Dear Bob Kerrrey article

I found the article about six middle schoolers and how they became writers interesting and useful. The article gave us a good look at how these students and their writing teacher define good writing and how they work on their writing during daily writing workshops at their school. Creativity and freedom seem to be the key words in how these young writers approach their writing assignments. The fact that their teacher gives these students lots of freedom to explore topics that interest them seems to me to be a key reason why these young people feel competent as writers and enjoy the process so much. It's too bad that it seems to be relatively rare to find this kind of a writing program in a lot of schools. Too often, teachers ignore the creativity factor and aim for a finished product that simply neat and tidy and free of errors. What a shame!