When I picked up Junior High Kid this afternoon, the first thing out of his mouth was, “I get to write and write and write tonight. And then when I’m done with that, I get to write some more. And when I’m done with that, I get to write even more.”
My response: okay… (This isn’t sounding too bad yet…)
Junior High Kid went on to tell me he had to write between 3,000 and 12,000 words…TONIGHT!
My response: THREE THOUSAND TO TWELVE THOUSAND WORDS IN ONE NIGHT???? Holy cow! What’s the assignment? (Mentally, I’m adding up just how many pages 3,000-12,000 words is…)
Junior High Kid said, “Well, I wrote my cover letter and addressed my envelope for the publication assignment. So now I have to write my story.”
(Ah! The Publication unit. Which started three days ago.)
My response: (silence)
I took a few deep breaths. Then, me: So…you chose your market BEFORE you wrote your story?
Junior High Kid: Yes. I chose Cicada. Stories for Cicada have to be 3,000-12,000 words long. That’s why I have a lot of writing to do.
[FYI: I looked up the guidelines from Cicada (the language arts classes didn’t actually have guidelines…they just used Writer’s Market)…their guidelines say, “Please don’t write for a junior high audience. We’re looking for complex character development, strong plots, and thought-provoking themes for young people in high school and college.” How does a kid who’s IN junior high write for a high school and college audience???]I took a few more deep breaths. Then: Do you really have to write a brand new story? Can you take one you’ve been working on and see what you can do with it?
Junior High Kid: No. None of them are 3,000-12,000 words.
Me: Do you have to submit to Cicada? Can you submit to another publication? One that takes shorter pieces?
Junior High Kid: No. I already addressed my envelope.
I am about ready to bang my head against the steering wheel here. I don’t know what to tell the kid. I wouldn’t sit down and crank out a 3,000-12,000 word story for Cicada tonight and send it out tomorrow (and I’m supposed to be an actual professional writer). How in the world is a seventh grader supposed to do that???
Junior High Kid finally said that the actual assignment was to take another piece of writing they’d done in class at some point this year and submit that, but if they didn’t like any of the things they’d done so far, they could write something new. Tonight. Junior High Kid didn’t think any of the things he’d written so far were appropriate (none of them were 3,000-12,000 words), so he didn’t think he had any choice but to write something new. By tomorrow. (He’s probably at a slight disadvantage having a mom who’s an author. I’m sure other kids aren’t stressing about whether their submissions are appropriate or not. Editors must LOVE this teacher or this school district…whoever’s brilliant idea it was to have EVERY seventh grader submit their work to a professional publication.)
BTW, his grade is based on whether he addresses the envelope properly, whether he does the cover letter right and whether he actually submits his story. It doesn’t matter what the story looks like. Though that part does matter to him. Which is good. Except for the fact it’s causing him stress.
I told him that if he wasn’t happy with anything he’d written thus far this year, it was unlikely he’d be able to whip something up in ONE NIGHT that he’d be happy with. (Especially if it had to be at least 3,000 words! Though actually, MY guidelines from Cicada say “up to 5,000 words.” It doesn’t mention a minimum word count at all.) I told him no professional author would do what he’s doing. I told him I spent my day reworking the same three pages. And finally I did something I try very hard not to do. I butted in and said, “you need to come up with a new plan. You cannot write a 3,000 word story tonight and submit it to Cicada tomorrow.”
So I helped him go through Writer’s Market again (after assuring him I would give him new stamps so he could do a new envelope…hopefully the teacher won’t mind). And we found a market that accepts poetry from kids. In fact, the ONLY poetry they accept is from kids. I do think he can write a poem tonight and submit it to this publication tomorrow. This publication doesn’t pay anywhere near as much as Cicada, but it’s a little more realistic of a market for him.
Was I wrong to butt in???
I think you needed to butt in. As a former English teacher, I can understand why the teacher is doing this assignment, but I’m completely flummoxed by the manner in which s/he is going about it.
You do understand why the teacher is doing this assignment? Could you please explain it to me?
She did give them a packet that explains how to submit your work to a publisher…and it was a pretty good packet. It covered all the basics.
