Their Stories, Their Voices

GRADES 6–12

Using Personal Narrative to Empower Student Writers KOURTNEY HAKE

THEIR THEIR

Using Personal Narrative to Empower Student Writers

GRADES 6–12

KOURTNEY HAKE

Copyright © 2024 by Solution Tree Press

Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked “Reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hake, Kourtney, author. | Timmerman, Paige, author.

Title: Their stories, their voices : using personal narrative to empower student writers, grades 6-12 / Kourtney Hake, Paige Timmerman.

Description: Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024003815 (print) | LCCN 2024003816 (ebook) | ISBN 9781960574220 (paperback) | ISBN 9781960574237 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: English language--Composition and exercises--Study and teaching (Secondary) | First person narrative--Study and teaching (Secondary)

Classification: LCC LB1631 .H258 2024 (print) | LCC LB1631 (ebook) | DDC 808.0071/2--dc23/eng/20240402

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024003815

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024003816

Solution Tree

Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO

Edmund M. Ackerman, President

Solution Tree Press

President and Publisher: Douglas M. Rife

Associate Publishers: Todd Brakke and Kendra Slayton

Editorial Director: Laurel Hecker

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Senior Production Editor: Tonya Maddox Cupp

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Text and Cover Designer: Abby Bowen

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Associate Editor: Sarah Ludwig

Editorial Assistant: Anne Marie Watkins

For my children, Vayda and Max: may you always be encouraged to share your stories.

—Paige

For my parents, Gary and Teresa: you are the reason I have a story to tell.

—Kourtney

Acknowledgments

Together, we would like to begin by acknowledging our wonderful students of the present, past, and future. You guys are why we do what we do. You serve as inspiration for all of our research and planning, and we hope the work we did here brings positive change in your lives. Thank you for sharing your stories with us.

We would also like to thank our amazing acquisitions editor, Hilary Goff. Hilary, you believed in our idea from the very beginning and helped us navigate the exciting yet daunting world of publishing. We are forever grateful for the kindness and support you showed us along the way.

Another person who helped us immensely in this process was our production editor, Tonya Cupp. Tonya, thank you for working so hard to make sure our vision came to life in the clearest way possible. Your feedback and encouragement were so valuable.

We firmly believe that every great English teacher’s secret weapon is an even greater librarian. We want to thank our great librarian, Hope, for her help in finding many of the texts we referenced throughout the book. There were times we presented her with some oddly specific requests, but she always came through and delivered exactly what we needed, and with flair! Thank you so much for your help, Hope. —Paige and Kourtney

I would be nowhere in life without my two secret weapons: my husband and my mother. Jake, you always find a way to “make it happen” for me. Thank you for cooking restaurant-quality meals night after night so I could have the time to pursue my passions. A million words could never be enough to describe how grateful I am to be the wife of such a loving, nurturing man. Thank you for being you. Mom, the little things you do are so big to me. I am always appreciative of you folding a basket of laundry, taking the kids for a few hours, or even just giving me a few of your homemade chocolate chip cookies. I hope I can someday support my own kids in achieving their dreams the way you have supported me.

To the two teachers I look up to the most: Carrie and Rebekah. Carrie, thank you for always making me feel like the impossible is possible. I have watched you accomplish such great feats in your career that have paved the way for me, and I always know where to go when I need career advice and encouragement. Rebekah, I am so grateful to you for not only allowing me to be a part of the Moving Writers community, but also for believing in me as a teacher. I will forever admire your work and am honored to have the opportunity to contribute to the same field. —Paige

I am forever indebted to my parents, who have supported me in every way. From watching my dogs to encouraging me at every step along the way, I owe everything to you. Thank you for everything you do to make my life easier. To my puppies Luna and Lira, thank you for allowing me to ignore you at times so I could work. —Kourtney

Solution Tree Press would like to thank the following reviewers:

Tonya Alexander

English Teacher (NBCT)

Owego Free Academy

Owego, New York

Jessica Bassler

English Language Arts Teacher

Francis Howell High School

St. Charles, Missouri

Ringnolda Jofee’ Tremain Director of Professional Learning Texas Leadership Public Schools

Arlington, Texas

Dianne Yee

Assistant Professor Western University London, Ontario, Canada

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy to download the free reproducibles in this book.

About the Authors

Kourtney Hake has been teaching English at various levels since 2014 and currently works at Sparta Lincoln School in Sparta, Illinois. She teaches eighth-grade English language arts (ELA), but has taught all levels of high school, as well as first-year writing at the college level.

Kourtney has been a member of the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE), the Illinois Reading Council (IRC), and the Illinois Association of Teachers of English (IATE) since 2014. While in graduate school, she presented her writing at numerous conferences, including the Newberry Library Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference and the Saint Louis University Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Kourtney graduated magna cum laude from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2014, with a bachelor’s degree in English education and a minor in speech communication. She graduated summa cum laude from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in 2019 with a master of arts in American and English literature. Her research focuses on the perception of Shakespeare’s female characters in the modern secondary classroom.

Paige Timmerman has been teaching high school English since 2012 and currently works at Salem Community High School in Salem, Illinois. She teaches all levels of twelfth-grade English, including an honors level dual-credit writing course. She has also taught freshman and junior English. In her instruction, she strives to provide authentic, real-world writing opportunities appropriate to her students’ skills and interests.

Paige became a National Board Certified Teacher in 2019 and has been a member of the NCTE and the IRC. She is a contributing writer to the popular Moving Writers blog (https://movingwriters.wordpress.com) and presented with the group at the NCTE annual convention in 2019.

Paige graduated summa cum laude from Western Illinois University in 2012, with bachelor’s degrees in Spanish and English education. She graduated from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2017 with a master of arts in American and English literature.

To book Kourtney Hake or Paige Timmerman for professional development, contact pd@SolutionTree.com.

Paige

So . . . I was having a thought . . .

I’ve always wanted to write a professional book for teachers, but I think I need a partner. Would you possibly be interested?

Kourtney

What kind of book? I don’t know that I’d be that helpful. lol

Well, I want to write what I feel like I need as a teacher.

Introduction

One cold night in late November 2021, Paige texted Kourtney: let’s write a book together. While it seemed like a wild idea at first, it slowly became a reality. During our early days of research, we came across this statement from 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle (2018): “Excellence happens incrementally. Let’s work on one thing, and when we feel good about our progress, let’s pick the next thing to work on. And then let’s multiply this by thirty years” (p. 225). This became our focus in the early stages: what is one thing we can make better as English language arts teachers? Our quest for excellence resulted in the book in your hands now.

Teaching is all about working through one challenge at a time. As teachers, we can work so diligently at improving our independent reading program, for example. We can read all the books, spend hours scrutinizing our schedule in an attempt to squeeze in this one more thing, and then roll out our new, exciting plan to students. As we discover how students are responding, we often find our plan isn’t as easy and effortless as we had once thought. We had anticipated reluctant readers among our students, for example, but we didn’t really know what that would look like in an independent reading setting with these students and their unique characteristics and experiences. We reflect. Why are these individuals reluctant readers, and how do I help them? We adjust our approach and pay attention to how students respond. We reflect, adjust, and watch again. And again. And again.

At the end of the year, we can step back and see the progress we made. We will more than likely recognize our shortcomings first, acknowledging the areas we wish our reading program was more successful. But we will also delight in our victories and smile knowing our efforts brought reading into the lives of so many of our students. We will reflect yet again, and our year of experience with an independent reading program will turn into wisdom that will be useful for the rest of our careers.

And then, after this is all said and done, we will realize that while we were building this valuable reading experience with students, we didn’t provide students with enough opportunities to grow as writers. So we start the reflection process again, this time putting the goal of utilizing the writer’s notebook on the front burner.

The best teachers approach lesson planning like scientists. They determine a question they want answered, form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis with students, reflect on data and observations, and try again and again. And through this process, they gain so much valuable knowledge about their students and their practice. They know they’ll never quite get it right, and this is what

they love about teaching. Because if they think they executed something perfectly, then they missed opportunities to learn and grow. If they think something went off completely without a hitch, then they’re likely not paying enough attention to their students as individuals. If they think they’ve “got something down,” then they’re not allowing themselves to consider other possibilities—possibilities that could lead to great change in their classrooms (Gallagher & Kittle, 2018, p. 224).

As coauthors of this book, we came together for this project because we strive to be great teachers who undergo the scientific process of hypothesizing, experimenting, and reflecting. Not only do we find this intellectual challenge of searching for new questions and new approaches invigorating, but we also recognize this is what our students need. In a world full of magic bullet teacher’s guides and computer programs, it is tempting to adopt a curriculum that can be copied and pasted from year to year. But there is a reason why teachers haven’t been (and won’t be) replaced by computers, and remote learning during the pandemic proved it. Our students are not copied and pasted from year to year; they bring in so many stories—both wonderful and heart-wrenching—that contribute to the unique set of advantages and challenges we will face in the year with them. Our relationships with students are the most valuable assets we have as teachers. Each activity, assignment, and discussion deepens our understanding of the minds of our individual students. And in doing so, we get one step closer to leading them toward a path where their best selves can flourish and we can improve our practice.

We, the authors of this book, are very different teachers in very different teaching situations, but we share the common goal of wanting to approach our instruction with a scientific mindset. And after a long, therapeutic conversation that left us ready to return from winter break with new vigor, we had settled on one thing we wanted to tackle together. Narrative writing, we both decided, was something we felt our students needed to practice to give them the tools to be successful in the next stages of their lives. However, we both felt this was an area in our practice (and in our research) that had a major weak spot. Sure, we both conducted personal narrative units, but we both expressed frustration with the work students produced in these units. We could check the box to say we were teaching personal narrative, but our students were not coming out of the unit really understanding how powerful it can be to share their own experiences with an audience. And we realized we weren’t sharing the best of what published narratives from professional authors had to offer our students either. There are so many life-altering stories we had both read—why weren’t we using these stories as mentor texts?

We went our separate ways from our dinner with the same question in mind: What does personal narrative look like today, and how can we use it to empower our student writers?

This book is our combined attempt to answer that question, not only to guide our own students but also so you may use our work to answer some of your own questions for your own students. Our wish is for our students to utilize their own experiences to navigate the world around them. We also want to create opportunities for our students to experience and create authentic writing. We hope you find something useful in these pages to allow your students to do that too.

As stated, although we share a common goal, we are very different teachers. To help you engage with the content in this book, we feel it is important for you to understand what brought each of us to writing it: the goal of improving our narrative writing units in our classrooms. It is our hope you may relate to one (or both) of our purposes for writing this book. At the very least,

we hope to convey the message that teachers with different purposes can still use their expertise toward the same mission.

Kourtney’s Path to Personal Narrative

Throughout my life, I’ve kept many different diaries or journals. Especially as a child, I would start one because the book looked pretty and abandon it after using only a few pages. Sometimes, I would start one, but afraid my older brother might read it, I would rip out the pages and tear them into tiny pieces.

Though my journals usually consisted of rhapsodizing about my crush of the week’s eyes, it wasn’t until I became a freshman in college that I started writing down my life with any regularity. When I bought another journal during the second semester of my freshman year, I didn’t expect it to last, as many of my others had not. Looking back, though, I was afraid I would begin to forget my life if I did not write down some record of it. My grandmother had Alzheimer’s, and I was beginning to fear I would lose my memory if I didn’t write it down.

Since then, I have kept a consistent journal of my daily life. While some years have gaps of a month or two, other years have daily entries. What started as a way to remember my life has become a daily ritual of understanding my life.

As writers, we come to understand ourselves and our world through our writing. As teachers, we hope our students learn to love writing as a way to explore meaning around them. Usually, though, students are more likely to be reluctant about any required writing.

Between the curriculum requirements, the state testing, and the endless data collection, when do we have time to instill a love of writing in our students? When do students get a chance to write about themselves, or something they truly care about? In Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities, professor John Warner (2018) sums up the struggle when he claims:

Teachers are tasked with preparing students for writing exams that carry significant stakes, but that also involve little writing . Those that do contain writing are done under conditions bearing little resemblance to the kinds of complicated, meaningful writing they will be asked to do in college and career (p 71)

The personal narrative as a form has begun to take a back seat to literary analysis and research essays. Even though narratives push students out of their comfort zone more than any other piece of writing, the focus remains on analysis in the form of a researched essay. Narration is seen as a type of writing solely for fun if you have time at the end of the year, not as a focus of the writing curriculum. However, narrative is such a key aspect of our daily lives as adults that it cannot be disregarded or tacked on to the typical curriculum.

