Dear Future teachers of writing,
I had an aha moment with my teenager last week that I thought you could all relate too. I shared my rough draft for my literary vignette with him, which he was happy to read. When he finished he said that I needed to work on my transitions, that what I had divided into 6 paragraphs was actually only two, that I had some convention "issues" and finally that I wrote with a powerful voice.
First, I was blown away with his language--I had a "powerful" voice. Wow, was I impressed, but also disturbed that he started with the "problems" with my writing. "But what about my story? Did you like it", I asked. "Oh, it was great", he said. It really brought home to me again that we need to validate all our student writers for their ideas and know that the conventions will come!