Liz Prather

"I can't write." How often do we hear this every day from students at all different skill levels? What is it about writing that causes such self-doubt, disabling procrastination, and fear of failure? "So many students do not identify writing as a positive experience or identify themselves as writers," Liz Prather says. "We rarely talk about the social-emotional resilience needed around the act of writing." In The Confidence to Write, Liz argues that we can help students reset their writerly self-regard by naming and examining their writing identity through practical activities she calls Metawrites. Metawrites are writing prompts that serve as invitations to students to think and write about their own writing. Woven throughout the book, along with commentary and advice from professional writers, Metawrites inspire students to confront and overcome the "I can't write" mentality. "By naming and disarming our fears," Liz writes, "-imposter syndrome, perfectionism, procrastination, and so on--we provide students strategies they can use the rest of their lives." A positive writing identity leads to writing courage, and writing courage leads to writing confidence. Help lift the burden of the mental obstacles that can invade the writing process and inspire your students to, as Liz says, "feel the fear and write anyway."

The idea that students should be "college and career ready" when they leave high school has become a major focus in education, but much of this conversation has been on reading readiness. What about writing readiness? Liz Prather argues that we can set students up for future success when we help them learn to care about what they're writing, and help them manage their time to write. "I needed a framework for teaching writing that would keep my students accountable and engaged," Liz explains, "but would allow them to write from their own passions, and instill in them an understanding of time management, goal setting, and production. By adding the tenets and practices of project-based learning, I could simultaneously protect the creative processes of my students while helping them learn to manage long term writing projects, the kind of projects they would be doing in college or in a career." Project-Based Writing provides a 7 step structure to conceive, manage, and deliver writing projects built upon student voice and student choice. Liz includes classroom-tested strategies for helping kids persevere through roadblocks, changes in direction, failed attempts, and most importantly, "anticipate the tricks of that wily saboteur, Time." Both practical and inspirational, Project-Based Writing teaches kids the real-world lessons they need to become real-world writers. "With this book, you will quite likely become the person students remember as the one who taught them how to write."--Cris Tovani