writing is – A graduate instructor tells students writing feels difficult for everyone, then argues that drafting, revision, and real feedback matter—especially as AI tools increasingly shape how school writing gets graded.
Writing is hard for everyone, even for people who love it.
That message sits at the center of a letter a college instructor wrote while designing the syllabus for her first course.. Now teaching freshman English composition while pursuing graduate study. she reflects on how her own path—once rooted in a community-focused school effort that later closed—led her back to the same classroom belief: writing cannot be treated like a smooth. instant skill that only a few people “have.” It is practice.. It is endurance.. And most of all. it is the kind of struggle students should be allowed to experience with support rather than avoid out of frustration.
In her excerpted note to students. she frames writing as something we do not naturally want to do. especially in a world that sells comfort and speed.. When a student sits down and keeps going past the urge to stop. she argues. they are not just completing an assignment—they are training a different version of themselves. one that can persist.. That persistence, she says, is the real lesson.. The common student refrain “I don’t know what to write” is often less about true inability and more about a misunderstanding of how writing works.. Many students arrive expecting writing to mean transferring already-formed ideas onto paper.. But real writing, she explains, begins before certainty.
Her teaching emphasis is built around the visible mechanics of drafting and revision.. Drafting insists on trying before feeling sure.. Revision insists that work can change. even if it is not immediately “good.” Together. these stages force students to hold more than one thought at a time: what they meant. what they wrote. what they intended next. and what feedback suggests.. That mental work produces clarity, not confusion—especially when students learn that feedback is not a verdict.. It is a tool for moving closer to a vision they can articulate more precisely.
These ideas take on new urgency as education systems confront the speed and convenience of AI.. She points to a recent report alleging undisclosed AI use to grade and provide feedback on student writing in some New Orleans schools.. She also cites a study from May 2025 indicating that 84% of high school students used generative AI to complete school work.. Those numbers land with a particular weight for educators who see writing not merely as a product but as a process where students learn how to think on the page. respond to others. and revise their own ideas.
There is a tension she does not dismiss: AI can feel like relief when students are overwhelmed and teachers are stretched thin.. Cognitive offloading—having a machine generate language quickly—can make assignments seem more manageable in the short term.. But her argument is that schools risk losing something harder to recover: the long-term habit of wrestling with drafts. receiving feedback in a way that demands interpretation. and watching revision happen as an unfolding practice rather than a shortcut.. If students stop engaging deeply in the writing process. she asks. what exactly are they building their future communication skills on?
Her question is also a political one, even when the classroom stays focused on sentences.. Delegating the human work of writing to machines can reshape what schools value.. Writing is one of the primary ways students learn to make meaning. persuade. document experience. and participate in shared intellectual life.. When that work is automated—especially without transparency—students can be left with outputs they did not learn to generate. while teachers are deprived of a window into what students actually think.
From a curriculum standpoint. she urges a re-evaluation of priorities: fewer assignments. longer timelines. and stronger collaboration between educators and administrators.. The underlying goal is capacity—giving teachers enough time and repeated contact with student writing to know students through their drafts. their revisions. and their incremental improvements.. That is how collaboration becomes real rather than performative: both teacher and student adjust based on what they observe on the page.
There is also a human reality to her stance.. She describes the strange feeling of urging students to care about writing while living in a moment when many adults insist they are busy enough. tired enough. or overwhelmed enough to justify reducing the struggle.. Yet she situates her belief in a longer tradition of writers who argue that language becomes more necessary when the world feels unstable.. Turning to Black women writers—including Toni Morrison. Toni Cade Bambara. Audre Lorde. and June Jordan—she treats writing as survival practice. not an optional academic skill.
Her closing position is simple. but not easy: she insists students should write because writing keeps people engaged with the future rather than surrendering to systems that would make the work effortless.. In her view. the demand is not to remove the difficulty of writing—it is to teach students how to move through it. with feedback that protects the process.. In the end, the point is not only that writing helps students perform in school.. It is that writing helps them become the kind of people who can create meaning. revise their thinking. and keep going when certainty is nowhere in sight.
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