Brave Writer

• What is Brave Writer?
• Getting Started
• The Brave Writer Program

Help for High School: Introduction

Note to the Parents

*Of course, to be a writer, all you really have to do is write. Frills like writers’ conferences are unnecessary. And if you don’t write, no amount of writing instruction will pull a novel out of your navel. Once you are writing, however, outside stuff can help.*
Grace Llewellyn The Teenage Liberation Handbook

By the time your teen is somewhere between thirteen and seventeen, she’ll face a blank page without fear. He’ll move a pen across that page without losing track of what he wants to write. And she’ll listen to your editorial input without melting into a puddle. When you see these signs of readiness, it’s time to teach the academic writing forms. Being comfortable with writing is the chief prerequisite for format writing. If your teen isn’t at this place, start with my course The Writer’s Jungle. Even teens will benefit and make swift progress if they begin with the writing process rather than writing formats.

As in my other materials, my goal in this short course is to help you, the homeschooling mother, lead your child through the expository essay process while staying true to the Brave Writer philosophy—brave writing starts with having something to say and then finding the best way to say it.

Philosophy

Before we get started on the nuts and bolts of essay writing, let’s review some writing principles that you may be tempted to forget now that your son or daughter is at the critical age: pre-college admissions candidate.

Some parents are tempted to forget everything I’ve taught them now that they’re embarking on high school writing instruction. Feelings of pressure to perform at the university level, to succeed in the admissions’ requirements for college, overwhelm the interest in nurturing your student’s writing voice. Moms want to be sure that their kids can use the writing formats to pass the classes.

But let me share with you a little conversation I recently had with my husband. He’s a university adjunct professor who’s taught Freshman Composition for thirteen years. “Julie, please don’t only teach your home-schooling mothers the academic writing formats. They can get those anywhere. What their kids need is what Brave Writer offers—enabling kids to play with writing, to stay connected to their thoughts, ideas and opinions, and to feel the freedom to express those ideas in their unique writing voices, not some canned formula devoid of life, personality or passion.”

In his opinion, the essay format has sucked the life out of writing for generations of students. Peter Elbow would agree. Peter Elbow, author of the classic writing guide, Writing with Power, is a lone radical voice in the academic world whose express purpose in life is to irritate the English departments of America with his novel approach to writing. He introduced freewriting as the foundation of a healthy writing life.

His classic text explodes the myth that applying formats is the key to success in writing. He argues persuasively that students have been robbed of their voices, and consequently, ownership of their writing because they are busy serving the requirements of the establishment and academic community.

Where does that leave us?

Are you and I going to buck the system? Ought we to abandon the essay form and continue to urge our students to “just write”? My take on all of this heady stuff is that we can do both—nurture the writing voice of our kids and train them to use the writing formats for academic purposes at the same time. Our students can learn how to meet the needs of the academic environment while preserving something of themselves in their writing. It’s my goal to aid students in that process beyond simply listing the number of particulars needed for each point.

Currently I’m a grad student and get to use the academic formats again. What I love about academic writing is that the disciplined format helps me to form my thoughts and develop my arguments. I find, though, that I write differently at this stage of my life compared with my undergraduate years as a history major. Since my professional writing/editing career has largely been in the magazine industry, my academic writing has grown to include my personal experiences as well as narrative detail that I find relevant to the material. I find ways to connect with the reader in addition to structuring a sound argument. Academic writing with personal flair is my favorite niche for writing. So I look forward to helping you find that balance with your kids, too.

As we look at the components of the essay together, I’ll provide tips for drawing on the writing powers your students already have so that all they’ve learned to do won’t simply be reserved for email, post-college writing or fiction, but will be brought to bear on that most unpleasant beast: the essay.

How it works

This course is written to your high school student. I have him or her in mind the entire time. You are free to read along or leave your student to it. I expect that you’ll provide support, brainstorming sessions, suggestions for better ways to word things, help in finding resources for research and typing or printing when necessary. Offer snacks and colas as required, too. Your primary job is to be an ally—your child’s trusted advocate when writing gets hard and frustrating. An equally important task is to be your teen’s conversation partner. Kids who talk about their topics for writing, write better essays. So keep talking with your teens. Even if you don’t know the material, be a sounding board and an interviewer. The more they give language to what they’ve studied, the more words are available for writing.

