The Journey Is Everything: Teaching Essays That Students Want to Write for People Who Want to Read Them

by Katherine Bomer

"In the electric, pulsating world around us, the essay lives a life of abandon, posing questions, speaking truths, fulfilling a need humans have to know what other humans think and wonder so we can feel less alone."
-Katherine Bomer Sadly, many students only know "essay" as a 5-paragraph, tightly structured writing assignment that must check all the boxes of a standardized formula. How did essays in school get so far away from essays in the world? Katherine makes a powerful case for teaching the essay as a way to restore writing to think-that it is in fact necessary for students' success in college and career. "Essay helps students write flexibly, fluently, and with emboldened voices," she writes in The Journey Is Everything, "qualities they can translate into any assigned writing task in school or in life." She argues that the close reading of essays fulfills the recommendations of state and national standards, while practice in essay writing leads to better academic and test writing. More importantly, "Essay gives its author the space, time, and freedom to think about and make sense of things, take a journey of discovery, and speak her mind, without boundaries." Don't students deserve the chance to develop their own topics, discover their own writing voices, and learn to structure prose organically, according to the content? Katherine gives you tools, strategies, and activities to bring a unit on more authentic writing into your practice. Rediscover the power of the essay to bring out students' true thinking-their true selves. Because after all, the journey is everything.

Genres: Teaching, Nonfiction, Education, Professional Development

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 22, 2016

Reviews

[Holly Mueller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about the teaching of essay writing! It challenged my thinking and my teaching of writing. I'm still trying to grapple with Bomer's claim that teaching patterns/structures for essays is problematic. I certainly agree with her that formulas (and the rubrics that grade them) are limiting. In our reality of high stakes testing, though, it's tough not to teach kids what we think is a formula for success and to resist checking off all the parts of the essay we're teaching with a rubric. I ultimately think it's ok to do that AND THEN ALSO teach how to think and write outside the box, organically and authentically. Lots to think about! The essays included in the back are beautiful. My favorite is "You Didn't Know Me Then" by Lester Laminack. SO powerful. I'll be thinking and writing a lot more about this book as I process and practice its tenets and strategies. Looking forward to a Twitter chat with Katherine Bomer on Aug. 28th, led by Margaret Simon.

[Rose Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, this book is just really well done. The organization is logical, establishing purpose, laying out a unit design, and then providing a collection of mentor texts at the end. Her level of attention comes through in the varied examples she includes from published texts and in the quotes she works into her writing that reflect years of careful thought and synthesis.

I initially picked up this book as a counterbalance to The Writing Revolution, my district's latest obsession. Bomer's approach to writing is much more comfortable and familiar to me because it mirrors the way I was taught to teach writing--which is the way I have come to see myself as a writer. And Bomer's approach certainly is a foil to TWR. While The Writing Revolution asserts that students need to be given containers and their thoughts will grow to fit them, The Journey is Everything assumes that students already have the thoughts and need to create the containers to hold them.

I wish more teachers and coaches in my district had read The Journey is Everything so we could have more deliberate and informed conversations about the teaching of writing in our district.

[Sarah Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really more like 4.5 stars. Though my own definition of what counts as “essay” is wider than Bomer’s, she has fantastic insights and suggestions for expanding what essay looks like in the English classroom and I’m excited to try a Bomer-style essay unit this year and hand my students another opportunity for more agency in what they write. A solid read—highly recommend!

[Sarah Krajewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for any teacher that teaches essay writing. We need to get students away from basic essay formulas, and Katherine Bomer does a wonderful job easing teachers into this process. The essays in it are beautiful, and ones I will be using with students.

[Trina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish that I had this book when I started teaching. I think that I would have approached teaching young WRITERS better. Reading Katherine Bomer's book The Journey is Everything made me smarter, not just as a teacher, but it made me consider other things that I could do as a writer to enhance my own writing. In fact, this book makes me want to read and write more essays - for fun! It includes a fantastic section of guest/mentor essays in the back, including essays by Lester Laminack, Katie Wood Ray, and Georgia Heard. It is a resource that I will definitely use with teachers that I coach and writing that I will continue to come back to.

[Leigh Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a refreshing release of writing boundaries which seem to hold us hostage as teachers. It not only presents us with a much-needed replacement for the 5-paragraph essay in our writing curriculum, but it shows us how essay is the foundation for all academic writing. Essaying is writing to think, to discover and to question which is what I want for my students and even for myself as a teacher writer. This book will entice you to take a journey with essaying. A joy to read!