What would happen, then, if we made personal narrative a key element to all our writing assignments throughout the year? Rather than one small unit that is never spoken of again, what would writing in the classroom look like if narrative became the biggest concentration? How could the personal narrative help our students reach all the same goals and actually enjoy writing? How can the personal narrative be a form of navigation through all forms of writing, as well as a navigation through our own learning?

Paige’s Path to Personal Narrative

I was seeing narrative everywhere.

It was in my email, the social media posts I stumbled on, the articles I browsed, the books I was reading, and my daily conversations. I decided to be deliberate and record all the instances of personal narrative, both from myself and from others, that I came across in a single day in September 2023:

y My husband’s hilarious narrative to me about the position my son was lying in when my husband went in to wake him in the morning

y Various text messages to my mom, husband, and a few friends about a possible new policy for sick days at school

y An email to an absent student explaining what I taught in class that day

y A story I told my students about how I learned to use infographic templates rather than starting from scratch as I gave them advice for their assignment

y My own personal narrative to the owner of an auto body shop of how I damaged my vehicle

y A social media post from a mom explaining her eleven-week-old’s sleep schedule and asking for advice on whether she should wake her sleeping baby in an effort to get her on a more consistent routine

y A social media post from a scholar with a contented photo of themself who wished to explain how they got to this bright moment in their day amid the grief and depression they also felt

y A social media post from a friend explaining her need for dry cleaning services and asking friends for recommendations

y A social media post from a teacher expressing gratitude for her husband, who sent her a fruit arrangement after a particularly rough day in the classroom

y A viral social media post from a new mom sharing her story of how she learned that mothers do not receive trophies for doing something the hard way (natural birth as opposed to a medicated birth, for example) and how she wished all moms could embrace their own style of motherhood without judging others

y A chapter from Raising Girls Who Like Themselves by Kasey Edwards and Christopher Scanlon (2021), an advice book for parents of girls written by parents who share their own experiences

Looking at this list from a teacher’s lens, I had a few thoughts. First, why is sending a teacher a fruit arrangement on a rough day not a more common practice? Better yet, why not a chocolate arrangement? I’m sure any teacher can recall with clarity more than a few days when they could have used either one. Second (and more seriously), why wasn’t I teaching more personal narrative?

Providing my students with real-world, authentic learning experiences has always been a priority of mine. After all, I have proudly created whole units that center on the writing students might encounter in the workplace. Narrative writing always seemed so abstract and inapplicable to the world students would enter outside of my classroom walls. But when I looked at that list, I realized personal narrative was perhaps the most applicable of any writing unit I could ever hope to adopt. I also can’t help but notice the complexity of personal narrative. Before, I thought of it

as simply sharing one’s own story. But when I examine the list, I notice that humans use personal narrative for a variety of purposes. Yes, reflection is one of those purposes, but we also share our stories to inform, analyze, and argue.

No matter what path lies ahead for my students, I can be certain that it will involve personal narrative. Sharing stories, it seems, is how we all get through life. We use stories to reflect on what our experiences mean to us, we use stories to make decisions, and we use stories to help others (in small, practical ways and in life-changing, profound ways). As author and teacher Kelly Gallagher (2011) claims, “Writing can be used as a vehicle to express ourselves as we negotiate the journey through our lives” (p. 24). I wanted to prioritize providing my students with opportunities to share their own stories in order to help them navigate their lives and the world around them.

What You’ll Find in Our Book

The pages that follow are a culmination of our research on what personal narrative looks like and how we can use that to create valuable writing opportunities for our students. We had an invigorating experience not only researching and reading newly published examples of personal narrative, but also exposing our students to these texts to inspire them to share their own stories. We are eager to share key texts we feel make great examples of each subcategory of personal narrative, as well as ideas for units and samples of student work written in our own classrooms. It is our sincerest hope that the knowledge and experience we built get you one step closer to supporting your own students in writing some of the real-world personal narrative we see all around us.

Here is an overview of how we decided to frame our new knowledge for grades 6–12 teachers, as well as literacy coaches, reading specialists, and curriculum coordinators.

Part 1 consists of chapters 1 and 2, where we define personal narrative and help you begin planning. In chapter 1, we define personal narrative and the different subgenres we have noticed through our research. Chapter 2 is meant to help teachers develop the framework for the units we share later in the book to flourish. In this chapter, we discuss the writer’s workshop, a methodology that allows students the freedom to find their own paths as writers and to receive regular feedback from the teacher during the writing process. Warner (2018) argues:

I believe we should let student writers work under the same conditions as any other writer If we want students to learn to write, they must work at building their writing practices We should create as ideal an atmosphere as possible for them to do this (p 151)

We can think of no better atmosphere to give students the authentic experience of a real writer than through a writer’s workshop. Chapter 2 also focuses on how we decided to structure the units we provide in the later chapters using the concept of backward planning. We firmly believe in starting with broad goals for our students and then selecting the materials, lessons, and activities that set students up for successfully meeting those goals.

In part 2, chapters 3–6 are where we discuss possibilities for teaching with each type of personal narrative. In chapter 3, we explore different ways to inform the audience while incorporating personal stories. Life events and big questions collide in chapter 4, where personal narrative meets analysis. Chapter 5 is all about supporting students in sharing their stories to persuade the

audience and bring about change in the world. And while chapter 6 covers personal narrative in its most traditional purpose—to reflect—we found that newer texts in this genre are anything but traditional. We end with an appendix of resources to turn to when planning notebook prompts that help students generate ideas for accomplishing the writing task.

We believe in backward planning: selecting unit goals first, then figuring out which skills students will need to build to meet those goals. That is why chapters 3–6 begin with possible goals and craft moves that can be used to achieve them. Craft moves are unique writing tools and include various things writers do with their words, such as using slang for verisimilitude. Craft moves can also describe choices a writer makes with structure, like deciding to open a piece of writing with an italicized scene from the past.

We are not suggesting that you must include every single skill, text, or project for each unit. Instead, we provide you with possibilities for you to pick and choose which skills, texts, and projects will work best for your students.

The next step in planning is deciding on a summative assessment that calls for students to use the skills they will need to show whether or not they met the unit goals. Thus, we’ve listed cumulative unit projects after the goals in the chapters. Chapters 3–6 also include starter projects that you can use to practice some of the essential skills we will have students build within the unit. Because these starter projects are a means of formative assessment to support the summative assessment, they should be selected after the final project has been determined.

Each chapter in part 2 ends by providing a sample unit plan derived from the ideas within the chapter. You may read these a couple of different ways. First, you may view it as a (mostly) grab-and-go unit to try with your students. No unit can be perfectly copied and pasted from one classroom to another because it must account for your students and their individual needs. However, these plans are meant to be strong launch pads for kicking off narrative units in each subcategory we provide. You may also choose to read these unit plans simply as examples of adapting ideas within the chapter into a fully formed writing unit. You may elect to do the same with different goals and different activities for your students.

The appendix helps you plan notebook prompts. You can use the notebook different ways to support each stage of the writing process. The early stages are all about exploring topic possibilities for the unit and later stages are meant to continue challenging students to experiment with new writing skills they may want to try in their larger projects. We list them last in our book because they are often the final decisions we make as teachers. We must choose a summative writing project before providing students with prompts they need to explore topic possibilities, and we must see the work students are doing before we decide what kind of skills to have them practice in their notebooks as the unit progresses.

We would like to mention that the mentor texts, unit goals, and craft moves in part 2 are not exhaustive. We simply tried to focus on the main features and moves we see in each genre. However, some moves (hyperlinks, for example) occur in more than one genre and sometimes all genres. Therefore, you could treat everything in these chapters as à la carte; you might use the goals from chapter 3 but find that some of the craft moves in chapter 4 work best for your unit. We do not pretend there is no overlap between the different categories of personal narrative we have identified, nor do we feel our categories are concrete and scientific. We simply categorized them this way to show the common purposes for which professional writers use personal narrative and to give distinct ideas for projects.

We acknowledge that by writing this book, we are not carving how to teach the personal narrative into stone. The mentor texts we use will eventually no longer be fresh. The world will change, and with it, new texts will be published with a better understanding of the new world. To echo the idea we opened this book with, teaching is an evolving, ever-changing career requiring constant reflection and modification.

One thing that should never change, however, is our willingness to learn and grow. We hope the work we did here inspires you to not only try some of the ideas we offer, but also to continue looking for real stories and to continue trying to understand what personal narrative looks like and how this can help your students become better writers. By making personal narrative our one thing to focus on for a period of time, we uncovered so many texts we would have otherwise overlooked or never even come across. So many new voices entered our classrooms through this process. As a result, our students shared so many stories of their own, giving us the privilege of helping them tell those stories that we may not otherwise have had. And in telling us these stories, our students came one step closer to learning to navigate the world around them.

This is why we strive to teach like scientists. This is why we hope you will, too.

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CHAPTER 4

Analytical Narratives Help Us Answer Questions

ometimes, we don’t share our stories to make a statement or convey a strong point. Sometimes, we share our stories because we’re looking for answers. These types of stories are messy because they’re often still in progress. We can’t tie the end up with a bow because there is no ending; we are in the process of finding out what that ending will be (or if one even exists). However, the journey is just as important, if not more so, than the destination in this type of writing. By sharing our stories, we learn to navigate the terrain we’re in and plan what our next steps will be.

A multitude of stories in progress are beautiful in their vulnerability. There are a lot of purposes for telling an unfinished story. On social media, perhaps the most popular use of this genre is to share a story while seeking recommendations, advice, or support, as we see in some of the examples. The story allows the author to provide context for why they are seeking advice. Outside of social media, authors go deeper, sharing a story in order to ask important questions that give rise to major personal or societal issues. We have seen authors share their experiences to come one step closer to discovering who stole their identity, to make a plan to help those without consistent, reliable access to water, and to better understand human behavior.

Ideally, students feel comfortable using writing to grapple with questions, whether they want to discover the best Mexican restaurant to choose while on vacation or to uncover the personal side of a recent diagnosis. In this chapter, we seek to help our students practice the skills they will need to explore any inquiry they may have and to analyze the multitude of perspectives that come along with it.

If you have chosen to focus on analytical writing using student experiences, then follow the steps outlined in this chapter to plan your unit. As you make your way through the chapter, you meet with several possibilities at each step of the process. Consider which projects will best reach your students and help them meet the goals of the unit. The “Personal Narrative Unit-Planning Tool” reproducible (page 46) can guide you as you make important planning decisions, since it mirrors the steps outlined in this chapter. The chapter ends with a sample unit about an experimental narrative.

CHAPTER 4

ANALYTICAL NARRATIVE

Choose one skill and one accompanying craft move .

Skills and related craft moves:

Formulate Questions

Contrary to Popular Belief / 91

Questions Aplenty / 91

How We Got Here / 92

Present Best Evidence

Get to the Gist / 92

Evidence Story / 92

Statistical Blend / 93

Leave No Stone Unturned

Third-Party Shake-Up / 93

Well, Here Goes / 94

Maybe I’m Wrong / 94

Reach a Reasonable

Conclusion

Sum It Up / 94

The Not-So-Satisfying

Conclusion / 95

Here’s Hoping / 95

Set It Up

Categorize It / 95

Set the Parameters / 95

Altering Perspectives / 96

Choose one project and one accompanying type

Summative projects and their informative narrative types:

Using Narrative to Evaluate

Product Reviews / 97

Culture Reviews / 98

Self-Evaluation / 98

Using Narrative to Inquire

The Loudest Girl in the World / 99

Invisibilia / 100

The Worth of Water / 102

Using Narrative to Investigate

The Trojan Horse Affair / 103

The Less People Know About Us / 103

Diary of a Misfit / 104

Using Narrative to Experiment

Dragon Hoops / 105 Little and Often / 106

I’ll Have What She’s Having / 106

Choose one starter project

Starter projects:

Review Podcast / 110

Video Testimonial / 111

Advice Letter / 111

Investigative Poll / 112

Vocabulary Challenge / 112

Step 1: Select Skills for Analytical Narrative

What are the skills that you think are most important for students to build during this process? Whether it is breaking down the larger picture or narrowing the focus to a specific question, students need help in all areas of analysis. Choose just a few skills to work on throughout the unit so that students do not become overwhelmed.

y Formulate questions.

y Present best evidence.

y Leave no stone unturned.

y Reach a reasonable conclusion.

