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One of the items asked teachers to: on the survey, I asked the teachers at the school to complete a short survey for me, before leading a staff development workshop on writing at an elementary school.

Write three words that describe how you feel when you teach writing to students.

Here are a few of the answers I received:

Teacher 1 Can't make Me!

Teacher 2 No No No

Teacher 3 No Not Today!

Teacher 4 Anything else please!

Just not writing, they will ask to teach any other content area! I have learned that teachers either love to teach writing or they really despise it, in my twelve years of leading staff writing workshops.

Why is this?

So how can you expect to teach something that you yourself are not comfortable doing or skilled at doing? They were never taught how to write themselves, even worse. First and foremost is that most teachers were never taught how to teach writing. My unscientific research has led me to several easy answers.

Writing is personal. Grading a paper often can mean hurting the feelings of the writer or not understanding the meaning of the writer. There is no right and wrong answer, plus with writing. The grammar and the punctuation to be perfect, they want the wording. Writing can be a creative time but teachers and students are often too focused on "getting it right". Many students share the feeling that writing is not a fun time, unfortunately. Hard and too subjective to grade students' writings once they are complete, teaching writing is not fun because it is long, lastly. Teachers overwhelmingly agree that getting kids to reread and revise their writing is too hard, secondly.

Games and letter tiles paved the way to more creative learning time, boring subject until raps, spelling was another dry. Games and songs to teach math skills, hands-on manipulatives, then teachers and companies developed fun. Rote memory time of the day, math used to be viewed as a boring.

It is time to put the fun back into writing.

Once a week encourage students to read aloud their favorite journal entry. Encourage students to take their journals with them outside during recess or home over the weekend. It is a student's chance to write their thoughts on paper without worry of anyone reading it or grading it. Journal time is grade-free, whether they give the students a prompt or allow students to freely write. Teachers need to start with daily journal time.

Let the children hear the fun you have with writing. Read aloud your favorite journal entries, as a teacher. They begin to value and enjoy it, when they see a teacher valuing and enjoying journal time. Students watch everything teachers do. Teachers need to write in a journal, during journal time, most importantly.

Allow them to decorate them and personalize them. Make the journals individual works of the students.

Middle and end by using an organizer, teach students how to group their writing ideas into a beginning. Brainstorm ideas before starting and list the ideas on the board. Fun topics together, write about engaging. Move into modeled group writing, once students begin to relax and feel comfortable with journaling.

Don't worry about grading everything that students write - worry about making the kids want to write, again! Offer tokens or learning incentives to students for each idea they have to revise their content. Model for students the thinking process that goes into revising and editing. Revise and edit it together. Use an overhead projector to create stories together as a class.

Make it a game to fill the wall with unique words. Encourage students to look through newspapers and magazines to find more words to add to the wall. Keep a list of the classes' favorite unusual adjectives and verbs, on the wall in your classroom. Encourage them to use a thesaurus and find unusual words and descriptions. Make the process fun for students by letting them work in small groups or with a buddy. Not a one-shot activity, help students realize that writing is a process. Work with the students to think through story ideas and add more or less detail where necessary.

Listen for precise details and descriptions and applaud their creativity, journals and paragraphs, as students read aloud their stories.

Allow students the freedom to experiment with their writing style without risk of failure. Point out the positives in writing and encourage more. A teacher's job is to find the areas that are good quality and to build on them. There will always be areas to improve, with writing.

Integrate writing throughout the school day. Teach writing while organizing science reports and creating social studies brochures. There are many areas of writing to teach, from attention-grabbing opening sentences to fluid transition words. Work on building strong sentences one day and work on writing an editorial the next. Vary writing activities.

In a hallway or in the local coffee shop, display excellent examples of writing on a bulletin board. Let the student pick which writing of the week he wants to have graded, at the end of the week. Don't grade everything students write.

The writing center should reflect the creative environment students need to have fun with writing. Etc, mechanical pencils, paper cut into shapes, carbon paper, a typewriter, fill it with unusual writing tools - gel pens. Make sure your classroom has a writing center.

Challenging and motivating, develop a writing environment in your classroom that is fun. Be sure to allow them the chance to risk and fail and risk and succeed with writing ideas. Be sure to let them see you risk and fail and risk and succeed with writing ideas, while modeling and working with students. Writing can be a fun part of the school day if teachers and students view it as a learning process.

We can put the fun back into writing, working together.