The Value of Publishing Student Work

We were in Livingston, Montana, a couple of years ago. After cooking for ourselves all week in a cabin which sat high on a mountain ridge of the Paradise Valley, we decided to traipse into town for some “real food.” Mainly, we were looking for a good place to have a good steak and walk around Livingston. High on the list of places to visit were a couple of books stores.

One of those stores was “uptown nice” and full of about every type of book you could think of. Posted at the front was a schedule of local authors who would speak there. I am pretty sure dinner was included if you went – that kind of uptown. So, into the store our family sprawled. We each began checking our our favorite sections.

It had a great collection of works which were written by authors from that area. Many of those books were set in the Mountain West. Tucked into one corner of the store near the front was a collection of work written by local students. OK, that had my attention. The book was professionally published, and full of student short stories and poetry. We grabbed a copy as we hustled out the door.

I can only imagine how proud those students were to publish their work, and even more, have their work sitting in a prime location within a reasonably famous bookstore. You see, the last step in writing is publishing one’s work for an audience. I used to always teach my students to “know who their audience was” before they ever wrote a plan. In the case of the student book in Livingston, the audience was the general public. Sometimes that audience might be our family. Our audience might be our peers. If you are really good, your audience might be a much more vast readership.

I often used “gallery walkthroughs” when teaching. This is simply where students complete their work, and place it on their desks for others to view. That work might be an edited piece of writing. It might be a math problem. It might be a project. We simply walked around and admired the creativity and craftsmanship of whatever was the subject of the gallery walkthrough. In many ways, students browsed selections like they would an art museum. Sometimes we might leave post-its. Sometimes we would just give a verbal compliment or suggestion. It is a pretty awesome and enlightening experience.

When we know we have an audience, our mission changes. We are more intentional in how we go about producing writing. And admittedly, sometimes it is fun just to simply write with the intent of having no audience. However, most of our students don’t get the option to publish their written work. Unfortunately, sometimes we have educators who don’t even read what their students write. In that case, there was sadly never an audience for their efforts.

“Publishing” is found in nearly all professions. The definition means to make a public announcement or to disseminate to the public. In my mind, it is simply to present something which will be viewed by someone other than yourself. A musician might prepare for a band recital. An actor might prepare for a play. Athletes might prepare to play in front of a crowd. A writer might put their work in a book, or read it aloud. Indeed, the very top of Bloom’s taxonomy is to “create.” Publishing is that highest order of learning!

Written student work can be published in a variety of formats and mediums. The old school way (and still effective!) is to put a copy of it in the hallway. With digital platforms, we can now place student work online in ever evolving ways. The aforementioned gallery walkthroughs are a great option, and those can be done digitally. We can have have them write blogs and deliver podcasts. If they have iPads, there are about a million apps which support writing and the presentation of that writing. My favorite way is having students read their work to the class. Again, a nice feedback option is to have other students write feedback about what they liked on a post-it note, and then stick those on the desk of the writer.

When your students publish a literary work, they are then truly authors. They have become writers! That brings an entirely different context to their purpose. Publishing provides an opportunity to view true authenticity. And here is a little secret for teachers of writing…it quite often makes them better editors!!!!

Student writing should be fun and meaningful. Moreover, it should be read by others. I think many of us would be surprised by just how good the writing is of every student. Most students that I taught were very capable of writing high quality work. So, work on finding a way to publish that work. Make it a priority. I think you will find it rewarding for students. Who knows, maybe one day you will drop into a bookstore and find that one of your students has a book on the rack.

ProTip: This article was written from the perspective of teaching writing. However, students can publish a variety of works. They can publish lab results from a science experiment or present a repaired car in the CTE building or allow people to taste their culinary art or simply have their work in an art show. Truly, the options are limitless. Every time that I post a blog entry for this site, I have to click the word “publish.” It is rewarding. We need to provide a similar experience for our students.