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Bomer's concept of the "real essay," and I'm pretty excited about the rubric I created by pulling together her ideas and ideas from Paul Graham's essay title "The Age of the Essay" (the two works have some overlap in terms of territory). Here's a short list of the qualities that Bomer and/or Graham believe are present in real essays (the list is the basis for the rubric I'm currently working with):

(Good) real essays:
- Are primarily expository, though may certainly include narrative in parts
- Begin with the exploration of a question the writer cares about pursuing and demonstrate the writer's thinking process
- Are like rivers - they meander with purpose (organic but logical structure)
- Don’t “take a position and defend it” but do provide reasonable discoveries/hypotheses/theories/ideas
- Support discoveries/hypotheses/theories/ideas with logic, reason, experience, and/or data
- Aren’t afraid to contradict themselves or challenge introduced ideas (complexity)
- Include multiple perspectives/"voices" found through reading/ short research on the essay’s focus (depth)
- Have a distinctive first-person voice
- Consider and address social and/or economic history in analysis
- Pay careful attention to language (play with language/use it in new ways)

After introducing my "real essay" project with seniors and doing a week of minilessons on the various components of the rubric (and having students read Graham's essay), a student shared this TED talk with me, which moves through and beyond the real written essay to address the real video essay, something I may want to have students try out in the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ald6L...

Overall, I felt like this book gave voice to ideas that I've been trying less skillfully to integrate into my classroom and reading it has helped me clarify those concepts (both for myself and for my students) and teach them more effectively as a result. Plus, many of the essays excerpts and full essays she includes within the text are just beautiful.

[Julie Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bomer delivers exactly what she promises...she explains specifically how to teach students how to write well (or, rather, provide opportunities for students to become writers who write essays that people want to read). She succeeds in making a case against the 5-paragraph, formulaic, academic essay, which I taught religiously for 13 years.

I was really good at teaching the formula for writing essays that students didn't want to write. I followed what was at the time considered best practice, and I did what all of the books our admins were passing off as gospel had prescribed, but my kids always became, at best, good enough writers to score a level 3 ("proficient") on their state exams. I rarely had the privilege of grading really GOOD essays, and now I know that my approach was NOT best practice at all.

This PD will tear down what you thought you knew about teaching writing, and if you are actually willing to commit to change, I can see where you will reap amazing results. Bomer inspired me to want to write, keeping my writer's notebook in my pocket (even though I don't write!). Her love of language, writing, essays, expression crawls off the page and into your own heart. I want to be in a classroom like that, and I want to write, too.

Unfortunately, I no longer teach ELA and can only support the efforts of my colleagues from the librarian role, but my fingers are crossed in hopes that the teachers in our district read and embrace the practices in this book so that our students can blossom as writers; I so wish I had read this sooner, although I do have a healthy degree of skepticism about whether or not it would have worked as she promises.

P.S. The mentor essays at the back were just what I needed today; three essays about cats and dealing with death. RIP Terrance.

[Imani Matherson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for teachers! It really expressed how important it is for teachers of writers to be written a themselves. It speaks about the practice of modeling writing for your students for motivation and inspiration. I found a better understanding of the relationship between reading and writing. The book states how you can use a students writing to determine how much they read and what they read which I never thought about. I also loved how students in the book found an outlet through writing. I would recommend for this book for teachers with any experience.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is much that is helpful in this book, but it's important to know going in that Bomer insists on the essay as originated by Montaigne, which is to say that she's far more concerned with personal essays than more academic essays. I think her pedagogy would be powerful in middle school and in creative nonfiction courses, but it's harder to know what to do with all of her ideas for the high school classroom. So I'm taking with me what I can use and not worrying so much about the whole.

[Christie Manners · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great companion to anyone following the Berkeley Writers Workshop model.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything about this book is beautiful. It has a soul, and it reminds us about what really matters when we teach essay writing.

[Ann Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a powerful and informative book! My understandings of what essays are and are not, and how we should teach students to write essays, were reframed as a result of reading this book. Katherine Bomer details why the traditional ways of teaching the essay genre (i.e., the “five-paragraph essay”) are limiting at best, and goes on to detail how we, as teachers of writing, should teach students how to write essays in transformative ways. Rich with quotes from writers and writing teachers, Katherine Bomer provides an evidence-based perspective on not only how we can teach students to write powerful essays, but also why we must do so.

