Guest Blogger Rachael Walker is the Outreach Consultant for Reading Rockets, a national multimedia initiative which aims to inform and inspire parents, teachers, childcare providers, and others who touch the life of a child by providing comprehensive, accessible information on how to teach kids to read and help those who struggle. Rachael began her career in children’s literacy at Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), has also served as a consultant to the NEA’s Read Across America campaign, and was most recently the Executive Director of Reach Out and Read of Metro DC.

My oldest started middle school this year and he had to complete a questionnaire for his English teacher about his reading and writing habits. When I looked at his answers, I told him that I couldn’t understand why he “loved” reading but “hated” writing. Didn’t he realize that what he so enjoyed reading was someone else’s writing? The classic pre-teen eye roll was his response.

I know my son isn’t alone in his disdain for writing. There are many reasons why students avoid writing. The one I most often hear is that it takes too long, and–like everything else these days–it’s boring.

But I also know that he gets frustrated because he’s not good at spelling and he can’t write fast enough to keep up with all his ideas. When he was really having handwriting difficulties, we encouraged him to record his ideas and then listen to them, or sometimes I would write down what he said and then he’d have an outline to work from.

Thanks to his new English teacher, I see now that what he was really missing was strong writing instruction. In this classroom, he doesn’t feel threatened, rushed, or insecure. Rather than traditional outlining, he’s been given interesting prewriting strategies to choose from. He’s learning how to share his writing and actually chose to share during an inspired field to the park to interpret nature poetry written in class. He’s building skills slowly and in the process, is coming to see that he actually does have something to write about and he’s not bad at doing it.

All this makes me feel like celebrating. So how perfect is it that October 20 is the first National Day on Writing? The National Council of Teachers of English established the Day and also the National Gallery of Writing where they are collecting all kinds of writing from all kinds of people.

Reading Rockets and AdLit.org are asking for writing, too. The Exquisite Prompt is a series of monthly writing challenges for kids in grades K-12. The writing prompts are inspired by the 18 authors and illustrators participating in the Exquisite Corpse Adventure, a rollicking new serial story sponsored by the Library of Congress and the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance.

For kids following the Exquisite Corpse Adventure, we’re providing a meaningful writing opportunity and some insight into the reading-writing connection. Why should Jon Scieszka, Katherine Paterson, M.T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, and Nikki Grimes provide all the fun? We can’t wait to see how kids flex their own writing muscles.