Don't Apologize

Cynthia Brown reads her story to her writing circle 

during lunch on Tuesday. 

My team had the pleasure of meeting with Amy Silverman, managing editor of the Arizona New Times, today for our writing circle. I hope that I can speak for everyone in my group when I say that the experience was both fun and beneficial. I walked away feeling like I had a great plan for improving my story, and I have a strategy that I can use with my students.

Amy had us each of us read our stories aloud. While the author was reading, the rest of the group followed along and wrote comments on the author's paper. Once the author finished we went around the table and talked about the strengths of the piece. Then we made suggestions about things that we thought that they could change to make the piece strong.

Before the first person started reading, Amy laid down the law--we were not under any circumstance to begin reading our paper with any sort of explanation or apology. I loved this rule. It really helped
me to feel more confident about what I had written.

Divona Phillips and Kenya Vance listen intently as Cynthia Brown reads her story. 

I will be using this strategy for peer editing with my students in my yearbook and English classes, and I will certainly be following Amy's rule for all of my conferencing and peer editing!

Annie Gorenstein

Arvada West High School

Arvada, Colorado