In this unit, we focused on some craft moves that allow students to hone their analytical techniques. These craft moves, while not exhaustive, will help students break a larger topic into a more specific focus as well as ensure they have fully explored that topic.

Formulate Questions

When we go to analyze a given topic, questions aren’t optional. They are the cornerstone of why we are writing; we want to know how something came to be, why it is the way it is, who was responsible, and so on. Questions are what drive us to make inferences, to keep looking and looking until we find a reasonable explanation, or in some cases, a whole new set of questions entirely.

Contrary to Popular Belief

This move occurs when the writer challenges a common, seemingly obvious belief by giving the reader something new to consider. It works great in an introduction as a way to lead into a personal story.

So I learned about trust the hard way . You can’t have true friendship without trust, right? It’s an essential part of the friendship code—or at least that’s what we think But what if the very notion of trust gets scrambled? —Kia Miakka Natisse (2021a), “International Friend of Mystery”

Areesa: Gossip can have a negative impact on friendships but can also have a positive influence on them .

Daniyal: And that’s really what we want to discuss today, and my question for you is, “Do you think that positive gossip even exists or is gossip all around just negative?”

—Areesa and Daniyal, grade 12

Questions Aplenty

In order to introduce all the facets of the topic, sometimes writers will use rapid-fire questions that illustrate their line of thinking on the topic.

But when faced with the almost Herculean task of dieting like a celebrity for an extended period of time and reporting on it, I had to ask myself a certain number of questions What would happen to me after going on a million celebrity diets? Would I live? Would my friends stay with me until the end even though I kept making them

come to my house for dinner parties where they all told me to my face that they despised all my food? Would I get a rash on my cheek and would it clear up? Could I achieve my ideal body? My ideal personality (a combo of Liz Taylor and Liz Taylor)? —Rebecca Harrington (2015, p 9), I’ll Have What She’s Having

Singers are often preceded by nerve wracking questions, like will I sing the right note? Will I remember all of the words? Is everyone going to judge me? And, crucially, what will the audience think at the very end? —Allyson, grade 12

How We Got Here

When formulating questions, writers can explain how they arrived at the subject in the first place. This gives a personal element to the question that also makes the author more relatable to the reader.

By the next semester it was time to come up with a topic for my master’s research project I struggled to isolate a research question, a vein of scholarship in which I would contribute something new . Because there was so little work being done in the area of identity theft, my options seemed as wide-open as an Indiana soybean field If I was being honest with myself (and my committee), my persistent, resounding question was: Who did this to me? —Axton Betz-Hamilton (2019, p 138), The Less People Know About Us

Present Best Evidence

When we decide to explore a topic, we’re going to run into our fair share of information from a variety of sources. It is our responsibility not only to decide what information is reliable and worth repeating to our own audiences, but also how to best present that information for further consideration. Seasoned writers are deliberate not only about what evidence to use, but also how they present it; they want their audience to pay attention to and carefully consider the information in the same way they did.

Get to the Gist

Writers need evidence that encapsulates the crux of what they are trying to convey. They will use one image or object to illustrate the heart of the matter.

It was my mother’s check—same name, address, and bank . But it was not her handwriting It was shaky and tilted in all the wrong ways I stared at it long and hard, trying to figure out who wrote it, racking my brain to recognize the impostor’s handwriting . And just like that, I was a financial deadbeat once more . —Axton BetzHamilton (2019, p 116), The Less People Know About Us

Evidence Story

When it is essential that the reader or listener understand a piece of background information— often one based on a historical event—the writer will sometimes present the evidence as a story so the audience is more engaged and, therefore, more likely to ingest the information.

The history of autism testing kind of starts with a guy named Dr Bernard Rimland In 1956, Bernard and his wife Gloria welcomed their first child Mark To the new dad,

his infant son seemed different from the other dodo babies in the nursery Baby Mark was “wide-eyed” and “precocious-looking,” Bernie recalled

When Bernie and Gloria got Mark home from the hospital, they knew something was off He screamed nonstop—sometimes 12 hours a day—and trying to comfort him only made it worse The howling was so constant and so piercing that the Rimlands’ neighbors would complain Real neighborly, you jerks —Lauren Ober (2022b), The Loudest Girl in the World

Statistical Blend

Strong writers often blend statistical evidence seamlessly into a personal story they are sharing; this not only allows the evidence to be easier to take in, but it also provides context for why the information is important to consider.

But when I heard we’d be spending the day on the “water issue,” I wasn’t sure what issue that was, exactly I guessed the water was contaminated

Then I read my issue brief It said, yes, the water was contaminated—so much so that waterborne diseases were killing a child about every twenty seconds But the water was also hard to access There were no water pipes in these villages, no water taps in people’s homes Somebody had to go get the water and bring it back, and that somebody was almost always a woman or a girl This was their responsibility: to walk as far as necessary to whatever water source they could find and fill their plastic jerrican, a five-gallon water jug that weighs more than forty pounds when full . —Gary White and Matt Damon (2022, p 5), The Worth of Water

Leave No Stone Unturned

When we ask our students to analyze something, we don’t want them to just look at it from a single angle. We want them to pick it up, turn it around in their hands and examine it piece by piece, leaving no stone unturned until they have a broader understanding of the subject. And while it’s true that doing so will help them build valuable reading and writing skills as they meet academic standards, we just can’t ignore the fact that considering as many perspectives as they can is just the right thing to do. It’s what helps make more educated, aware citizens.

Third-Party Shake-Up

One way to get readers or listeners to consider another way of looking at an issue is to have an outsider share a personal story connected to the topic. Hearing a personal experience brings in new variables that readers or listeners might have otherwise overlooked.

YOWEI: So Kia, would you be into normalizing friend breakups?

KIA: Yeah I mean, I feel like that’s healthy And it’s nice actually to, like, have an agreed upon ending instead of it just being like, I hope I never run into that person again because it would be mad awkward .

YOWEI: So I was all Team Normalize Friend Breakups, too But there’s research that suggests that fading friendships out can leave the door open to reviving them later And when I asked Emily, she was not on Team Friend Breakup, either Emily told me a story about a friend from years ago Basically, she was feeling neglected, like

she was way down on her friend’s priority list after his wife, his kids, and other obligations But instead of breaking up completely or doing the fade out—you know, the avoiding thing—she and her friend decided to sit down and talk about ending the friendship they had And maybe start a new kind of friendship

EMILY: I think that’s the only time I’ve ever had any conversation like that . And I remember saying, I get it You have a lot of family demands right now And I said, based on that, I’m going to walk away here a little bit We’re still friends, but I’m not going to prioritize this friendship like I did because I don’t think you can either It was fine, and we understood it . He and I are still friends, but he’s not in the inner circle And I’m glad I did it —Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw (2021), Invisibilia

Well, Here Goes

Writers may acknowledge what seems like a ridiculous or odd idea before jumping further into the idea and trying to follow it to its fruition.

Does this sound insane or “bizarre” even? Maybe it does But then, with the gimlet eye of a serious journalist, wasn’t I duty-bound by the rules of my profession to try Marilyn’s diet for myself and see if this was really true? Sure I was —Rebecca Harrington (2015, p 50), I’ll Have What She’s Having

Maybe I’m Wrong

A good writer is always willing to recognize their own faults, and it is sometimes helpful to acknowledge that a previously held belief is actually wrong. In doing so, the writer recognizes that they may not have all the answers, but they are open to learning more.

Maybe I was wrong about Ivan and Paris Maybe their unwillingness to share their backstories with me has nothing to do with being “media savvy ” Every time they step on the floor, they give us their Superman Who can blame them for wanting to keep their Clark Kent to themselves? —Gene Luen Yang (2020, p 434), Dragon Hoops

Reach a Reasonable Conclusion

Analytical narratives can be frustrating because we don’t always get a definite answer to our inquiries. We can search and search, only to be left with more questions than we started with. Even if an exploration does not end with a bright red cherry on top, we still owe it to ourselves and our readers to reflect on what we did find. Even if we did not find the answer we were looking for, we have certainly emerged from the experience wiser. Writers often end an analysis journey one step closer to the answers they are looking for or on a different path they did not initially intend or even realize existed.

Sum It Up

When analyzing a product or service, writers tend to summarize their opinion at the end of their piece as a way to leave the reader with a final idea of how they should feel about the reviewed material. So, unless you’re a child who desperately wants a novelty box stained with grease and marinara sauce, I would suggest you keep your association with Garfield strictly by comic strip —Ruby Spaloss (2020), “Garfield Eats—You Shouldn’t”

The Not-So-Satisfying Conclusion

As not all questions have definitive answers, writers must choose how to conclude their piece without reaching a clear-cut resolution. Usually, this takes the form of explaining what a resolution might look like, if there is one.

Mystery of the Trojan Horse letter could be resolved But in order for that resolution to happen, government officials or the police, the British public, they would have to decide that this task, determining the perpetrator of a massive nationwide hoax, is their responsibility, and probably should have always been so that it wasn’t left to a doctor turned journalism student in search of a school project Which is to say, a bunch of people would have to care enough —Brian Reed and Hamza Syed (2022), The Trojan Horse Affair

Here’s Hoping

In active explorations that do not reach a satisfying conclusion, writers will sometimes end with a call for answers from their readers.

Like all of my projects that explore any aspect of identity theft, this book has been an undertaking that is largely for the benefit of others—my aim is to help anyone who has dealt with this debilitating crime But in a small way, it has also been written with the hope that someone, somewhere, may read it and realize that they have answers to my questions I would like to know the truth because the truth is important —Axton Betz-Hamilton (2019, p 298), The Less People Know About Us

Set It Up

When analyzing, not only is there an abundance of information to consider, but there is also a multitude of lenses through which to consider it. Analytical narrative writers take special care to structure their evidence so that readers can clearly examine all the possibilities. Because this is a genre of uncertainty, writers also make an explicit effort to present the information directly.

Categorize It

In analytical pieces, writers classify their information in easily digestible categories. These categories are like headers to direct the reader to the information they need most. In the following excerpt, the author uses the listed headers to distinguish different types of information covered in the article.

The best smart white light bulb The best smart color-changing light bulb —Kyle Schurman (2020), “I Didn’t Think I Needed Smart Light Bulbs Until I Tried These”

Set the Parameters

As analytical pieces don’t always have a neat ending, writers may set up rules or guidelines at the beginning that explains what their focus will be.

Here are the rules I set for myself I would try to eat the way celebrities normally eat While it could be amusing to try to imitate the life-threatening efforts made by Christian Bale to slim down to the size of a Popsicle stick for The Machinist, it wasn’t scientific enough for me, Ben Franklin I would also buy any cookbook a celebrity wrote, even if it looked really bad And I would try to employ exercise regimens, clothing choices, or dinner parties when appropriate . —Rebecca Harrington (2015, p 8–9), I’ll Have What She’s Having

Altering Perspectives

Because this genre rests on considering multiple points of view, writers will sometimes clearly label the different perspectives they are exploring with headers.

Chapter 1: What the Hell is the “Water Issue?”

POV: Matt Damon

POV: Gary White

—Gary White and Matt Damon (2022, p 3, 22), The Worth of Water

Step 2: Select a Final Project

By the end of the unit, we want our students to create a complete, finished writing project centered on their pursuit to answer a deep, difficult question. Some of the mentor texts that follow offer answers to these questions. When a writer is working on a review or an investigation, for example, they are not usually expected to come up with the unyieldingly correct response. What the reader does expect, however, is for the writer to reach some sort of educated conclusion based on the information they gather. And that conclusion is all the more convincing with the incorporation of personal narrative.

Other mentor texts in this collection are simply an exploration of a question. These texts focus on the writer’s process of becoming more educated on a topic. These writers hope to broaden their perspective and find new questions rather than arrive at a definitive ending and move on. This inquisitive process could involve talking to others and hearing their stories. It could also mean setting a clearly defined goal and allowing oneself to learn during the personal journey of achieving that goal.

