Being a Writer

As one of the people who identified themselves as a writer in our first class, it was strange for me to read through these three articles and actually finding myself trying to make sure that I understood what being a "writer" meant. As I had previously explained, I have gone months without writing in my journal due to academic or work-related responsibilities, but I have still decided to label myself as a "writer." And I am glad I have labeled myself as one, and I feel like Cameron, the NCTE, and Thomas would all encourage me to continue that label. However, I know Cameron would definitely want me to stop making excuses for my lack of writing in the moments where I kind of just stare at my ceiling, thinking about all of the responsibilities I had to do the next day. The idea of "grabbing" really caught my attention and struck some sort of chord with me as I think about how the last date in my journal is from the beginning of this month. There are a thousand times in my day where I could've grabbed a moment to write, whether it is waiting for my ride to come pick me up to go out, or waiting the hour and a half it took for mechanics to put a new set of tires on my car. To say that was a "golden nugget" is the best description of it, and I could not help but also bring it into the other two readings.
For example, the NCTE article is all about teaching writing and that is all well and good, but "grabbing moments" kept completely interrupting my thought process as I read through. How can you teach students to "grab a moment" when they have hours of school, homework, extracurriculars, work, etc.? I'd like to say the easiest way is to give them that moment within your own classroom, but who knows how hard that is with the standards surrounding classroom time? Can grabbing a moment be writing the introductory paragraph of a persuasive essay during class, just to start getting ideas out onto paper? I'd say yes. It at least gets students to learn about certain genres of writing while also practicing their own writing in a space where writing is not discouraged in anyway. But then that brings me back to Thomas's article where he wrote "foster genre awareness in students while interrogating authentic texts (and rejecting artificial writing templates)." I think that using templates and helping students really analyze the genres of writing are a great way to get writing started in the classroom. However, I think looking past the templates and encouraging authentic exploration would be the best way to get students to really "grab the moment" and start to develop their own writer's voices as I think Thomas encourages in the article. Overall, definitely think that as a writer and as a teacher, one of the main things I need to work on for myself and teaching my students would be the idea of "grabbing a moment."