Best suited for teachers of writing in Grades 4-12, Katherine Bomer provides so many ideas and insights for teaching students how to write powerful, authentic, and meaningful essays. One of my favorite teaching ideas from this book is Bomer’s framework for how to teach students to read essays “closely, powerfully, and deeply” (as she puts it!), which in turn helps students learn to write essays that are powerful and deep. She includes a number of essay “mentor texts” (both within the running text of the book and in the appendix!) to use with students, as well as lists of other wonderful essays that we as educators can help our students explore. Bomer puts into practice the concept of “reading-writing connections” in practical ways to support students in learning how to write essays that matter!

Another teaching idea from this book that I found to be particularly helpful was Bomer’s chapter on writing “craft” in essays. In this chapter, Bomer provided many of the characteristics or criteria of excellent essays. I could envision using these characteristics in writing focus lessons across an essay genre study to help students learn ways to enhance their essays. Bomer shared many resources to teach each characteristic that I am eager to explore. Later in the book, she provided ideas on how we could use these characteristics to assess students’ essays.

A final teaching idea from this text that I found to be beneficial was the chapter on ways to begin writing an essay. As teacher-writers, we understand the struggles of our students when they tell us they don’t know what to do to begin their writing. Bomer provides numerous ways we can teach students to use their writing notebook entries, observations, and experiences to spark ideas for writing essays.

Overall, I found Katherine Bomer’s book to be a treasure and a wonderful professional resource. Filled with inspiration, wisdom, and practical knowledge, this book is a “must read” for educators who want to teach essays in Grades 4-12 in meaningful and powerful ways. I was so inspired by this book that I wrote an essay myself for the first time in over 20 years! After reading this book, you will not only want to teach students how to write essays, but also want to read and write essays yourself!

[Amy]

This book teaches teachers how to write terrific and tremendous essays more than it teaches teachers how to transfer this knowledge to students.

This was a lovely book, but I was hoping for a few more chapters that took some of the more sophisticated musings about how good essays work and modeled student-facing language with them. For example, Bomer uses a t-chart to differentiate between a topic (soccer) and an idea (winning isn't everything), but how do we introduce that difference to students, and how do we help students understand that the difference is important?

I also would have liked to have seen student exemplars, including some student-generated outlines, writer's notebook entries, and revisions. Most of the samples here are finished work from well-known authors, including a lovely collection of mentor texts at the end.

This book is best not as a solo, but in chorus with other works like Writing with Mentors: and Energize Research Reading and Writing: Fresh Strategies to Spark Interest, Develop Independence, and Meet Key Common Core Standards, Grades 4-8.

[Alex Valencic · Rating 5 out of 5]

The five-paragraph essay is arguably the worst formula ever conceived for teaching students how to write. (It is an artificial structure and the product isn't even really an essay.) Essay writing should be a journey for the author who is writing to think and discovering meaning in text and in the world. If this is the kind of essay writing you want to see in your classroom, join Katherine Bomer as she helps you (and your students!) rediscover the meaning, the purpose, and the beauty of essay.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

some good ideas for getting students writing, especially writing personally and reflectively. I liked her section on how this kind of writing supports academic and test writing (as that has to be a concern for teachers), and I personally like essay writing of the type she honors in this book. But there is a sense that it's a particular kind of essay writing favored here--and I can't help but think students need exposure to lots of other genres, too.

[Liz Matheny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good edu-read for a new writing teacher (especially high school). It partners well with Writing with Mentors and would be a really great resource to use as a department/vertical teaming book study. I think AP teachers (especially AP Lang) will not find much new-ness, but will want to give it to every teacher in the younger grades. Same with college teachers to high school teachers...

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little wordy at points, but has some good suggestions for the classroom that really seem to delve into the type of writing that the common core leaves out--the personal writing, the reflective writing, the writing that really shows students' thinking and learning.

[Cassie Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book helped me to see the art of essays in an entirely new way. This book is packed with possibility for both teachers and students, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in bolstering the skills needed to teach "essays that students want to write for people who want to read them."

[Phyllis Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book pushed me to think about writing in a totally different way. Can't wait to try out some of the concepts.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome approach. As always Katherine Bomer's ideas and strategies have both depth and practicality. Thanks!

[Kathleen Chupp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reminders on the need for balance between academic writing and writing that matters to the writer. Great strategies for writing to think.