"Only the journey matters..."

"What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?" (Routman 82). I would sing in public, play the piano for my son's wedding, publish a book of poems, learn Latin dances, and cultivate huge gardens. I can say all that, but still the possibility of failure is attached to the task and I hesitate to try. With the chance of failure inherent in everything we do, I reframe the question: "What would you attempt if you knew it was okay to fail?" My culinary attempts aren't always deserving of a place in a cookbook, but at my house it's okay to fail knowing that my husband will graciously eat anything. So I keep trying and take enough pride in my cooking to blog about it.

My acupuncturist heard a lot from me in the hours I spent being needled on his table. He knew that I was frustrated with teaching and, in particular, a poetry writing class I was taking. I felt that my work wasn't up to the quality of the more experienced writers in the class. Knowing that I was a perfectionist and accustomed to good grades, he proposed the related questions, "What if you gave yourself permission to fail? What risks would you take?"

I started writing poetry with more abandon and took risks because I was writing out of my own need with myself as audience. (And I didn't fail the class since I was writing for authentic purpose and audience.) I have increasingly been willing to take risks--quitting my job being one of the bigger ones--and the rewards have been more joy and satisfaction.

So what do my ramblings have to do with our students? We need to give them permission to fail and encourage them to write so much that they can indeed expect some less than perfect pieces of writing. We can't expect to read everything they write anyway. "If you're reading everything your students write, they're not writing enough" (Routman 65). We can structure our assignments so students can submit their best work for the grading period as opposed to requiring that they submit for a grade all assignments they've tried. (If you wish, give participation points for having tried the exercise.)

It's time to celebrate risk-taking in our classrooms as a way to promote excellence. I've substituted "writer" for "photographer" in a Harry Callahan quote to make it apply to the English teacher's classroom: "To be a writer, one must write. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of writing. Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an writer. Only the journey matters..."

Routman, Regie. Writing Essentials. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann, 2005. Print.