Figure 4.1 outlines the different types of projects you see in this chapter. The right column features questions that writers might consider as they brainstorm how to write within the parameters of the genre. In chapter 3 (page 53), we provided examples of each type of narrative using the same topic, baking cakes, to highlight the distinctions between the different purposes. We’ve done the same in chapter 4 (page 89), but this time, the topic is school rather than cake. While hobbies like baking cake are great for the informative narratives discussed in chapter 3, we’ve found most of the purposes for analytical narratives require topics that give way to more uncertainty.

Type of Analytical Narrative

Evaluative Narrative

Inquisitive Narrative

Investigative Narrative

Experimental Narrative

Purpose

To determine how the writer feels about a topic

To explore the many dimensions of a topic, typically through an openended question

To actively pursue an answer to an inquiry

To document the process of learning, trying, or making something new

FIGURE 4.1: Overview of the analytical narrative genre

Guiding Questions

Which class in high school was most valuable to me?

Why do so many students in my school struggle academically and what can we about the problem?

What is the benefit of taking Advanced Placement classes in high school?

What would happen if I take a class that is completely out of my comfort zone?

Now that you have previewed the types of projects we will discuss in this unit, it’s a good time to stop and collect your thoughts before diving into each type of analytical narrative and the specific ideas for projects Remember to consider the following questions as you make important instructional decisions

y What is your goal?

y Who are your students?

y What is your timeline?

Once you determine the answers to those questions, choose a project from the options that follow that best suits the needs of your students You can use the reproducible "Three-Week Unit-Planning Template" (page 47), "Four-Week Unit-Planning Template" (page 48), or "Five-Week Unit Planning Template" (page 49) to plan

Using Narrative to Evaluate

We often begin new experiences with questions, both consciously and unconsciously. How will this ice cream parlor’s rendition of butter pecan compare with the one I tried last month? Is this new Netflix show really worth all the hype it received in the weeks leading up to the premiere? What style of jeans from this clothing store is the right one for me?

When writers engage in evaluative writing, they strive to answer the pressing questions they had before beginning the experience. In doing so, they give readers the gift of making more informed decisions about their own future experiences without having to do the same legwork as the writer.

This style of writing often takes place in the form of reviews (product and culture, for example), which are some of the most popular journalistic pieces published. While mentor texts of this style are copious, table 4.1 is a sampling of project ideas derived from evaluative writing with an emphasis on personal narrative. This genre also encompasses reviews of the self in the form of self-evaluations.

TABLE 4.1: The Evaluative Narrative at a Glance

Resources for Mentor Texts

Sample Project Titles

New York magazine’s The Strategist “My Experience Using a Laptop as a Learning Tool”

The New York Times Learning Network “The Best Meals in the School Cafeteria, From a Student Who Knows”

Inside Voices (Porter, 2020a) “My Performance in Algebra This Semester”

Product Reviews

In the last chapter, we mentioned The Strategist (a division of New York magazine) as a go-to place for product recommendations. After browsing the site more, we discovered several sections containing product reviews with elements of personal narrative. The sections we found most valuable were Best in Class, Testing Testing, and I Tried. The articles in each column are similar

in that they feature a writer (or writers) who experimented with a variety of products and publish testimonials of their experiences to inform consumers. Some of our favorites that make great mentor texts include “The Very Best Dog Coats” by Liza Corsillo and Brenley Goertzen (2023), “We Tried 7 Meal-Delivery Services for Kids on the Pickiest Little Eaters We Know” by the Editors (2020), and “I Didn’t Think I Needed Smart Light Bulbs Until I Tried These” by Kyle Schurman (2020).

The product reviews are short and tend to feature the best of the products tried by the authors, so most of the reviews usually have a positive tone. This, however, does not have to be the case for our students. They can read these mentors as a guide for structure and craft moves while shifting in tone to reflect their own experiences. Sample titles from students might include, “What I Thought of the 3 Most Popular Shoes in School,” “I Used 5 Different Pencils in One School Week,” and “I Tested 4 Different Apps for Note Taking.”

Culture Reviews

In the last chapter, we mentioned the New York Times’ Learning Network as an excellent resource for writing teachers. If you wish for your students to write a review about anything cultural (architecture, art, books, fashion, movies, restaurants, TV shows, or games), check out their page for high-quality teaching materials for student reviews. For the last several years, the Times has sponsored an annual student review contest in which students submit a review of 450 words or fewer over something new they experienced.

The Learning Network contains a multitude of reviews to use as mentor texts. You could choose to use reviews written by professional writers and contributors to the New York Times, or past student winners of the contest. Some of the mentor texts we found that incorporate personal narrative are “Thomas Keller’s MasterClass: A Master Guide on Gourmet Cooking and Living” by Siyang Lian (the Learning Network, 2021), “Garfield Eats—You Shouldn’t” by Ruby Spaloss (the Learning Network, 2020), and “New York Penn Station: Incoherent Urban Calamity” by Henry Hsiao (the Learning Network, 2020). Even if you choose not to have students follow the guidelines of the contest, these are still stellar examples of how writers can incorporate their own experiences when drawing conclusions about a cultural topic of interest.

The last mentor text in our list is an especially meaningful resource, as it is also part of the Annotated by the Author series. In this series, authors break down the texts they have written, explaining why they wrote each section of their text the way they did. Looking at author annotations is a segue for students to not only to understand the writing process of others, but also to better understand their own writing habits.

Self-Evaluation

On the podcast Inside Voices, Kevin Porter (2020a) invites other podcasters to chat about how they created their shows, what they sound like, and how they would describe their voices. Though they talk about more than just their voice in this chat show format, the guests use the time to assess themselves and how they have come to be where they are now. Before choosing to use one of these episodes for a mentor text, be sure to listen to it in its entirety as some may reference material or use language that is inappropriate for your students. You also may use just a portion of an episode in which the guest is specifically detailing how their voice sounds to them, though Lauren Lapkus’s episode is particularly good at self-evaluation (Porter, 2020b).

Students can emulate the format of the podcast by evaluating who they are and how they have come to this moment. How have their hobbies and interests influenced the person they are today? How would they describe their voice? How does that differ from how their voice sounds in their head? It might be helpful for students to interview each other to help them be more comfortable with analyzing themselves in such detail.

Using Narrative to Inquire

Sometimes, we use writing to work through larger, more complex life questions that often lack a concrete answer. Some examples might include Which college should I attend? Why did my friend react negatively when I made plans with someone else? How can I help some of my classmates better understand students in the school who are neurodivergent?

When a writer discusses the process of how they came to a difficult question and why it captivates them, they are engaging in what we are calling “inquisitive narrative.” In this style of writing, the story behind how the question came to fruition is made clear, along with all of the factors that make answering the question a strenuous task. As the writer works through the inquiry in their writing, they come one step closer to answering their big question.

The purpose is not necessarily to answer the question but to explore the various options that the question presents. As the author progresses through the narrative, it is likely they will learn more about themselves as well as the topic they started with. Table 4.2 is a preview of the different resources and possible project styles you might consider for having students craft their own inquisitive narratives.

TABLE 4.2: The Inquisitive Narrative at a Glance

Resources for Mentor Texts

Sample Project Titles

The Loudest Girl in the World (Ober, 2022c) “Navigating My New School”

Invisibilia (Natisse & Shaw, 2015) “Making New Friends at an Old School”

The Worth of Water (White & Damon, 2022) “Helping Everyone Find Their Place at School”

The Loudest Girl in the World

Founded in fall 2022, The Loudest Girl in the World is an autobiographical podcast in which the host, Lauren Ober, documents her journey toward an autism diagnosis in adulthood. Throughout the episodes, Ober shares the good, the bad, and the ugly of experiencing neurodivergence while functioning both personally and professionally. Each episode focuses on a different aspect of her journey; some topics of focus include the evaluation process for autism, the history of the study of autism, romantic relationships, friendships, and school issues. The podcast follows a “think-aloud” style, as Ober uses questions and personal stories to work through her journey of learning about her own mind. Here’s how she questioned whether or not she should be evaluated for autism: It was just waves lapping up on my shores with increasing intensity . Not spurred by an incident that happened or a book I read or a YouTube video I watched Just a steady ebb and flow of a feeling

Inside my brain it was like: What if I’m autistic? I think I might be autistic I don’t want to be autistic Am I autistic? I can’t possibly be autistic Which in itself seems a little autistic (Ober, 2022a)

Like Ober, students can also document their own journeys of self-discovery. Their texts could center on a life-altering event and how different aspects of their lives changed because of it. If applicable, students may follow Ober’s lead and write about a diagnosis. Other options include exploring a death in the family, a major move, a new friendship, or a lifestyle change such as a new diet or exercise regimen. No matter the topic, students should focus their stories on the aftermath of the major life event and how it has impacted multiple facets of their lives.

Invisibilia

The goal of NPR’s Invisibilia podcast, hosted by Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw (2015), is for listeners to better understand human behavior. Personal stories highlight different ways humans react to one another in a given situation, and the listener is left to ponder why people behave the way they do. The show has multiple seasons, with episodes in each season revolving around the same theme. In the fall of 2021, the show explored the topic of friendship. Although the show is meant for an adult audience, we feel many of the issues discussed during this season can apply to a middle or high school audience.

One such example is the episode “Poop Friends” (Natisse, 2021b). During this episode, the hosts explore questions such as, When and how should one bring up the topic of poop with friends? What does it say about a friendship if its constituents are comfortable discussing poop? What does it say if they are uncomfortable with it? The podcast does not draw concrete conclusions to their questions but rather exposes the listener to several lenses through which to view the questions by including interviews and personal stories. At the end of the episode, the listener is left with plenty to think about to draw their own conclusions or continue to explore the topic further.

Other episodes of the friendship season we feel make excellent mentor texts include “A Friendly Ghost Story” (Shaw & Natisse, 2021) and “International Friend of Mystery” (Natisse, 2021a). The former considers the question of how friendships should end, and in the latter, the hosts consider how friendships can be mended after betrayal takes place. We would like to reiterate here that the show is meant for an adult audience, so you will definitely want to preview episodes before using them to ensure they are right for your students. Most of the episodes have multiple parts, so you may find that only playing a part of an episode is necessary.

After listening to an episode or excerpt of Invisibilia, students can create their own products (written or in podcast form) that tell the personal stories behind other human behaviors they don’t quite understand. For example, one student who is not allowed to use social media may explore the reasons why some parents are OK with their children using it while others are not. Another student may choose to inquire about the differences between what is considered “polite” to people of different cultures and backgrounds.

You could choose to have your class work within the same theme as well, with each project (individual or in small groups) focusing on a distinct topic of the same theme. No matter what approach you choose for conducting a project of this style, be certain to keep in mind that the students’ job is not to reach a definitive answer but rather to explore an essential question that will help the reader or listener reach a deeper level of thinking about the topic. Figure 4.2 provides an example. Paige had her students listen to the three Invisibilia episodes mentioned

from the friendship season, then she asked them to create their own podcasts revolving around another friendship-related inquiry. This is an excerpt from the transcript of one of the student projects in which Areesa and Daniyal interview a teacher at school about how they should handle a dilemma with a friend. Visit https://tinyurl.com/5n7vkreb to listen to Daniyal and Areesa’s entire podcast episode.

Areesa: So we have this friend in our friend group. .

Mrs. Randolph: Mhmm.

Here, Areesa explains how she and Daniyal arrived at the question they are going to ask Their discussion provides context for the inquiry

We love Mrs Randolph’s response . She doesn’t tell Areesa and Daniyal what to think, but rather looks at the situation from multiple angles and offers a possible solution This gives them more to consider, further deepening their inquiry

Areesa: We’ll just call her Susan, right. And every time that she’s, like, in a bad mood or—I don’t know—having a bad day, she always brings everybody else down.

Daniyal: We are not as fond of her as, like, friends now.

Mrs. Randolph: Mhmm.

Daniyal: And we’re wondering if you think that’s because we’re gossiping about her and we’re constantly staying in that negativity or because she’s just a bad person.

Mrs. Randolph: It could be both. If she does kind of, like, carry around this dark cloud— mean, yes. Or you have now failed to see the good in your friend. You could talk to her, have an intervention.

Areesa: If you’re always gossiping about that one friend in your friend group. . . .

Daniyal: Mhmm.

Areesa: Is it better to just, like, talk to them and share your concerns about them or would you rather just cut them off and after high school.

