I confess: I don't know what to write about.

First blog post. The pressure. Gah. As I sit next to my less-than-tired toddler trying to convince her she needs to go to sleep, I’m mentally drafting what I should write about. I’m drawing a blank. She smiles at me and starts to squirm out of bed. She’s got plans and they don't include doing what I ask--the first of which is digging through my bedside drawer. As I watch her toss  my ear plugs (don’t judge, my husband snores!) over her shoulder, I realize I really am stumped. Maybe I just won’t do this whole blog thing.

What have I gotten myself into? I mean, I love to write. I do. But the truth is, I’ve lost my writing muse. I haven’t written in a hot minute. I’m an imposter. So here it is. I confess. I don’t know what to write. Truth is, I have 1 million ideas. But none of them seem to come to fruition as I start to try to put them on the page. They fall apart. And I’m left staring at the screen—blinking cursor mocking me. And then I wonder, how often do our students feel this way? How often do their ideas flounder between little blue lines only to dissolve into apathy? How often do they give up because they just don’t know that perseverance is often what writing is all about?

I recall a brief, but important, exchange I had with a brilliant colleague today. We were talking about this venture of writing for 31 days and she mentioned that “coming up with ideas always seems to be the hardest part.” I agreed. Then she quickly quipped, “it’s almost like we were conditioned to need a prompt.” She was being tongue-in-cheek, BUT SHE IS RIGHT. Isn’t it true that we are slowly murdering our students’ creativity when we pigeonhole them into writing the thing that we want them to write rather than letting them write what moves them? Something they love? Instead we give them prompts like, “imagine you’re stuck on a desert island....blah blah...” (you get the idea) and expect them to be inspired. This was how it was for me. And, if I’m being transparent, this is something I did with my students for years until I learned to do better.

And since we know better...why are we still doing it? Why are we forcing their hands in writing things they don’t care about? Why do we do this to them when we ourselves are suffering the consequences of the same? Yes, I know they still have to write research papers. But, why can’t they write them about something they actually care about? Why does it have to be off the “approved list of topics”? Why can’t we let them take risks? Isn’t that the way that we grow their thinking and their writing and their creativity? Isn’t that the way we make them better than us?

I know I don't have all the answers. But, I do know that we need to stop forcing kids to write to ridiculous prompts and about things that don’t matter to them. If we don’t, we’re going to end up with another generation 40 something moms laying next to their toddler struggling to come up with something to write about. Let’s break that cycle, shall we?