WriteShop is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year in 2021. From its humble beginnings as a local homeschool co-op class, it has expanded into the award-winning, full-scope writing curriculum you know today. WriteShop has inspired thousands of successful writers over these twenty years!
Kaeli’s Story
As you can imagine, I love hearing from WriteShop students who have found success in school and life. In 2010, I received an announcement in the mail from one of my former WriteShop I students (also a homeschool grad), who graduated summa cum laude from Gordon College.
Along with the announcement, Kaeli included a copy of an essay she had written for a grad school application—an essay limited to just 300 words. The irony of this little requirement didn’t escape either of us because brevity was never her strong suit. It was, in fact, the very fly in her WriteShop ointment.
Back in our WriteShop days, restricting this enthusiastic writer to a single 5- to 7-sentence paragraph was practically the same as torture. More than once Kaeli pleaded for eight sentences. More than once she made a passionate case for those extra adjectives. Much to her dismay, I always stood my ground.
Not that it’s a crime to write a ten-sentence paragraph or use a string of four perfect adjectives. Rather, it was all about a skill we were trying to develop in our teen writers: conciseness.
Teaching conciseness is a foreign concept for many homeschool moms—you’re just happy to see a complete sentence materialize on your child’s paper! But we discovered that the same limits on paragraph length allowed parents to teach one simple WriteShop lesson to both eager and struggling writers.
The result? The reluctant child sees a doable goal (“I only have to write five sentences”), and the enthusiastic student learns to hone her writing and avoid rabbit trails and unnecessary verbiage.
Kaeli fit the latter profile. Bursting with ideas, she wanted to say it all. Instead, her year in WriteShop taught her how to say it best.
More WriteShop Success Stories
It was good to hear from Kaeli. From time to time I think of my former students and wonder, “Where are they now?” I haven’t taught a class in a number of years, but it’s really rewarding to see how successful many of these homeschoolers have become:
- Entrepreneurs
- Medical doctors
- Military officers
- College graduates in a wide variety of majors including journalism, English, sociology, criminal justice, Middle Eastern studies, photography, communications, art, music, and theater
- MA and PhD recipients in English, economics, political science, philosophy, psychology, and theology
In many cases, it’s been over twenty years since I’ve edited their fledgling writing attempts. But I’ve also read some of their recent writing. And what I see now reflects what I saw in my own son as the post-WriteShop years passed: maturity, knowledge, wisdom, growth.
They express themselves in different ways, but they have all moved well beyond those WriteShop days.
Watch the video below to hear Tammy, Jolanthe, and April—all longtime WriteShop users—tell how the curriculum equipped their now adult children for success.
You’re Laying a Foundation
Some of you are just setting out on your homeschool journey. You can’t even begin to imagine that one day your child will write an articulate, coherent thought. Others of you have taught WriteShop to several children who are now young adults succeeding in college and the workplace.
We “veterans” have learned that WriteShop served as a launching place, a training ground for instilling the basics of writing, including concreteness, conciseness, clarity, and sentence variety—skills that many incoming college freshmen lack.
Take heart. You’re teaching your children that writing is more than random thoughts tossed on paper. You’re helping them learn to use important tools that lay a foundation for future writing—writing that will take shape and mature as their knowledge, life experiences, vocabulary, and thinking skills develop.
Diligence Will Pay Off
My girls were intuitive writers, easy to guide and easy to teach. But I didn’t have much faith that my reluctant 12-year-old son (the WriteShop guinea pig) would be able to write. Our journey was hard, and we experienced more than our share of frustration. But diligence paid off. He’s now a pastor who holds a PhD in theology. Writing, once his nemesis, is now a vital part of his life and work.
Your child may not become a scholar . . . and that’s okay. But good writing skills will take him far in the workplace and in life. So stay the course, and be encouraged that a great deal can—and will—happen between now and adulthood.
Do you have WriteShop success stories of your own? We’d love to hear them. Leave a comment here, email us, or join our Facebook group and post there.