We can really see Daniyal weighing the evidence he has collected in this conversation as he begins to reach a conclusion about his inquiry

Daniyal: I think that after high school you sorta start to broaden your horizons, and your tunnel vision that you have isn’t there anymore. So I think that cutting off those friendships at such an early age isn’t that smart of an idea, but I don’t think necessarily that we should be cutting off those friendships just due to negativity or due to the gossip that might be causing the negativity towards that person. It’s not fair to gossip about someone without having them present.

Source: © 2023 by Areesa and Daniyal. Adapted with permission.

FIGURE 4.2: Project spotlight—“Gossip Among Friends” by Areesa and Daniyal, grade 12 .

The Worth of Water

This nonfiction book explores the process through which engineer Gary White and actor Matt Damon (2022) became personally invested in helping people around the world who lack access to clean water. The first two chapters of the book contain personal stories about how each learned about the issue and began questioning what they can do to work toward resolving it. In chapter 1, Damon shares the story of how he accompanied a young girl in Zambia on her daily trip to obtain water for her family:

After half an hour or so, we arrived at the well Somebody suggested I try my hand at it I had just finished filming one of the Jason Bourne movies, so I thought I was in pretty good shape But pumping water from this well was harder than it looked Wema and I laughed as I struggled with it She had this incredibly practiced way of working the pump and then hefting this big, heavy yellow can up onto her head, where she kept it balanced with the help of one hand This was easy to admire until you remembered (if you’d let yourself forget) that this was work for her: an inescapable, essential chore (White & Damon, 2022, pp 6–7)

Some of our students also have philanthropic causes they are passionate about, and this book serves as a great mentor text for telling the story behind beginning to question how they could help. However, we realize our students are young and many have not yet become involved with service projects. If this is the case, students can still use The Worth of Water as a guide for sharing their personal journeys toward questions about other topics. For example, one student may decide to share the story of how spending time with his grandfather and hearing stories of his experiences serving in the military during the Vietnam War led him to wonder what might happen if a mandatory draft were to occur today.

It is also worth mentioning that The Worth of Water extends past inquiry in later chapters. White and Damon (2022) discuss how they met and what efforts they made together to work toward a solution to the issue. With that said, this book could be an outstanding mentor text to use for other narrative purposes as well.

Using Narrative to Investigate

When we have a question we want answered, we often make a concrete plan for how we will answer it. We lay out what information we need and what avenues we need to go through to fill the gaps in our existing knowledge. And while it’s true that there may be more than one way to answer the question, what we’re looking to do when we investigate is figure out the best answer to our problem. Or, at the very least, a clearer path on which to go forward.

Writers often record their personal experiences with trying to answer questions in the texts they create. What sets this style of writing apart from the last section is that, while inquisitive narratives seek to analyze a question and how it was formed, investigative narratives detail the actions the writer took (or is taking) to find an answer to the question. Though the writer may come to a satisfying conclusion, like when researching the best personal fit for college, some investigations may only open up more questions as the process continues. These types of narratives allow students to do a meta-analysis of their writing and detail their process as well as any conclusions they reach. Table 4.3 is a preview of the different resources and possible project styles you might consider for having students craft their own investigative narratives.

TABLE 4.3: The Investigative Narrative at a Glance

Resources for Mentor Texts

The Trojan Horse Affair podcast (Reed & Syed, 2022)

The Less People Know About Us (Betz-Hamilton, 2019)

Diary of a Misfit (Parks, 2022)

The Trojan Horse Affair

Sample Project Titles

“Why I Deserve the Right to Vote”

“My Friend Ghosted Me and I Have Questions”

“My Hometown’s History and Me”

When a strange letter appears on an official’s desk claiming there is an Islamic extremist plot to infiltrate Birmingham, England, city schools, the entire country erupts. The investigations led to many educators losing their jobs, stricter counter-terrorism laws, and a deep fear of “Muslim values.” However, no one knows who this letter was written to or who was meant to receive it. When journalism student Hamza Syed hears of the “Trojan Horse Letter,” named after the Operation Trojan Horse that the letter outlines, something seemed off. He couldn’t understand why no one cared who wrote it and to whom it was written. He teamed up with Brian Reed (2022), who hosted the podcast S-Town, and they went on a journey to learn as much as they could about the letter.

Though their investigation turns up a lot more questions than answers, the overall podcast asks some important questions about authority and fear of others. Students could use these podcasts as a guide for how to research an event. Students can choose an event, whether historical or more personal to themselves, and research the event and its consequences, as well as exploring their personal connection to it. An event like women receiving the right to vote, for example, can be explored by investigating the lack of diversity with feminist leaders at the time. Students could then consider how this event impacts them still today.

The purpose of this narrative is more to detail the investigation itself rather than to find a specific answer. It is very possible the question the author starts with becomes more complicated as the investigation continues. Students may find this type of investigation frustrating, but writing about their research in this manner will help them think about how historical events continue to impact us years after they occur.

The Less People Know About Us

When Axton Betz-Hamilton was in college, she discovered her identity had been stolen. Through her book The Less People Know About Us (Betz-Hamilton, 2019), she details her investigation into who stole her identity and why. Her story is also detailed in two podcast episodes “Money Tree” (Judge, 2016) and “The Less People Know About Us” (Judge, 2019), both from the podcast Criminal. When her identity was stolen in 1993, the businesses from which the thief bought goods were the ones who were considered victims because they were the ones who were owed money. There were no laws in place to protect those who had been the actual victims of the theft. Armed with a hastily scribbled police report detailing her identity theft, Betz-Hamilton had to figure out how to fix the damage by herself. She researched identity theft through her master’s

program and eventually wrote her doctoral dissertation on child identity theft. When she discovered who her identity thief actually was, though, her investigation was just beginning.

Depending on the time allowed and the learning goals of your unit, you could use the podcasts, an excerpt from her book, or the book as a whole for a mentor text. If you are pressed for time, the podcast episode “The Less People Know About Us” (Judge, 2019) provides enough context of the situation for students to understand the story.

Using Betz-Hamilton’s story as a model, students should research something that happened to them. Hopefully they will not have as negatively life altering an event as Betz-Hamilton; however, they can explore events such as a game that didn’t go as well as they had hoped. Maybe they lost touch with a friend, and they aren’t sure what went wrong. Students should actively look for answers by examining events that have changed their life in some way, even if it doesn’t seem eventful at first glance.

Diary of a Misfit

After coming out as a lesbian in college, Casey Parks feels estranged from her family and former life in the South. However, when her grandmother mentions a transgender man who lived across the street growing up, Parks decides to return home to find out what Roy’s life was like and the circumstances surrounding his death. While she initially intends to focus her investigation on learning more about Roy, Parks could not help but be swept up in the mystery surrounding “the town misfit” and exploring how she could relate. Her book, Diary of a Misfit (Parks, 2022), is an account not only of what she finds out about the late Roy, but also what she learns about herself along the way. At the end of the book, Parks (2022) reflects:

I had hoped reading Roy’s diaries would settle something inside me If I could solve his mysteries, I thought, I would decipher my own I would know where I belonged But I understand now that most of what haunted me before might haunt me forever. I drove away from Louisiana, but I returned I am still returning, even now (p 350)

Like Parks, students can engage in their own investigations to learn more about a topic of interest and themselves. Urge students to consider something about which they’ve always been curious. Perhaps they want to know more about an activity offered at school. Maybe they want to know more about the history of where they live. They might also be curious about one person in particular. Encourage students to find answers to their questions while exploring what it says about them that they are interested in the topic.

Using Narrative to Experiment

From time to time, we may not be looking for a definitive solution to a big life question or even seeking an answer at all. Instead, we may willingly choose to continue grappling with it, knowing that looking at it from a multitude of different angles may provide a whole new perspective on the issue. And while not attacking the question head-on has its risks, looking at it through an experimental lens carries the powerful prospect of entering a whole new, unexplored terrain.

To be clear, experimental writing differs from investigative writing in the author’s attitude toward approaching the inquiry. Investigative writers are determined, with a specific goal they would like to meet by the end of the project, whereas experimental writers are nonchalant, approaching the inquiry without defined expectations. Let’s for a moment consider a writer

who wishes to help children in the community without access to clean, durable shoes to wear to school. If they investigate an answer, they will likely research different ideas for fundraisers and donate the funds to a local charity. But if they decide to conduct an experiment with the question in mind, they might decide to spend a week walking to school and around the building in a pair of inadequate shoes and writing about their experiences. Going through this experiment will likely help the writer better understand the people they are trying to assist and hopefully lead to better solutions. At the end of this chapter, you will find an example unit plan based on this narrative type. Table 4.4 is a preview of the different resources and possible project styles you might consider for having students craft their own experimental narratives.

TABLE 4.4: The Experimental Narrative at a Glance

Resources for Mentor Texts

Sample Project Titles

Dragon Hoops (Yang, 2020) “I Don’t Live on a Farm, but I Joined FFA Anyway”

Little and Often (Preszler, 2021)

“What I Learned When I Sewed a Dress in Textiles Class”

I’ll Have What She’s Having (Harrington, 2015) “My Adventures in Trying a New Sport My Senior Year”

Dragon Hoops

In the graphic memoir Dragon Hoops , Gene Luen Yang (2020) shares the story of how he familiarized himself with a brand-new world: the world of basketball. At the beginning of the memoir, Yang characterizes himself as a nerdy high school teacher and graphic novelist who tended to surround himself with like-minded individuals. On a quest to better understand other perspectives, he befriends his school’s basketball coach and spends the season getting to know the game and the members of the team. Through his journey, he learns valuable lessons about the personal effect sports can have on its constituents, and he uses these lessons to guide his own decisions at an important moment in his career.

There are a few different directions you could go by using this graphic novel as a mentor text. Students could create a project that mirrors the goal of the whole book; they could step outside their comfort zones and try to gain a deeper understanding of something with which they are unfamiliar. If you decide to go this direction, students will likely need help brainstorming different topic ideas and guidelines for who and what to ask to learn more. After a clearly defined amount of time for exploration, students could report their journeys and what they learned back to you in a format of your (or their) choosing. You might have them stick with the graphic memoir genre like the mentor, but you may also allow students to use other forms of media.

Another approach would be to closely examine one of Yang’s character analyses. Sprinkled throughout the book are the stories behind the coaches and players that shape the basketball team. In chapter 10, for example, Yang details the life of Qianjun “Alex” Zhao, a player who grew up in China and moved to California without his parents in hopes of one day playing for the NBA. Your students could create a character analysis (again, format may vary) in which they write about another person with significant differences and reflect on what learning about that person allowed

them to gain. While completing the character analysis, it is important for students to exhibit the same open mindedness Yang had when trying to better understand the personal sacrifices made by the athletes and coaches at his school.

Little and Often

Little and Often (Preszler, 2021) focuses on the events surrounding the death of the author’s father. After an estranged relationship with his father that spanned years, Trent Preszler finally drives from his beach house in New York back to his childhood home in South Dakota to spend Thanksgiving with his parents. Directly on returning to New York from the visit, however, Preszler learns of his father’s abrupt passing. Because the death leaves him with unanswered questions about his father and their relationship, Preszler decides to embark on a journey to better understand the man who created him. He decides to step into his father’s shoes by using his old toolbox to handcraft his very own canoe, a bold move considering Preszler has never built anything in his life. Here’s an excerpt from Preszler’s (2021) discussion of his decision in his memoir:

My father could build, fix, or make anything, and for the last decade I had concerned myself with making wine How pruning shears got handled, how grapes got pressed and fermented, how bottles got corked and uncorked, how glasses got polished— these were not just casual concerns for me They formed the backbone of my career I began to think that maybe my father’s tools were a way back into appreciating the career choices I had made for myself, too I did not just have to admire his tools I could also use them to build something—perhaps a wine barrel or a wine storage rack . I would have to give it some more thought (p . 94)

Some of our students, and often the ones who are not engaged in traditional academia, are tactile learners. They respond better to hands-on activities and enjoy creating tangible products. Little and Often is a great springboard for a project that reaches this type of learner. Students could read an excerpt of the book as a mentor text, and the class could have a discussion about different types of projects they would like to try (see the unit at the end of this chapter for an excerpt we think works well). Maybe someone in class has always wanted to learn to knit from their grandmother but has never sat down to try. Perhaps another student has the desire to bake the perfect apple pie. Other students, like Preszler (2021), may have the desire to build something useful. Students may need a little prompting, but it is likely that each of them has a desire to pick up a new skill. Before students determine a task they would like to undertake, set some guidelines for them. Will they have a week? A month? Will there be class time to work on their projects, or will they be done entirely on their own? These are questions only you can answer about your students. As they work through the project, keep in mind the goal is for them, like Preszler, to reflect on the process of picking up the new skill and considering the important lessons they are learning along the way. You will need to guide them toward creating a project that reflects their personal response to the experience, whether it be positive or negative.

