Article and Photograph by Victoria Olivares
As an English teacher, I know a lot about sad stories. One of the saddest stories I know does not come from any book I’ve read, but rather from the real people in my life. And it’s a story about what I do. Repeatedly, students, friends, and fellow parents relay the death of their dreams of becoming a writer at the hands of their formal education. The novel they wrote at nine, their secret poetry journal—something they remember with fondness because of the joy it once brought them but later with bitterness because their relationship to language somehow changed. As an English teacher, and perhaps more powerfully as a parent, this story makes me very sad.
When I started Inscribe nearly 4 years ago with my University of Portland colleague, Cheri Buck-Perry, we began to dream about ways to reclaim and foster a love of reading and writing in our community. What if everyone, our students and their parents, came back to relive the love of story that lands on the happy side of the spectrum?For the 3rd year, we are excited to partner with schools to offer community Write Nights where participants of all ages gather to spend time being creative together, playing with words, exercising their imaginations, and employing language in a meaningful way. Last February we partnered with Hayhurst School to write odes to our favorite objects and “love letters” to folks in need of encouragement; in April, we coached families at Beverly Cleary toward authoring their own adventure tales by introducing an “adventure situation” and a mysterious envelope full of story props. We are excited to expand our Write Nights to the Forest Heights community and are always interested in bringing these events to new audiences. It’s our hope that more families and schools will embrace the joy of creatingand writing stories together—modeling a need for imagination, as essential as any other scholastic subject.
Many people ask us how to foster a love of reading and writing with their children, knowing or having experienced the sad story from the opening of this article. From our work with individual students of all ages and our own children, we have many ideas—too many to list here. However, a few ideas we consistently share include reading aloud as long as possible, as too many children and adults let go of this precious activity too early; we also encourage everyone to journal, sketch, and talk about what they read. Most of our advice could be summarized in this simple way: maintain the wonder of language by sharing it with each other.
Inscribe educators, Victoria Olivares and Cheri Buck-Perry, have worked with college writers for over a decade. They use this unique vantage point to create educational experiences that cultivate the skills and qualities young thinkers need for future academic success and a life-long passion for learning. Learn more at inscribeinc.com or contact us at inscribeeducation@gmail.com.
