How private are writers notebooks?
What would you do if one of your students wrote “do not read” on the pages of his or her writer’s notebook? If you did read those pages and found something disturbing, what actions would you take? We put that scenario to three of our authors. Here are their responses: Kelly Gallagher, author of Reading Reasons, Deeper Reading, and Teaching Adolescent Writers, believes that writer’s notebooks and their privacy are sacred. “I think all artists, writers included, need a special place to dabble, to experiment, to fail without fear of someone else reading what’s been written,” Kelly says. In his high school English classroom in Anaheim, California the rule is that Kelly reads only those entries flagged by students. “Eventually, after much writing has been generated, each student chooses something promising from the writer’s notebook and brings it out in the light for more drafting and revision. It is at that point I will see writing from each student, but the majority of the writing in the