I’ll Have What She’s Having

In today’s culture, self-improvement and self-help ideas can be found around every corner. While topics vary widely, the idea of self-improvement is prevalent throughout all forms of media. In I’ll Have What She’s Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting, Rebecca Harrington (2015) attempts fourteen different celebrity diets, and incorporates various aspects of their lifestyle.

In each chapter, she breaks down the main components of each celebrity’s diet and lifestyle, outlines the preparation necessary, details her days spent on the diet, and then gives her overall thoughts on the diet (and this quote appears earlier, in the Set the Parameters craft move section):

Here are the rules I set for myself: I would try to eat the way celebrities normally eat . While it could be amusing to try to imitate the life-threatening efforts made by Christian Bale to slim down to the size of a Popsicle stick for The Machinist, it wasn’t scientific enough for me I would also buy any cookbook a celebrity wrote, even if it looked really bad And I would try to employ exercise regimens, clothing choices, or dinner parties when appropriate (Harrington, 2015, pp 8–9)

We do not recommend the extreme dieting techniques Harrington employs in many of the chapters; however, her attempts at the exercise regimens and lifestyle choices provide students with an idea of how to enact a self-improvement project. Though she tries every diet as closely as possible, she does make changes as needed or quits a diet early if she feels she must. She details her experience on the Karl Lagerfeld diet before abandoning it quite quickly:

Karl says that when you are on a diet, “you are a general and you have a single soldier in your army You must give him instructions and he must carry them out It may annoy him but he has no choice ” And thus I start the day with what Karl calls his “winter breakfast”: a piece of toast, an egg (not fried in any oil because that would be too appetizing), some juice, yogurt, and a Diet Coke It is the spartan meal of a prisoner but it does the job After my call, I set about guzzling Diet Cokes Lagerfeld drinks up to ten Diet Cokes a day, so I have to really set my mind to this task After three in quick succession I get very jittery; after four I decide I’m so jittery I can’t eat lunch (protein sachet) or write or concentrate and just start pacing my room, which seems, all of a sudden, like a necessary activity After my last Diet Coke, I give up and I go and watch the finale of The Bachelor I rationalize this brainless but emotional activity because Karl is a rabid consumer of culture and has three hundred iPods (Harrington, 2015, pp 42–43)

Rather than using the entire book as a mentor text, we suggest using one of the chapters as a guide for a self-improvement project for your students. We especially recommend the Gwyneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz, Madonna, and Carmelo Anthony chapters. For this project, students should set some ground rules for themselves and attempt to improve an aspect of their lives. As food is not something that all students have control over, we suggest providing examples that all students could easily do without expense. Some examples include drinking a set amount of water every day for a week, getting the recommended number of hours of sleep every night for a week, or starting each day with three positive affirmations. Students should be allowed to pick their self-improvement project with guidance.

Using excerpts from Dragon Hoops (Yang, 2020), Little and Often (Preszler, 2021), and I’ll Have What She’s Having (Harrington, 2015) as mentor texts, Paige decided to have her freshman students write about an experiment they conducted in their own lives. Figure 4.3 (page 108) spotlights ninth-grade student Ava B.’s progress in drawing more realistic faces, produced as part of Paige’s experimentation unit. Please see the end of this chapter for specific details on how Paige taught this unit and how it might work in your classroom.

I have been drawing since I can remember, whether it was in art class, when I was bored, or just to take my mind off things. I have always loved drawing. Although I wasn’t very good to start with, I wanted to get better, so I did. I would watch youtube videos on how to draw certain things like a nose, eyes, and lips. Now I know how to draw a pretty good face but it’s not very realistic, it was more cartoony. So that’s what I have tried.

I wanted to take my drawing skills to the next level, what better way to do that than to learn to draw a realistic face. I started by drawing as close to a realistic face as I could get. When I realized it was not very realistic I knew this wouldn’t be as easy as I had originally thought. So I tried again. This time I tried to add shading, but it did not go very well. So I watched a video on shading a face. After the video I felt more confident that I could actually do this. After I watched the video I tried again. It looked better but it was not what I was looking for. So I asked my mom for help.

My mom is very good at realism. She draws lots of things such as people, tables, plants, and even a teapot one time. She shades everything, and it always looks amazing. So I asked her to try and teach me how to shade a face. We tried and tried to figure it out but in the end it was unsuccessful. So back to the drawing board I went. I really wanted to complete this so I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I decided to sit down and try to draw a realistic eye and start there. That was not very hard. I got all the shading right and I thought it looked very good. So I took it as a win and stopped trying that day.

Since the eye went so well I wanted to push my luck a bit, so I tried drawing realistic lips. It went horribly. I watched a video because I still thought I could do it. After I finished the video I tried again. The first time it didn’t look quite right, so I tried again, and again, and again. After about four tries it looked good. Then I tried to see if I could recreate it. And I could. So then I practiced drawing the lips for a good two days, any down time I had I was drawing lips. Once I thought I’d mastered those I started drawing the eyes again.

Then I started working on the nose. I thought this would be the easiest part because I love drawing noses. And boy was I right, I breezed right through the nose. Then I added the eyes I had been practicing and drew the nose and eyes on a piece of paper. Once I drew that I was quite pleased with myself. I took a break for a couple days because my hand was killing me. Then I took the drawing of the eyes and nose and added the lips. At this point I knew I needed to work on proportions, because it didn’t look right when I added it together. I watched a few videos on it and practiced.

Ava starts off by introducing the reader to something she cares about: drawing Starting with a personal narrative allows her to make a quick connection with the reader This is something she loves dearly

Here, Ava lets the reader know what her main focus is She wants to learn how to draw a more realistic face This is her way of Setting the Parameters, a craft move we saw earlier in the chapter

In this portion, Ava is utilizing the craft move Maybe I’m Wrong, shown earlier in the chapter Sharing her mistakes and weaknesses along the journey demonstrates that she is vulnerable and willing to admit to her flaws

Here, Ava acknowledges the progress she’s made so far and takes a pause in her journey She is stopping for the day, but she is not done with her process

This repetition drills in that she is continuing to experiment until she gets it right

Ava clearly leads the reader through each step of the process before moving on to the next one

Ava is able to find a conclusion to her experiment and focus on the positives from the experience

At this point I realized that I had no clue how to draw eyebrows that look real. I’ve always drawn them solid and eyebrows aren’t solid. So I had to figure that out. I watched a few videos and asked my mom for help. She taught me how to make the hair in the eyebrows look real. So then I drew the eyebrows on the paper with the eyes, lips, and nose. Then I drew another version of this all together. Once I had finished that drawing I added the final touches which were the outline of the face, the jawline, chin, and hair.

When I finished that I did not like the way it looked very much, so I decided I would try again but make each feature a little different then before. I even tried adding freckles to the face. That did not work out very well. I erased the freckles, fixed the shading, and made the nose a little differently shaped. This is the first one I actually really liked out of everything I had drawn. So I decided to see if I could make another one I like a lot. This time I wanted to add some different things. I tried curly hair and bangs, which did not turn out too well. So I went back to the one I drew before and added some personal touches and I was finished. My final product didn’t look very good, so I tried again and again until I was happy. In the end it took about 5 tries to get one I actually liked.

Once I had finally created a really great realistic drawing of a person I was happy with it. I am really proud of myself. If it was not for this assignment I probably would not have tried so hard to do my best. But in the end I’m glad I did. Honestly it’s a miracle I didn’t get a blister while drawing this much.

Ava’s Progress

Ava’s style before the experiment

Ava’s attempt at only a nose

Source: © 2023 by Ava B. Adapted with permission.

Ava’s first attempt; after this attempt, she decided to focus on one facial feature at a time

Ava’s attempt at only an eyebrow

FIGURE 4.3: Project spotlight—“Realistic Face” by Ava B , grade 9

Ava’s attempt at only an eye

Ava’s face after practicing each feature; she wants to keep practicing

Pause, Reflect, & Act

As you read through the project options, we hope you were thinking of your students and what you would like them to accomplish by writing an analytical narrative We hope you found one or more ideas that could challenge them to dig deep into a topic and their role within it If you’re still thinking about how to make an analytical narrative unit work in your classroom, we invite you to consider the following

y What are the main goals of my class? Will an analytical narrative project help my students meet one or more of these goals?

y Is there a project or projects that will engage my students and excite them to write?

y Do one or more of the projects listed fit in the scope and sequence I have in mind for the course?

When you’ve answered those questions, we encourage you to turn to the unitplanning templates (pages 47–49) They will guide you in making decisions on what instruction will focus on each day of the unit

Step 3: Select a Starter Project to Practice Asking and Answering Questions Through Story

Once you know what you would like your students’ final projects to entail, it’s time to think about how to best prepare them. The following are a few options you can consider. The projects present students with the opportunity to consider a big question in their writing to practice the skills of the unit, but they do so on a smaller, lower-stakes scale than the projects outlined earlier in the chapter.

The following different starter projects are those students can do.

y Review podcast

y Video testimonial

y Advice letter

y Investigative poll

y Vocabulary challenge

Review Podcast

Episodes of the New York Times’ The Book Review (Cruz, 2014) podcast consist of two parts. The first part of the show is spent interviewing the author of a newly published book. Questions focus on the writer’s inspiration, writing style, and intended purpose. In the latter, much shorter, portion of the podcast, Times critics give their insight on two other recently published books they read in the past week.

The second portions of the episodes are a great way to introduce students to both the type of personal narrative that exists in long-form written culture and product reviews, if you plan to have your students go this direction for their larger projects. While the critics do not fully discuss

their own experiences in their reviews, they do use personal narrative to explain their reactions and connections they made between the book they are evaluating and other texts they have read.

To have students practice these skills, have them work in groups to review the same topic. You could have each group discuss their own takes on the text you most recently read together as a class, a recent sports game or theatrical performance at school, a brand of shoes they have each worn, or a new song they have all heard, for instance. As with culture and product reviews, the possibilities for topics are endless, and each group could focus on a different angle. What is important is that each student practices giving their individual opinion using their own narrative for support.

Video Testimonial

If you want students to complete a review containing more personal narrative, consider having them create a video testimonial. More informal than the reviews featured in the previous project, a testimonial features the user’s entire journey with the subject of the review from start to finish. The creator of the video usually begins by telling the story behind why they decided to try something new, and they follow it up with a step-by-step analysis of their experience.

Like most types of media, several options exist for testimonials. Companies often hire people who have used their products to provide glowing testimonials that only offer rave reviews. However, rising in popularity are videos where average consumers offer more blunt reviews that tell the good, the bad, and the ugly. YouTube is peppered with video testimonials featuring topics of all kinds, but we like IntrovertTV’s (2020) “Walmart vs Crocs” video. As the title suggests, the video features a woman who tells us her thoughts after trying both real Crocs and the knockoff Walmart version.

If you wish for your students to write a review later in the unit, a great warm-up activity is to have them create their own short (two minutes or so) video tutorials about a product or cultural topic they tried out. Students could share these with partners, small groups, or the whole class, and peers could then offer feedback about how well the personal narrative shared in the video persuaded or discouraged them from having the same experience featured in the video. This is a quick, easy way for students to get feedback before writing a longer piece.

Advice Letter

Most major news sites contain an advice column where readers can send in an inquiry in hopes of being answered with expert advice. We like The Atlantic’s advice column, Dear Therapist, in particular because many of the topics it covers apply to our middle or high school students. Some examples include, “Dear Therapist: My Mom Won’t Stop Pressuring Me to Get Better Grades” (Gottlieb, 2020b), “Dear Therapist: My Boyfriend Won’t Let Me Have Male Friends” (Gottlieb, 2020a) and “Dear Therapist: Should My Parents Get Divorced?” (Gottlieb, 2020c).

To receive advice from the expert, writers have to go beyond asking a simple question. They must also use personal narrative to tell the story behind what led them to the question. Thus, this starter project allows students to practice the skills they will need to show how they arrived at the big questions they will explore if you choose to have them do an inquiry, investigation, or experiment-based project later in the unit.

