Writing Hope Strategies for Writing Success in Secondary Schools: A Strengths-Based Approach to Teaching Writing

This book provides ways of thinking about the teaching of writing in secondary schools (with applications to college writing) and shares research-based strategies for immediate use in the classroom. The strengths-based, classroom-tested, student-centered writing hope strategies shared within the Writing Hope Framework (WHF) are designed to allow students to work within their own unique writing processes and insert their individual writers’ voices and styles authentically. The Writing Hope Framework allows students to choose which strategies and stages of the writing process they wish to engage in for purposeful writing goal attainment; it recognizes unique writing approaches and accounts for these differences in curricular design and implementation. Teachers can assess the writing abilities and self-beliefs of the students in their classes using a variety of strategies provided and then guide students in their pathways selection processes for writing.
Given the nature of this research and its application, it is the intention of this book to bring readers through a process of hope that can facilitate life hope and writing hope in the classroom for and with students. Hope is not exclusively for the already hopeful students; it is also, and perhaps more critically, for those students who do not presently see hope in their lives but who can. Every student is capable of hope if it is facilitated effectively and purposefully. This book is divided into four sections that each contribute to understanding ways of building writing hope in secondary school classrooms. In all sections, each chapter ends with discussion questions and teacher or student testimonies. The lists of discussion questions may be useful for educators to consider in professional learning communities or in independent reflections and can be adapted as writing prompts for secondary school and/or college students as they engage in the discourse and discovery of writing hope.