Everyone has a Neil: Possibilities of literacy desiring in writers’ studio

Kuby, C. R., & Rucker, T. L. G. (2015). Everyone has a Neil: Possibilities of literacy desiring in writers’ studio. Language Arts, 92(5), 314-327.


Sometimes my heart and my head read an article in two different ways.

When I read Kuby and Rucker’s story of “Neil”, a child who took an unconventional path toward becoming a writer, my heart rejoiced. I loved the way the second graders in Rucker’s classroom were given the freedom to play with various materials and discover their own multimodal ways of communicating their ideas. In Neil’s case, he was able to build 3-D texts, including board games and pop-up books, as a way of composing and sharing narratives. Neil’s unconventional text forms helped break down his social isolation in the classroom, as his peers became interested in what he was doing, and he began to build collaborative, creative partnerships with peers.

I would have thrived in the classroom described here. I was an early writer, and produced written products on demand that were far advanced for my age level, but that sort of writing often did not engage me. I just sort of churned out products that received rave reviews from teachers but did not interest my peers (who called me a “teacher’s pet”), or me. I often threw those pieces, gold stars and all, into the trash as I left the school building. At home, however, I created magazines with games and stories that I “published” on tablet paper (this was way before computers were widely available) and gave to friends. I made elaborate puppet shows and wrote plays that I presented for peers. One of my teachers allowed me to present these at school, but none of my other teachers were interested.

When I began teaching, I encountered a student like Neil, and also like me. This student, like Neil, had a vivid imagination and a somewhat quirky style that adults tended to consider “off the wall” and sometimes even felt threatened by. Like Neil, my student was a social isolate who had trouble working with peers. When we wrote narratives, my student devised an entire play and built a cast of clay figures to act it out. He took pictures of many scenes with these clay characters and turned them into a slideshow which he then showed and narrated. This form of “clay animation” was the hit of our open house that spring. My student must have showed his story more than 20 times that evening. Just as with Neil, the stories were a bit enigmatic and even disturbing at times, with clay figures getting squashed and meeting violent ends. However, the student took complete ownership and pride in his work, and his mother tearfully told me she had never seen her son so animated in public before. If I had not allowed my student to do his writing in an alternative way, and had insisted on a written text, that night’s miracle would never have occurred. My student still had battles to fight. Sometimes I could give him the freedom to learn in his own way, and sometimes I was powerless. He failed that spring’s standardized tests because he did not come near finishing all of the test items. In many ways his literacy development was far more advanced than any other student’s in my class, but his test scores put him at the bottom of the group.

The account I read in this article brought all of those memories back in a rush, and my heart resonated. I have had the opportunity to meet the authors and hear them speak, and they are both dedicated, creative educators whose work I admire. I would love to teach in a classroom that was more of a “studio” than a “workshop”. In fact, I have found my own creative engagement lies more in the arts than in making written texts. Creating written texts is work. It is sometimes creative and fulfilling work, but it is work. When I am in my own multimodal art studio at home, my work is play. As with Rucker’s class, what I do in my studio is a desiring rather than a designing. The joy is in the process, and not in the product, but the irony is that when I am desiring and experiencing the process, I sometimes do come up with products that catch the attention of others, as Neil’s work did. I have had more people come to me spontaneously and comment on how my art engaged them than ever have even noticed any of the many written texts I must generate as part of my “day job” professional life.

With all this going on in my heart, you might ask, what was my head thinking? My head was feeling despair at the probability that there really can be many classrooms like Rucker’s. How many teachers will be allowed to let children play with materials and devise their own paths to creating texts? Though the authors here claim that this alternative way of doing writer’s workshop will ultimately help students meet mandated standards, I am afraid that most administrators are going to need to see evidence of that first, before they will allow elementary teachers to use the kind of approach we read about here. Kuby and Rucker were obviously in a supportive teaching environment that allowed inquiry and exploration. Not many of the teachers I know could implement this sort of writing development approach without serious questions being asked.

My heart loved the picture this article painted, but my head wondered if that picture could ever be replicated in today’s typical second grade classroom.