Although some students may be totally comfortable sharing how their life experiences have led to questions about how they should handle a situation, not everyone will be. If this is the case, offer some alternatives. Students could write a Dear Therapist inquiry through the voice of a character in a novel or short story they recently read. You might also encourage them to think

of other types of inquiries, as not all have to be about serious topics like divorce. Instead, you may prompt students to think of a difference in opinion they have with a friend and write a letter asking the therapist how to approach discussing it with the friend.

While writing the inquiry prepares students for work inside this unit, we cannot ignore how valuable the opportunity might be to have students also answer the inquiries of their peers. Students could use their own personal experiences to lay out what they believe the inquirer should do. While this activity would be more suitable for the work done in the previous chapter, it would be an opportunity for students to see the similarities and differences between different craft moves writers utilize when using personal narrative for distinct purposes. You might also consider asking students to write inquiries in one unit and then saving them to answer in another unit.

Investigative Poll

When we think of an investigation, we tend to think of a long process that can span many months or possibly years. While this is sometimes the case, an investigation can also be a short process once a question is answered or a conclusion is reached. A poll is one way to condense the investigative process and allow students to go through the motions before conducting a more complex examination of a topic.

For this activity, students could work in groups to come up with a question that could be answered by polling the rest of the class or another group of people (on social media, perhaps). Students will each need to have a personal reason why they arrived at their question. For example, one group might each have a story about how TikTok helped them find a new novel to read. They may then decide to poll their class to discover what other resources are available to help students find new books to read.

We love the idea of having students present the findings of their poll through an infographic. Polls can be created by reading information found in a study or by utilizing information students have gathered themselves. Students can create a chart or other type of graphic to visually represent the answer they reached to their question. Have your students present the results of their investigation to the class and require them to use personal narrative while speaking to show how they arrived at their question and their reactions to the results of the poll. This will allow them to practice the craft moves they will use with a larger investigation later in the unit.

Vocabulary Challenge

While it may seem at first glance that our students all use the same set of words and phrases to communicate, vocabulary is highly individualized based on a person’s unique background and life experiences. A student whose family raises pigs may be familiar with the terms boar, gilt, and sow, while the student sitting right across from them may have never heard these words. Instead, this student may have grown up helping with the family furniture business and be comfortable using terms that baffle their peers such as chifforobe, chaise, and bureau.

The Allusionist (Zaltzman, 2015) is a podcast that explores how language defines its users. Each episode contains personal stories that explore what a person, group, or society’s choice in words says about their character and values. For example, the episode titled “Name v. Law” (Zaltzman, 2018) contains stories of individuals in Iceland who encountered obstacles while naming their children; as it turns out, Iceland has a list of approved names from which parents are required to choose. This raises questions about the power of a name and who should have the authority to decide what we call ourselves.

This episode (and others) of The Allusionist (Zaltzman, 2015, 2018) is a great springboard for helping students see the many branches of inquiry that can spring from a study of vocabulary. Students could work in groups to create their own products that explore how and why certain slang words and phrases have recently gained popularity. These explorations should contain personal stories that highlight experiences they have had with the phrases.

Another option for a project involving vocabulary inquiry is to have students participate in one of the New York Times’s vocabulary challenges. Each month, the Learning Network sponsors a different contest with the goal of students learning new, meaningful vocabulary found in the pages of the Times. Some of their contests easily lend themselves to also having students practice skills involving personal narrative, like writing a story using their words of the day or inventing a new word and defending why it is necessary. Each contest contains past winners that you can use as mentor texts, if you choose to go this direction.

At this point, we hope you have a summative project in mind for your students . As you think about how to best prepare your students to do the work in their final project, we invite you to consider the following

y Which starter project will best prepare students for the writing they will do in the summative assessment?

y Are there connections or parallels between one of the starter projects and the summative assessment I have chosen?

y How much practice do my students need before getting into the summative assessment? Is a starter project a necessary part of the process?

After deciding how to answer those questions, check out one of the unit-planning templates (pages 47–49) They will help you make decisions about how the starter project may fit into the sequence of your instruction

Sample Unit Plan: The Experimental Narrative

Figure 4.4 (page 114) is a sampling of how you might conduct the experimental narrative project outlined earlier in this chapter in your classroom. This example uses all three of our experimental narrative mentor texts and some of the craft moves we introduced. When Paige taught this unit to her freshmen, she used a modified variation of the unit shown in this figure. Before getting to the writing, however, she began by reading Dragon Hoops (Yang, 2020) in full with students to target some of her course’s reading goals. She also chose to target speaking and listening goals by having students present their experimental narrative projects to the class. Therefore, the overarching theme of the quarter became experimental narrative, while the writing unit was only a portion of this period of time. If it’s right for your students, you may also consider extending this project into a larger unit of study that also addresses other skills. However, if you only want to focus on writing, a version of the unit outlined in figure 4.4 may be a better option. An explanation of each entry follows the figure.

Unit Goals

y Students will be able to form an essential question that contains a measurable goal for experimentation

y Students will be able to clearly break down the process of their experiment from beginning to end

y Students will be able to use a variety of writing techniques to incorporate personal narrative and reflection while discussing the experiment

Day One Day Two Day Three Day Four Day Five

Week One Skills Workshop: Forming Questions Skills Workshop: Forming Questions

Week Two

Week Three

Exploring Mentor Texts: Little and Often (Preszler, 2021), pp 93–97

Drafting and Conferring Preliminary Reflection

Week Four

Week Five

Drafting and Conferring Halfway Point Reflection

Exploring Mentor Texts: I’ll Have What She’s Having (Harrington, 2015), pp 49–56

Drafting and Conferring Targeted Skill: Forming Questions

Drafting and Conferring Targeted Skill: Well, Here Goes

Revising: The Big Three Revision Activity

Revising: The Big Three Revision Activity

Starter Project: Investigative Poll

Exploring Mentor Texts: Dragon Hoops (Yang, 2020), Prologue

Drafting and Conferring

Targeted Skill: Set the Parameters

Drafting and Conferring Targeted Skill: Maybe I’m Wrong

Revising: The Big Three Revision Activity

4.4: Sample experimental narrative unit plan

Starter Project: Investigative Poll

Exploring Mentor Texts: Craft Move Chart

Starter Project: Investigative Poll

Planning: Outline the Experiment

Drafting and Conferring Targeted Skill: Get to the Gist

Drafting and Conferring Targeted Skill: Sum It Up

Editing Activity: The AAAWWUBBIS Comma

Drafting and Conferring Targeted Skill: Evidence Story

Drafting and Conferring Targeted Skill: The Not-SoSatisfying Conclusion

Final Reflection Activity: Read and Discuss

FIGURE

Week One

Developing and exploring deep questions is an essential skill in this unit. Students practice these skills briefly in a skills workshop and more extensively later in the week, when they conduct their own investigative polls and discuss their results with the class. They are also introduced to the formative assessment and assigned their own experiments this week so they are ready to write about them next week.

Day One: Skills Workshop, Forming Questions

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to write about something they’ve always wanted to make, try, or learn. Why are they interested in this undertaking?

y Because students will be conducting an experiment in this unit, they need to know about it now so they can complete the experiment before it is time to draft and confer during week three. Explain that they will be conducting an experiment in which they must make, try, or learn something new, and then they will be writing about their experience. We recommend having them submit a project proposal by day three of this week so you can let them know if their project has been approved by day four or five. This gives them a week on their own time to conduct the experiment.

y Discuss what makes a strong essential question for an experiment. Explain that experiments tend to identify goals that are measurable. In other words, there will be a clear goal and a way to determine whether or not the goal has been met.

y Provide examples of some sample questions (both measurable and not) and lead students in discussing why each option works or does not work.

Day Two: Skills Workshop, Forming Questions

y As a notebook prompt, provide an image from the New York Times or a similar publication. The Roddy Mackay photograph at http://tinyurl.com/y324xxcn comes from the article “Why Did 488 Golden Retrievers Gather in Scotland?” (Newman, 2023) and works well for this prompt. Ask students to write a list of questions they have about the image. What do they want to know?

y Give each student a sticky note. Have them anonymously write an essential question they are thinking of using for the unit on the note and stick it somewhere in the room.

y In groups, ask students to gallery walk around the room to look at each note. Groups should draw a star on the notes that contain essential questions they find acceptable. If they have a concern about it, they should write an exclamation point.

y Collect the sticky notes and discuss. Begin with a few that received all stars and ask students to explain why these are strong essential questions. Then, discuss the notes with one or more exclamation points. As a class, revise the questions so they are measurable.

y If time permits, allow students to work on their proposals.

Day Three: Starter Project, Investigative Poll

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to make a list of questions that come to mind when they hear or see the word holiday. (Note that you can easily replace holiday with another topic.)

y Have a discussion with students about their responses to the notebook prompt.

y In groups, students should use what they wrote in their notebooks or topics brought up during the discussion to write one essential, measurable question about holidays. This should be a question for which they can collect and represent data. Encourage groups to choose a topic in which one or more of them have a personal connection; this will allow them to practice utilizing personal narrative later.

y After approving each group’s question, have students create a poll they can use to collect data from a group of people prior to class tomorrow. Be sure to provide guidelines for how many responses they need, who is allowed to respond, and so on. We recommend Poll Everywhere (www.polleverywhere.com) or Google Forms (www.google.com/forms/ about) to create electronic polls.

Day Four: Starter Project, Investigative Poll

y As a notebook prompt, provide students with an infographic such as “How Many Friends Should I Have?” (www.instagram.com/p/CVTKXX4L3U4) from Mona Chalabi (2021) on Instagram. Ask students what they notice about the information. What questions do they still have?

y At this point, students should have data that provide them with an answer to the inquiry they began with. Students should represent these data visually on an infographic. Show some examples of infographics in class to get them started.

y We like the program Piktochart (https://piktochart.com) for infographics. From past experience, students do not need much instruction on how to use the program and are able to work independently with the templates provided.

y Groups should also prepare to present their questions and findings to the class. Emphasize they will need to tell the story of how they arrived at the questions and share any personal experiences related to the question during class tomorrow.

Day Five: Starter Project, Investigative Poll

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to analyze the results of their poll. Was anything surprising about their results? What other questions do they have now that they see the results to this poll?

y This day is dedicated to presenting infographics to the class. As students present, be sure to use positive reinforcement when they incorporate personal narrative, especially when they do so in a captivating way. For example, you may say something such as, “I enjoyed how Molly told us about her family tradition of setting out a stocking full of treats for her dog each year on Christmas. This really speaks to our culture; we are starting to treat our pets more and more like family members. This story helped me understand why this group’s question about how people celebrate holidays with pets is important to consider.”

y Let students know if their experimental narrative projects are approved and confer with those that are not. Encourage students to begin conducting their experiments. These should be complete prior to the start of class on week three, day one.

Week Two

This week, students become familiar with the different ways a writer can approach the experimental narrative. They look at three unique mentor texts and consider each attempt to create, try, or learn something new. They will end the week by making plans for documenting their own experiments.

Day One: Exploring Mentor Texts, Little and Often (Preszler, 2021)

y As a notebook prompt, show students the video “Building a Canoe, and Ties to His Late Father” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW4x5dRLPesCBS; Sunday Morning, 2021). This is a CBS interview with Trent Preszler about his experience. Then, have students respond to the video in writing. What stood out to them in the interview? What surprised them? In what ways could they relate to Preszler’s experience?

y Introduce Preszler’s (2021) Little and Often and read the excerpt (pp. 93–97) together.

y Invite students to respond to the text like readers. What in the text stood out to them? What surprised them?

y Lead students in reading the text like writers. Ask students to point out what they noticed about the way the text was written. How does the excerpt begin and end? How did Preszler use language to show the myriad emotions he felt after his father’s death?

Day Two: Exploring Mentor Texts, I’ll Have What She’s Having (Harrington, 2015)

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to describe an off-the-wall food they have tried or have always wanted to try. What sparked their interest in this dish?

y Introduce Rebecca Harrington’s (2015) I’ll Have What She’s Having and read the excerpt (pp. 49–56) together.

y Invite students to respond to the text like readers. What in the text stood out to them? What surprised them?

y Lead students in reading the text like writers. Ask students to point out what they noticed about the way the text was written. How does the excerpt begin and end? How did Harrington use language used to show her attitude toward the food experiment?

