Today is a day of writing! NCTE,  The National Writing Project, and the New York Times Learning Network have partnered with Teaching Channel to share this campaign. Students and educators around the country are asked to reflect about why they write.

I write to:

• reflect
• process my thoughts
• share ideas with a global community
• express my creativity
• relax and have fun!

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As a child I filled up notebook after notebook with the stories I created for my own amusement. High school and college stymied my love of writing (and reading) for quite a while. However, as a younger teacher, I had the opportunity to attend the Teacher’s College Reading and Writing Project summer institute for writing (and reading!). It was there, in the hot, sticky classrooms in New York City that July, where I rekindled my love of writing and I haven’t looked back since!

I became a much better, stronger, more supportive teacher of writers (because we teach the writers, not the writing!), after this experience. The more I wrote, the better able I was to talk to my students about writing and their goals as writers. I believe that all educators are readers and writers with the power to model those skills for students in any content area.

As an educator I write to inform, to persuade, to entice, to support, and to coach. As a professional I also write to tell a story [about our work]. Not a day goes by that I don’t write, whether it takes the form of an email, a tweet, a blog post, a website update, a newsletter article, or a board agenda item. Writing is a powerful form of communication. Writing is also a skill that our students need to develop in order to be successful in so many future paths. More importantly, I fervently hope that our students develop a love of writing now that stays with them forever!

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Why do you write?