I’m probably overly sensitive since this is MY line of work and it feels like she’s trampling all over it, not setting the kids up with realistic expectations (talking so much about the MONEY!), not giving them time to really research the markets and revise their work and make an appropriate submission. And I am all for showing interested kids how to submit and to encouraging them to take that step if they’re really ready…but I just don’t understand why EVERY 7th grader is submitting something to a professional publication (as opposed to a publication that specifically looks for work from kids).
So much of our job as a teacher is to make things relevant and show how the curriculm relates to an occupation. I can see how she is trying to show that writing is an occupation and that writers get things published and get paid. That’s about where my understanding ends. If I was going to do such a thing I’d start at the very beginning of the year and all the kids would know that the end goal of all the writing over the course of the year was to submit something to a publication. We’d do lots of market research, revision work, writer workshops and so forth. Giving the assignment a few weeks before the end of school and setting up this big financial expectation makes no sense at all.
I should say that it is not really the teachers’ ideas to make things relate to an occupation. That is the trend in education and is what is expected of teachers from the administrators.
Yeah, I realize that…teachers have to teach to the curriculum, regardless of how they feel about it.
“Show how the curriculum relates to an occupation.” Okay…I can understand that. I have mixed feelings about the whole money thing — on the one hand, I’m glad she’s sending the message that a writer should be PAID for his/her work, but on the other hand, these are SEVENTH graders.
I do remember that when I went to back-to-school night last fall, this teacher did mention that they would be doing a publication unit sometime this year and they would be submitting something, so it’s possible it was mentioned to the kids early in the year, too. But Junior High Kid talked about it this week as though this was the first he’d heard about it.
I like your idea of making it a year-long goal to do market research, revision, writer workshops etc. and work up to this. If it had been handled that way, I’d still wonder whether EVERY 7th grader really needs to submit work to a big publication, but I’d feel better about it than I do now.
You know, this may sort of explain why, when I talk to high school students, there seems to be this assumption that writing is a job like any other: you chose it, you do whatever you need to do to get trained in it, and then you just go on to make a living at it–all as part of one linear, predictable career path.
You’d think the teacher would have encouraged the students to submit their projects to magazines that specifically take stories from kids. Did she stress to the students that their chances of being published in a magazine like Cicada are probably zero? Seems to me there will be a lot of disappointed kids this summer.
EXACTLY my point! I would feel WAY different about this if they were submitting to markets that specifically took work from kids (and there are markets like that that pay!). But no…every 7th grader on this “team” (perhaps every 7th grader in the school!) is submitting to the exact same publications all of us are submitting to.
If other schools around the country are doing this, too, you can understand why editors talk about the slush pile the way they do, and why so many publications are closing their doors to unsolicited submissions.
I wasn’t actually in the classroom, so I can’t say what the teacher stressed or didn’t stress, but I can tell you the message Junior High Kid took from it. He came home and said “the goal is to make money from our work” and “some people are getting up to $1,000 for their stories.” And when I helped him go through Writer’s Market (and my file of actual guidelines!) to find an alternative to Cicada, he’d say, “but that one doesn’t pay as much.” So “odds of getting published” really wasn’t entering into his thought processes too much.
BTW, he did end up going with a poem rather than writing a 3,000 word story, but he decided to submit it to Cicada instead of the other market we found. For one thing, we’re not CERTAIN that other market still exists. And well…he HAD already done the envelope and he wasn’t sure he was allowed to do a new one.
I’m teaching a writing class at the library again this summer and Junior High Kid is planning on taking it. He did say last night that maybe after that class he’d submit something “for real.” So I think he understands that the odds of getting an acceptance from Cicada are pretty low, and I think he’s okay with that.
He sounds like a smart kid. He’s very lucky to have you to steer him in the right direction.
And here the poor editors are going to get all these submissions that are poorly written just for the sake of an assignment, too!
Not everyone is ever going to write publishable work, and while it’s admirable to teach kids that they can submit if they want to, requiring it seems unfair. What group of adults would we require such a thing from?
And Cicada doesn’t exist just to help kids complete assignments, either.
Exactly! And BTW, many of these students submitted work to magazines for ADULTS! Top paying ones…because the goal is “to not only get published, but to make a lot of money!”