Day Three: Exploring Mentor Texts, Dragon Hoops (Yang, 2020)

y As a notebook prompt, provide students with an image from Dragon Hoops (Yang, 2020). A good example is the image that focuses on the groups in the faculty lunchroom on page 5. Ask students what they notice. How does this image relate to the theme of the unit they’re working on? How can they relate to this image?

y Introduce Gene Luen Yang’s (2020) Dragon Hoops and read the prologue together.

y Invite students to respond to the text like readers. What in the text stood out to them? What surprised them?

y Lead students in reading the text like writers. Ask students to point out what they noticed about the way the text was written. How does the excerpt begin and end? How did Yang use language to show the internal struggle that led to his decision to learn more about basketball?

Day Four: Exploring Mentor Texts, Craft Move Chart

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to reflect on the mentor texts they read during this unit. Which experiment speaks to them most and why?

y In groups, students should complete the reproducible “Craft Move Chart” (page 45). Each group should identify two structural moves (things the writer does to set up or move through the text) and two language moves (things the writer does to convey emotion or hold the reader’s attention). There is an example of a language move in the first row of the chart. (Earlier in the chapter, we mentioned craft moves that you can teach in this genre. However, we also like students to identify craft moves themselves to engage in the process of building their own knowledge through inquiry before we explicitly teach moves to them.)

Day Five: Planning, Outline the Experiment

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to write a paragraph using one of the moves they found yesterday.

y Begin by having each group share one or two of the moves they have on their charts with the rest of the class. Create a class list of craft moves as a resource during the unit.

y Have students converse with a partner about the experiment they will complete prior to the next class period. Encourage them to focus their conversation on how to best tell the story of their personal experiment.

y Students should create an outline for how they will discuss the details of their experiment. You could have them look back at the mentor texts and create a template on a document that they can fill in and modify next week when they begin writing their experimental narratives.

Week Three

During this week, students draft their experimental narratives. As they write, they learn new craft moves to apply to their writing and check in with the teacher for further writing support.

Day One: Drafting and Conferring

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to identify at least one structural move and one language move they plan to try in their experimental narrative. Why do they think these moves will work with what they’re trying to convey? How do they plan to use them? (Reflecting on how they want to set up their writing will encourage students to think about how to begin writing. It is our hope this notebook prompt will allow them to get started.)

y Encourage students to consider how their notebook reflection might apply to their experimental narratives. Prompt them to continue drafting their projects. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Day Two: Drafting and Conferring

y Explain that students will need to reveal their essential question for their experiment to the reader somewhere early in their writing. Show them examples of these moves from earlier: Contrary to Popular Belief (page 91), Questions Aplenty (page 91), and How We Got Here (page 92).

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to reflect on the three approaches to formulating questions shown today. Which do they think might work best for their topic? Have them explain.

y Encourage students to consider how one of these moves might work for them in their drafts. Students should continue drafting their experimental narratives. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Day Three: Drafting and Conferring

y Teach students the Set the Parameters move by showing them the example from I’ll Have What She’s Having (Harrington, 2015).

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to imitate the Set the Parameters move in their notebook, using the mentor text as a guide.

y Encourage students to consider incorporating this move into their experimental narratives. Prompt them to continue drafting their experimental narratives. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Day Four: Drafting and Conferring

y Show students the excerpt from The Less People Know About Us (Betz-Hamilton, 2019) we used for the craft move Get to the Gist (page 92). Ask students what they notice about the writing. Why is Betz-Hamilton’s narrowing in on a check that her mother wrote so revealing?

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to think of an image or object that strongly represents why they chose to do their experiment. Students should practice describing this image or object in a way that will reveal the purpose in their experiment.

y Encourage students to consider whether this move might work as part of their experimental narratives. Prompt them to continue drafting their experimental narratives. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Day Five: Drafting and Conferring

y Show or play the excerpt from The Loudest Girl in the World (Ober, 2022c) we used to illustrate the move Evidence Story. Ask students to consider why Ober provided background information about the history of autism in the form of a story.

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to reflect on what events in their life led them to choose this topic for an experiment. Using Ober’s (2022c) example as a guide, students should think of how they could represent these events as a story.

y Encourage students to consider whether this move might work as part of their experimental narratives. Prompt them to continue drafting their experimental narratives. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Week Four

This week is a continuation of last week. Students continue drafting, learning new craft moves to apply to their writing, and receiving support from you through conferences.

Day One: Drafting and Conferring

y As a notebook prompt, remind students that they are halfway through drafting. Ask students to reflect on their progress so far. What are they proud of? What needs additional work? What kind of support do they need during conferences? What craft moves from their chart, our class chart, or the minilessons have they already utilized? Which ones do they still plan to use?

y Have students share their reflections with a partner aloud. During their conversations, ask them to, together, identify what their most important goal should be for the week ahead.

y Prompt students to consider their reflections as they continue drafting. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Day Two: Drafting and Conferring

y Show students the excerpt from I’ll Have What She’s Having (Harrington, 2015) that shows the Well, Here Goes craft move (page 94). Ask them what they notice about the excerpt and discuss the craft move. How can showing uncertainty in writing be helpful?

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to think about their own uncertainties going into this project. How can they best represent them in their experimental narrative?

y Encourage students to consider whether this move might work as part of their experimental narratives. Prompt them to continue drafting their experimental narratives. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Day Three: Drafting and Conferring

y Explain that the move Maybe I’m Wrong is another way to show uncertainty and humanity in writing. Show students the example (page 94) of this craft move from Dragon Hoops (Yang, 2020).

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to closely imitate the style Yang (2020) uses in the excerpt (page 94). Students should use repetition at the beginning of sentences and end with a question.

y Encourage students to consider whether this move might work as part of their experimental narratives. Prompt them to continue drafting their experimental narratives. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Day Four: Drafting and

Conferring

y Teach the Sum It Up move by showing students the example of the final paragraph of the “Garfield Eats—You Shouldn't” (Spaloss, 2020) excerpt (page 94). Ask them to consider why her approach is brief and straightforward.

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to write their own version of the mentor text they examined today, clearly summarizing the outcome of their experiment.

y Encourage students to consider whether this move might work as part of their experimental narratives. Prompt them to continue drafting their experimental narratives. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Day Five: Drafting and Conferring

y As a notebook prompt, have students write a list of questions they still have or new questions they have after completing their experiments.

y Show the example (page 95) from The Trojan Horse Affair (Reed, 2022) to illustrate the Not-So-Satisfying Conclusion move to students. Ask them to consider how they might close with uncertainties about their experiments.

y Encourage students to consider whether this move might work as part of their experimental narratives. Prompt them to continue drafting their experimental narratives. As they work, confer with individuals to offer personalized support.

Week Five

Students end the unit by engaging in a revision activity that requires them to continue applying craft moves from the unit to targeted areas of their drafts. They also polish their work in an editing workshop and acknowledge the strengths of peer drafts.

Day One: Big Three Revision Activity

y Ask students to reread their drafts from beginning to end. This should just be a readthrough without revision or editing. It may help to have them read it aloud.

y Have students highlight three areas they would like to address in revision. These could be single sentences or whole paragraphs.

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to discuss the three areas for revision they have chosen. Why do they feel these areas of their writing need more attention and consideration?

Day Two: Big Three Revision Activity

y Have students share their draft with a partner. Students should read over their partners’ drafts.

y Prompt students to discuss the three areas they have chosen to focus on with their partners.

y Encourage students to return to the craft moves they have studied throughout the unit. They can look at their annotations on the mentor texts, their craft move charts, and their notebooks for resources. Together, each partnership should identify a new approach for the selected areas of revision focus.

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to write about their plan for revising their selected sections. What will their approach be to each revision? Why?

Day Three: Big Three Revision Activity

y Students should go into their drafts and make the three revisions they have been planning with their partners.

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to reflect on each of the three revisions they made in their draft today. What moves did they make? Did they stick to their revision plan? Why or why not? Why is their writing better now than it was before this activity?

y Instead of reflecting on revision in the notebook, consider having students do this as comments within the draft. This will help you consider what they revised when you read over their writing.

Day Four: Editing Focus, the AAAWWUBBIS Comma

y A common error we see in student writing is the lack of a comma after a dependent clause at the beginning of a sentence. This is commonly known as the AAAWWUBBIS comma because it is typically seen in writing that begins with the words after, although, as, when, while, until, before, because, if, and since. (for example, Because it is snowing, we’ll need to get out the shovels). Students often omit this comma or separate the dependent clause from the independent clause with a period.)

y Do a quick minilesson to show students this move.

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to write an AAAWWUBBIS sentence about an upcoming event at school.

y If time permits, have some students share their sentences.

y Have students select an editing partner to read over their drafts. As they read, they should only look for and highlight this error. It may be tempting to point out other errors, but this should be the focus.

y Students should return to their original documents and fix the errors. At this point, they may fix any other errors they notice that are not AAAWWUBBIS-related issues.

Day Five: Final Reflection, Read and Discuss

y Before class, create a platform for students to share their work with the rest of the class. We like to have students post a link to their Google Docs onto Padlet, but there are other programs you can use.

y Give students time to browse one another’s papers, narrowing in and reading a few that are particularly interesting to them.

y As a notebook prompt, ask students to reflect on what they saw as they browsed their classmates’ work. In a good way, what stood out? What did they learn from others that they appreciate? Is there anything another writer tried that they might want to try in the future?

y Lead a discussion about the narratives, encouraging students to recognize other writers for the successes they had in the unit.

y Congratulate students on completing the unit. Offer words of encouragement at having completed an experiment and reflected on the results.

Closing Thoughts

An analytical essay is a staple of every English language arts classroom. Though the focus is usually on literary analysis, the skills required are imperative in the classroom and beyond. We want our students to be able to analyze the information they take in, understand all the levels of a message, and respond in kind. Allowing students to include their own stories in such analysis is a natural extension of our current goals. The author’s experiences throughout the analysis lend a personal touch to today’s writing that readers crave.

Personal narrative has taken a backseat to other forms of writing in the English language arts classroom, such as research essays and literary analysis. However, this format enables students to send a message, answer questions, fight for change, and reflect on experiences. In Their Stories, Their Voices: Using Personal Narrative to Empower Student Writers, Grades 6–12, Kourtney Hake and Paige Timmerman show how personal narrative harnesses students’ natural urge to tell stories. The authors channel that instinct into a step-by-step, customizable process that helps students excel as they use their own experiences to navigate the world and create authentic writing.

Readers will:

• Help students understand how they can use words to inform others, analyze difficult questions, persuade others to make changes for good, and allow for valuable reflection

• Receive an extensive list of contemporary mentor texts for different narrative purposes—send a message, answer questions, fight for change, and reflect

• Learn how to hold a writer’s workshop in the classroom to allow student writers to explore and receive feedback

• Take advantage of sample unit plans and try them in their own classrooms

• Use personal narrative in sensitive ways while considering student trauma, diversity of voices, and applicability to all learners

“The kind of book you want to buy for every first-year English teacher, Their Stories, Their Voices is a well-organized and practical approach to bring the personal narrative back to its rightful place at the center of the rhetorical universe of your classroom. Students will thank you.”

—LIZ PRATHER

Author, Story Matters: Teaching Teens to Use the Tools of Narrative to Argue and Inform; Writing Teacher, School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Lexington, Kentucky

“Investing in student narrative pays dividends. Their Stories, Their Voices both emphasizes the importance of this type of writing and provides teachers with practical methods and resources for developing this kind of writing. From using narrative as a means to persuade to creating memoirs, Their Stories, Their Voices empowers teachers to harness the power of student voice to develop young writers.”

—RACHEL SWAIN

American Literature and AP English Language Arts Teacher, ITW David Speer Academy, Chicago, Illinois

“In Their Stories, Their Voices, Hake and Timmerman flip what we think we know about narrative writing upside down, showing us that our personal stories can help us fulfill nearly any purpose or intention we have in writing. This book has it all: mentor texts, lesson sequences, calendars. This book is so rich with ideas and resources that it is a teacher’s one-stop shop for teaching narrative writing—not just for one school year, but for many years to come. I anticipate it will live on the corner of my desk where I can grab it and use it constantly in my classroom.”

—REBEKAH O’DELL

Coauthor, A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, 6–12; English Teacher, St. Michael’s Episcopal School, Richmond, Virginia