Introduction for teachers

I took a class on writing as healing as part of my graduate education program in secondary instruction at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Not only have I found it to be an incredibly helpful tool in my own personal life, I have also discovered it can have a big impact on my students.

There are multiple ways to incorporate writing as healing into your curriculum, and I will cover several options below, along with notes on which grade levels have worked best with which lesson plan in my experience.

Any assignment involving memoir provides an opportunity for writing as healing, if a student chooses to write about a traumatic experience. If you have a memoir assignment you already do with students, when you introduce the assignment, you could briefly go over the research behind writing as healing and throw out the possibility of choosing to write about a traumatic experience in order to promote healing.

If you do encourage students to write about traumas, you should warn them that teachers are mandatory reporters; therefore, if they talk about someone hurting them, you are required to report that to Child Protective Services. If they discuss having sex as a minor, that also may have to be reported. If a report is triggered, it can be painful for the teacher, the school, the child, and the family--but at the same time, this may be exactly the opening an abused student needs to seek help.

Lesson plan 1: Writing as healing

recommended grade levels and purpose

I recommend doing this lesson plan with eleventh or twelfth grade or college students. I have found that younger high school students often say they don't have a trauma to write about. However, (sadly) by the upper grades, most students have at least one trauma they can write about. This is a great way to introduce students to writing as healing so they can use it as needed on their own. This lesson plan only takes one class period, and I wouldn't grade this assignment.

Hook

I find it effective to start with an example writing as healing narrative to hook students into the topic. One option would be to use one of my excerpts from my memoir Guts, such as this one on obsessively dreading an upcoming surgery and feeling like the world should stop for me and my trauma. Even those who haven't had surgery will relate to the frustration of feeling like the world is callously ignoring their trauma.

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You might also find a tie-in to the literature you're reading--for example, the stories "The Man I Killed" or "Speaking of Courage" and "Notes" from The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien are examples of writing as healing. Heavily autobiographical literature such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad or Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid also contain elements of writing as healing. Of course, any memoir (for example, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou or The Diary of Anne Frank) also connects readily to writing as healing. You could use a passage from such a work that you're reading in class instead.

Brief recap of the research

To help students understand the purpose of the exercise and the potential impact of this technique, I recommend a brief recap of the research on writing as healing. Click here for my summary of the research and links to articles and books on the topic.

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Guidelines for writing as healing

Next, go over the guidelines for writing as healing so students understand the task. I like to give the information to students on a handout and explain that even if they haven't yet experienced something that has impacted them negatively in a lingering way, they will someday, and they can learn about this tool now and hold on to the handout so it's ready to use when the time comes. Here is the handout I use with students on writing as healing.

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Warn students that they may feel sad, angry, or upset while writing and for an hour or two afterwards, but long-term, they will feel a sense of lightness and release that never goes away.

Knowing this, you can encourage students to use self-compassion to help ease the emotional discomfort of this writing, as described in the excellent book Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff. Self-compassion means recognizing that the suffering you are experiencing is shared by everyone. It also involves observing your emotional state and evaluating how much you can handle before it's too much, and noticing what kind of self-care would help you cope--should you keep writing? take a break? talk to a friend?

The good news is that if the writer is upset during and after writing, that means there is real lingering emotion locked up in that memory, and now that it is released, the writer can truly start to heal.

brainstorming

Some students will easily and immediately know what they want to write about; others will struggle to find a topic. I start by giving students a few minutes to brainstorm possible topics. Depending on the group, you could give them the opportunity to share topic ideas.

I tell them to look for something that haunts them, that they don't like to think about, that still hijacks them emotionally, that they know has left triggers that cause them to overreact in otherwise innocuous situations to this day. If they can't think of anything that fits, then I ask them to just pick an experience that was very intense in some way.

Also let students know that you will not be collecting what they write or requiring them to share it with anyone.

