Slice of Life 2026: 6 of 31- FORTY-ONE

In March, Two Writing Teachers hosts the Slice of Life Story Challenge. Everyone is welcome to share writing and comment on others in this special community. 

"If you want to listen to an interesting parent conversation, you're welcome to be i my office when I'm meeting with this parent," I said to Cecily, my youngest daughter. (The one who is only sort of slicing this year since the three sisters ahead of her have set quite an example. This will be another slice one day.) 

Cecily is in the final semester of her BA/MA program to become a teacher, and she's going to be a good one. Every now and then, I have things to share with her, and this conversation would be a good one. (Please know that the parent was aware of the onlooking)

I tutor D. for 30 minutes every other week on Zoom, and he is the topic of the conversation. That is THIRTY minutes every OTHER week on ZOOM. And I haven't been doing it long. I'm sharing this information because this child is one HIGHLY teachable child. He's in third grade, he loves dinosaurs, and he is fascinated by the history of football. He loves writing, but worries that he doesn't know when to capitalize letters and also that b's and d's look so much alike. 

Last week, his mom sent me his weekend news story that he'd done in school. Her text said something along the lines of what we need to focus on improving. She sent me the pictures of his two pages of writing. For the sake of this post, I have counted the approximate number of words on his handwritten piece. Ninety. Of those ninety words, the teacher had corrected, in red pen, 41 of them. FORTY-ONE. 

FORTY-ONE.

What a lot of work for that teacher. And yeah, I have so many questions about this. 

But, before I ask some of them, let me tell you about what he has done well. 

• Focused on a moment-- it was about picking out new glasses (Glasses was spelled as "glases" and it was corrected several times.)
• Included snippets of conversation between him and his dad. (Dad was spelled DaD, a strategy D. uses so that he doesn't confuse his b's and d's. It was corrected several times.)
• Named a specific place that was next to the glasses (glases) store. (Whole Foods Market was written as whoul food's marcit, so it had several corrections.)
• Used conjunctions and complex sentences to express ideas and different decisions. (Those were crossed off.)
• Spelled several tricky words correctly including: said, could, weekend, looked, asked, any (Those weren't corrected.)
• Formed all his letters neatly, on the line, and across the page so that the work was highly legible. 

So no, he didn't spell store with an "e" at the end, and his apostrophe was in the wrong place when he wrote "didn't", but I could see a LOT of skill in this piece, skills his mom didn't see until we talked, and skills that D. didn't see. 

Please know that I am ALL for teaching spelling. And I am also for celebrating the courage of young writers and the amazing stories they have to tell. 

After the conversation, Cecily and I talked. 

"That mom was really worried," Cecily said. "It must have been hard to see so many marks on the page."

Teachers have so much power. So much power to render sleepless nights and germinate deep concern. And so much power to inspire and nurture the storytellers in their worlds.