Finding the Writer

I spent many years as a vibrant, motivated fifth grade teacher, all the while having no idea how to teach writing. It seemed a mystery, how one child could get words to flow on a page and another could not. I came from a single “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up” essay a year, at the most. Voracious reading did not make me a fluent writer, nor did my mastery of Warriner’s English Grammar. I winced my way through Advanced Exposition for my Liberal Arts degree, and my courses for my teaching certification did little to enlighten me.