At this point, you should warn students that teachers are mandatory reporters; therefore, while you are not requiring them to share what they write about, if they talk about someone hurting them, you are required to report that to Child Protective Services. If they discuss having sex as a minor, that also may have to be reported. If a report is triggered, it can be painful for the teacher, the school, the child, and the family--but at the same time, this may be exactly the opening an abused student needs to seek help.

You could list common topics:

death or illness in the family
personal illness
divorce
serious conflicts or problems with parents, siblings, or friends
abuse
crime
relationship problems
questions of identity--gender, sexual orientation, parental pressures, pressures to conform
bullying
alcoholism
accident
moving
adjusting to a new school

write

You could give students twenty minutes right then to write in the classroom. You could also give them the option to find a private space within the school to write and then come back in half an hour or so if they want to be alone while doing this emotional writing. You could also have them write for twenty minutes as homework so that they are not in public while writing about loaded issues.

reflect

After the students write (either later that class period or the next class period), ask students to reflect either in writing or out loud on how they felt while writing and how they feel now. You don't need to ask them to share what they wrote about--just their reflections on how it went.

Remind them to hold on to the handout for future times when they are struggling to put a bad experience behind them.

You could also go back to the literature example you used in the hook and discuss how and why the writer used his or her personal experience and transformed it into writing, especially now that the students have tried it for themselves.

Lesson plan 2: Intense imagery assignment

recommended grade levels and purpose

This one works for any high school or college level class. It opens the door for writing as healing without requiring the same intense focus on troubling experiences, so younger students can handle it.

This is useful for teaching the creative writing technique of using specific description to alert readers to important moments. It also helps students understand the author's purpose for using imagery in literature. It's a good way to build community in the classroom by sharing true stories of important moments from our lives.

I would grade this writing assignment, which could take one class period if you make it a brief exercise or a few class periods to complete (depending on how much peer review and revising you want them to do).

hook

I would start with an example of a passage with intense imagery. This could come from the literature you're reading in class at the time, from a personal example of your own writing, or from one of my Guts excerpts. This example is the first page of the memoir, which is about waking up in intense pain from the first surgery.

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instructions

I tell students to pick a really meaningful moment from their own lives, whether positive (a moment of victory or realization or closeness) or negative (a moment of loss or anger or tragedy). They will describe every detail of what was happening around them in that moment using imagery--including sensory detail, similes, and/or metaphors. They don't need to explain what led up to the moment--just capture the intensity of the event through details. The length should be a couple paragraphs (maybe around a page).

brainstorming and pre-writing

You could give students a few minutes to brainstorm possible topics and share their topics with the class if they feel like it. Also let students know whether or not you will be collecting what they write and whether or not you'll require them to share it with others in the class, as that will affect their topic choice.

Any assignment involving personal writing provides an opportunity for writing as healing, if a student chooses to write about a traumatic experience. You could briefly go over the research behind writing as healing and mention the possibility of choosing to write about a trauma when brainstorming topics.

At this point, you should warn students that teachers are mandatory reporters; therefore, if they talk about someone hurting them, you are required to report that to Child Protective Services. If they discuss having sex as a minor, that also may have to be reported. If a report is triggered, it can be painful for the teacher, the school, the child, and the family--but at the same time, this may be exactly the opening an abused student needs to seek help.

Once students decide on a moment to write about, I like to have them brainstorm details relating to each of the five senses. I have them generate lists for each sense, one at a time, that they can then pull from to write their scene. Make sure to have students jot down lines of dialogue when they do auditory details. Making these lists is a good way to avoid writer's block and ensure lots of rich detail in the final paragraphs.

write, share, and reflect

After the students write and polish their scenes, be sure to give them a chance to share them in small groups, and have peers give positive feedback. Sharing these stories helps create community in the classroom.

You could then go back to the example from literature and discuss the author's purpose in loading up the imagery in that particular scene and how that relates to the students' choice of moments to write about.

Lesson plan 3: Be the hero in your own life

recommended grade levels and purpose

This is a good assignment for any high school class. I use it when teaching the hero's cycle, and it reinforces the stages of the hero's cycle as well as story structure and archetypes. Also, writing and sharing personal stories is a great way to create classroom community.