Finally, I hope you’ll edit your kids’ writing. Read it, mark the parts that are unclear to you, point out which paragraphs feel insufficient to persuade, highlight the great moments of insight that break through. Be your child’s partner.

I’ve based this course on two of my online classes: Kidswrite Intermediate and The Expository Essay. I will release a special unit on Timed Essay Writing sometime in the future. I’ve tailor-made weekly exercises, reading assignments, writer’s tips and writing samples to equip your son or daughter to discover what an essay is and then how to write one.

This course is divided into two parts: Preparation for Essay Writing, and Writing the Expository Essay.

The first unit is based on the Brave Writer course called Kidswrite Intermediate. It offers creative exercises for exploring written language and ideas so that your kids learn to write with flair and insight. The exercises help students expand their understanding of how language creates view-point, how it hooks the reader and persuades, how to associate one idea with another, how to use beautiful and precise words to move the reader.

There are six modules in this unit that cover musical language, creating metaphors and associating familiar experiences with remote ones, keenly observing and analyzing a controversial issue, how to use personal experience in academic writing and a final project inspired by Peter Elbow called collage writing. This entire unit serves as a transition to the expository essay portion of the manual, which helps students understand the importance of immersing themselves in whatever topic they choose for writing. This section can be completed in about six weeks if your student does one module per week. Also, the strength of this program is that the exercises can be used again and again for each new area of study that requires writing.

The second section of this book is devoted to becoming a bigger, wider, deeper person. Essay writing is about engaging ideas—analyzing them, asking questions of them, finding support for positions the writer takes about an idea or ideas. High school is usually the first time in a student’s life that she is asked to write about ideas following an academic format.

Stories, reports and narrations aren’t enough. Teens are expected to investigate the internal logic of arguments and contrasting viewpoints when reading about a subject. Knowing how to write an essay does not mean your child will successfully write an essay because essays depend on good questions, not an accumulation of information and facts. Having something to say comes first. Essays require writers to comment on information, not to simply retell it. As parents, we must start by widening the life experiences and reading our teens do so that they join a bigger conversation than the one they are used to in our homes and local homeschooling or religious communities. This is the time to open their minds to other ways of thinking, believing, and knowing.

Your kids will write two complete essays in the second unit: an open form essay and a closed form essay. We’ll go over how to write a thesis that surprises, how to choose points and particulars, how to structure an essay according to academic standards, and how to write quality introductions and conclusions. There is also a section on parenthetical citations (how to cite your sources in your writing) and an FAQ at the end of the course.

My online essay class is among the most popular of my courses. I’ve discovered why. Most mothers don’t remember how to write an essay. And in some cases, they don’t remember ever being taught the essay form. It’s not surprising, then, that many moms feel intimidated to teach the essay. So let me reassure you up front. The essay format isn’t really as tough to learn or teach as you’ve been led to believe. It’s a format used by educators to quickly determine if a large class of students has assimilated the material they’ve taught. It’s also a practical tool for organizing a person’s research and thinking so that a case can be made for whatever the essay writer wants to argue.

The expository essay form has a short life span in most of our lives. Usually it’s only needed for about eight years (9th grade through the end of college). Academic research writing will continue to be used in graduate school as well. Since none of us read expository essays for pleasure, most students don’t encounter one until they write their first. This reminds me of my son’s foray into playing lacrosse. The first game he ever saw was while on the field, playing. He had to learn the rules and make the moves as the game was being won or lost. Essay writing can feel the same way; kids are learning how to organize the material as they write it out and know they’ll be graded for it. No wonder so many flounder! And no wonder so many kids prefer to write fiction. No brainer—they spent their entire childhoods devouring novels.

The essay unit can be completed in six to eight weeks if you do approximately one module each week. It can take longer, if the student needs to slow down for any reason. I have an online bulletin board at the Brave Writer website for those who get stuck or have questions: bravewriter.com. Kids are just as welcome to post a question as mothers. Feel free to direct them to me, if they need help.

This course, then, can fulfill a semester’s worth of composition at the high school level, at minimum. If you move at a slower pace, you can stretch it out over the course of a year. It doesn’t matter if your child is in 9th grade or 12th. These skills are equally necessary and valuable. And, any student would benefit from working through the exercises and writing projects multiple times using different topics as a way to practice and improve her skills. I have many online students who’ve taken my essay class two and three times! The best way to grow as an essay writer is to read essays and to write them.

The Brave Writer Program