Today is the last day for submissions to our last “Essential Reads” column of the year. We hope you’ll share your great suggestions here!

Thanks!

Continuing the theme on Writer’s Workshop, I’m mosying over to a side-topic related to this. And that’s the intersection of individualized learning, such as the quiet, individual writing time of WW, and facilities. In my elementary school library, we had little Parson’s coffee tables from IKEA. A few kids could sit on the floor, and they were just the right height for them to write on. Others sprawled out on the floor. Some used stools pulled up to bookshelves with a bit of empty space, which they could use as a writing space. Some liked clipboards and using them in upholstered chairs. Some preferred to work at a standard table. Others focused better writing on the computer. We even had one vintage wooden desk that fit just perfectly into a corner, where you could work all alone, back facing the rest of the library.

As you ponder your suggestions for our “Essential Reads” column on Writer’s Workshop, take a look around at your space. What messages does it send about meeting the individual where he or she is?

(And don’t get me wrong — I’m not perfect. Sometimes, my library said, “Welcome! This is your kind of space! Settle in and get in the flow!” and sometimes the students heard, “Welcome! This is your kind of space! Get really comfortable and forget that it’s school!” Live and learn.)

When I was a practitioner, I used email like mad to communicate with teachers and parents … but rarely with students. In part, it was because over half of our students were too young to have a district-provided email account.

I know many of my secondary colleagues do a lot of librarianship-via-email, with students emailing with questions, mostly about databases or resources.

But what if, especially in schools where collaboration and/or class visits were low and librarians worried about how to impact instruction, librarians offered to flex their skills by providing feedback via email directly to students? We could take a page from Professor John Whittier-Ferguson, who occupies an office on the University of Michigan campus about five minutes from mine. He teaches composition and offers feedback via email. Check out this quote from an Atlantic post:

What Whittier-Ferguson does is, early on in his classes, he’ll make some joke about how fast he is on email, about how he even intentionally delays some responses just so the students think he’s got a life. And around when the first essay gets assigned he’ll show them that he really means it. Someone will send him an email just for the hell of it. He’ll respond freakishly fast. And then they’ll get into it.

“That’s what it’s all about,” he says. “They rise to the level at which I’m engaging.”

Indeed some students, about a third in each class, take “really substantial advantage” of his inbox: he’ll exchange about forty emails apiece with them over the course of the term.

These are meaty emails. Ferguson trains students to focus on thesis articulation, on structure, on particular writing moments — on the load-bearing columns of a well-written essay.

If nothing else the exchanges get students writing. In office hours ideas can be loose and suggestive, with tone and context carrying most of the discursive weight. Email requires concise specific articulations.

But above all it’s deliberate practice: goal-directed, supervised. It’s unfolding in smallish chunks in a series of tight feedback cycles. The conversations can be referenced, excerpted and combined; there is a clear trail of progress. “By the time we’ve done our half dozen email back-and-forths about their thesis, a lot of the time I can see direct evidence — and they can see direct evidence — that it’s gotten better.”

Is this something librarians could help with? Organize parent volunteers, substitute teachers, the underemployed, or college students to act as writing coaches?

While you think about it, be sure to take a look at the Atlantic’s awesome Photoshopped Mac keyboard!