Rather than worrying about a topic to write about, just writing and letting ideas flow feels a better option.
I signed up to the reader’s panel on the Hearst magazine site as I’m looking to find new ways to express myself and connect and found it really easy and accessible to use. They post little questions for forums that take a moments thought to connect with and respond – “Do you still print photos or keep a collection of albums” – and I found it liberating to just riff on some ideas and share thoughts.
Children can respond well to this in the classroom – little snippets of a task that are manageable with a clear goal in sight. I respond well to feeling proactive and ticking off a task with a bit of purpose and I guess many others do too.
But I want to couple this with not being obsessed with something having to be ‘correct’ or polished and this can be problematic in the modern world as much of social media appears this way, or has been produced to within an inch of it’s life, meaning the pressure on others to act this way is intensified. I guess this pressure may be felt in the classroom too at times, to make a piece of ‘wow’ work or edit writing to the highest quality. We shouldn’t shun the aim for high quality, but neither should we not celebrate the simple act of doing or simply having a go.
Education for Empowerment 
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