I want to reflect on the ideas in this post at greater length, so I’ll probably be back to write a third comment. 🙂 But my initial comment – part 2 of 3? – will be that you’ve posed some really interesting questions about how to differentiate for writers in my classroom.

I think that writing workshop can be a way of addressing some of these questions, but the deeper question, I think, is: how do we define success as a writer for our students?
Or perhaps put another way, invoking my particular context: why are we (in the U.S., “we” would be policymakers, district leaders, administrators, and teachers) defining success without inviting input from the students themselves?

All right, I know part of the answer to this question: because the powers-that-be are more interested in creating workers and consumers for their corporations than in educating citizens to take part in a democracy or supporting human beings in achieving their potential. So to put the question another way: how do educators dissent with and resist this reductive approach to education, and how do we replace that model with an approach that honors students as citizens (in the broad sense of the term, not the legal sense; this is a loaded word in Southern California, and one I use with care) or community members and, above all, as people?

Is this question different in your context, Maha, and if so, how?