Like the intense imagery assignment, this can be a way for students to work through a traumatic experience, or they could choose to write about something light, so the project opens the door to writing as healing without requiring students to write about traumas if they are not ready or interested.

This assignment also sends the message that each student is valuable and heroic in his or her own way, which is not something teenagers always hear. There's a self-esteem component to noticing their own moments of bravery, big or small, and creating something entertaining and compelling out of them.

I would definitely grade this assignment, and it might take a few weeks to complete, depending on how much time you want to give them for conferencing, peer review, and revising.

hook

I like to start with this video clip from the movie The Holiday. In it, a young woman talks with an old man who used to work in Hollywood. After hearing about her discouraging love life, he tells her that she's acting like a sidekick in her own life, when she is in fact the leading lady. This is a really sweet, entertaining scene, but it also captures that idea that we need to remember that we are all heroes in our own lives, which is the topic of this memoir assignment.

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You'll want to go over what the hero's cycle is all about, of course. There are lots of great videos and handouts online about the hero's cycle. Here are a couple I found particularly useful and engaging:

This is an entertaining and funny YouTube video on the seven archetypes of the hero's cycle

I also give them an example of a student's memoir about meeting a boy at camp and having to decide whether to continue a long distance relationship after camp ended along with an analysis of the hero's cycle in the memoir. I like this example because it doesn't at first seem like the story fits the hero's cycle, but it actually does, which clarifies for students that the hero's cycle applies to any situation in which someone encounters the unknown and has to be brave, which doesn't necessarily mean a physical journey or stereotypical heroic deeds.

assignment

The students write a true story from their own lives, full of vivid details and well-chosen wording, that fits the hero cycle. They also write a brief analysis to accompany the creative piece that details how the memoir fits the hero's cycle and explains any interesting choices or realizations that the student made while writing the piece.

Memoir

should be 2-5 pages long
needs to contain the whole hero cycle, though they could skip some stages for space reasons or make changes from the usual stages for a purpose (as in the movies/books/examples analyzed in class)
needs to be artfully written with lots of specific details, dialogue, well-chosen wording, and overall polish

Analysis

should be 1-3 pages long
walks through how the stages of the hero's cycle apply in the memoir
explains any interesting choices, artful literary techniques, or variations on the hero's cycle used and why
contains reflection on what they realized about writing, creativity, the hero's cycle, and themselves while writing

Any assignment involving personal writing provides an opportunity for writing as healing, if a student chooses to write about a traumatic experience. You could briefly go over the research on writing as healing and throw out the possibility of choosing to write about a trauma before brainstorming topics.

write, share, and reflect

After the students write and polish their memoirs, be sure to give them a chance to share them in small groups, and have peers give positive feedback. Sharing these stories helps create community in the classroom.

You could then go back to the examples from literature and discuss the authors' purpose in using the hero's cycle and how that relates to how the students used the hero's cycle in their own stories.

Lesson Plan 4: Hippie Boy Narrative Guide

Overview

Ingrid Ricks, a Seattle author, wrote a New York Times bestselling writing-as-healing memoir about her childhood called Hippie Boy. The protagonist is a teenager struggling with divorce, neglect, poverty, and abuse, and the book reads quickly and pulls the reader in.

Ricks has worked with high school students to help them create their own writing as healing narratives, and based on that experience, she has written a narrative guide for teachers to go with her book that contains brief, focused lessons on key elements of memoir like structure, character, and dialogue, using excerpts from high school students as well as Hippie Boy to illustrate her points. It's a very accessible way to teach principles of writing while carrying out a writing as healing project. The guide is free, and I've attached the PDF below.

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Ricks also has a website called WriteItOutLoud.org with additional resources.

How did it go?

If you try writing as healing in your classroom, I'd love to hear how it went in the comment space below. I'd also be delighted if you or your students chose to submit a writing as healing narrative to the website using the Submit page.