy my reading turnaround. Because authors had chosen to write, their writing mattered to me. I was consumed in the adventures and misadventures of Ramona and Beatrice. I delighted in the mischief Anne Shirley often found herself in. Admittedly, my first crush was Gilbert!

But I didn’t just get lost in the words of others. I found myself losing, and finding, myself in my own writing. I vividly remember my third-grade year. My siblings and I had recently transferred to St. Bonaventure’s Catholic School. (My siblings hated the uniform, but not me. I loved that crisp plaid brown romper, knee socks and Buster Brown Mary-Jane shoes. Oh how I loved the sound those shoes made as I walked the long halls of that school). In the right hand corner of the long, old, green chalkboard, in Sister Mary’s classroom, was a cursive penmanship chart. The chart listed the names of everyone in the class. Next to each name, a row of boxes, where bright, shiny star stickers would be awarded if we mastered the correct cursive letter and word formation. Once we earned our 50 stars, we were awarded the highest honor you could give a child of the 80s and 90s- a blue, erasable pen! Only the writers with the neatest penmanship, the most attention to detail, were permitted to write in pen.

Third grade was the year I wielded a brand-new weapon, that blue erasable pen, and found my inner writer! I discovered I could make people smile, laugh, cry, beam with pride with the words I wrote.

I remember one story I wish I’d saved! It was about a girl, roughly my age at the time, and her mishap walking to the chalkboard to practice her cursive writing. The girl, in her excitement to feel the chalk between her fingers, tripped and landed her foot smack in the middle of the small metal garbage can beside the teacher’s desk. Her classmates snickered and laughed aloud as the teacher, to no avail, attempted to free her foot from its newfound prison. She was forced to walk that eternal walk home with the boot of shame covering her foot, hearing the clink of metal against the concrete sidewalk. Once home, her mother took sticks and sticks of butter and dumped them into the garbage can, piling them atop the girl who had now resigned herself to all the things she would have to learn how to do with a garbage can boot as her newest shoe fashion. Eventually the girl’s mother took the hairdryer and melted that butter and tugged and tugged until her foot was freed and they both went flying backwards through the air.

More than the details of that story, do you know what I remember most? My teacher. She had graded all of our stories and held mine in her hands. She called me up to her desk, handed mine to me and admiringly said, “Monique, one day I know children will be reading your stories and smiling just like the stories from the books you read.” And my mother, when I read that story to her, I watched her eyes light up, heard her honest laughter and felt how proud she was that her daughter was “an author.”

Writing matters because it connects us to others, but also because it connects us to who we are. I am an educator because I love writing- reading others’ writing and producing my own, and I knew from a fairly young age I just had to share that passion with little girls and boys like me.