Jane Hancock is co-director of the UCLA Writing Project, Director of the Lake Arrowhead young writer's retreat, author of Short Answers to Big Questions about Literacy, and has over 50 years experience teaching literacy and writing in K-12 and postsecondary. We asked her to share some of her teachings that have had the biggest impact, and her response is below.

You can feel the enthusiasm she brings to teaching and writing as you read her essay.

We couldn't resist also posting her Vita, which appears just after the article.

You are a writer!

After eating a delicious lunch of steamed rice and orange chicken, I opened my fortune cookie to find these words: You are a writer. My fortune cookie says so; therefore, it must be true. What wonderful words! I want to buy a fortune cookie factory and make sure that all the cookies coming off my assembly line say You are a writer. This is so much better than You are going to go on a fabulous trip or You are broadminded and socially active or Beware of an offer that sounds too good to be true. Because I believe that you-student, teacher, business professional, homemaker, laborer, anyone-can be a writer if you write. And that's the message I take to the workshops and classes I facilitate and teach. They may not think they are writers when they walk in the door, but when they walk out the door, I want to hear each one say, "I am a writer."

So, when I was asked to share a few things that have made the biggest impact on the writers I work with, that was the first one that popped into my head. What else do I value? What else am I going to hang on to and never let go of-in spite of mandates and pacing plans and concept lessons and frameworks and standards and essentially, no time? I'll make time for the following.

Writing with your students. The National Writing Project says that teachers who teach writing should write themselves. What a novel idea! But let's carry that idea farther. Teachers who teach writing should write their own assignments before they assign them and then, when the students write, the teachers should be writing with them and sharing. Teachers should be doing all the things that they ask students to do. It's long been recognized that during sustained silent reading, everyone reads, even the custodians, even the administrators. So when students are writing, everyone in the room should be writing.

Forget structure. Or, let's put it this way. Forget any structure of which someone else has said, "This is the way you write." Content dictates structure. Content dictates ideas. Last month, I was facilitating a workshop at a local high school. We had just read a persuasive essay from Newsweek, one of those "My Turn" columns. I asked the group to find the thesis. They started at the top of the article and kept looking for it. Every once in a while, someone would call out a line but before anyone commented, they'd take it back. Finally, someone found it-in the middle of the second column! Then one of the participants said, "Well, if the thesis statement had been at the end of the first paragraph where it belongs, I could have found it!" He said it facetiously, but his statement led to a discussion about who decided that's where the thesis statement belongs and why teachers follow this unknown guru down that path, forcing students to write a thesis statement in the end of the first paragraph before writing the essay.

Write to explore ideas. Sometimes we, who write, find that as we write, our thesis changes. Content dictates thesis. In the same workshop, a participant had told the group he was going to write his persuasive essay on banning cell phone use in all public places. When he shared his draft, we discovered that his thesis had to do with spending more time with his children. "What happened to banning cell phones?" we asked. That idea had evolved into a more important idea: if he put away his own cell phone, he could enjoy more time with his children.

Enjoy writing. And finally, or maybe this should be listed first, writing should be fun. Oh, I know writing is hard work. We struggle for ideas-finding the right words, attending to our audience, deciding on the genre. But, like any challenge, it can be fun. Playing football is hard work, but people spend hours, even years perfecting the skills needed to play the game. Win or lose, it's fun. Of course, it's more fun when you win. And writing is more fun when you have an audience who likes what you have produced. But writing will never be fun if the only time you write is for a grade on a test. Writing will never be fun if you have to revise and correct every piece you write. Writing will never be fun if it's always done in a classroom sitting at a desk. But playing with words is fun. Pretending you are someone else and writing as that person might write is fun. Changing a text from one genre to another is fun. Finding the perfect hook to start the writing is fun. Sharing it with an audience is fun. And seeing it printed in an anthology or on a blog along with pieces by other writers is fun, and rewarding.

My name is Jane Hancock, and I am a writer.

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Vita for Jane S. Hancock

Author of Short Answers to Big Questions about Literacy

Jane S. Hancock, co-director of the UCLA Writing Project, received her bachelor's degree from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and her master's from the University of Southern California. Her first assignment, in 1949, was at Victor Valley Junior High School in Victorville, California, and this was where she fell in love with teaching.

In 1981, she was invited to be a fellow of the UCLA Writing Project, and that summer changed her life. As she has often said, "USC made me a Trojan, but UCLA made me a writer!"

She belongs to two writing clubs, men and women who write and want to share their writing, and to a book club, a group of readers who love to read and want to talk about literature. Because she loves writing and the teaching of writing, she directs a program at UCLA called Writers Anonymous and a once-a-year weekend retreat at Malibu that gives teachers an opportunity to get away and write. In addition, she directs a retreat for young high school writers that meets in Lake Arrowhead one weekend a year.

In her work and in her contact with teachers, she receives many questions about literacy. Those questions are the basis for her book, Short Answers to Big Questions about Literacy.

In addition, she has written several articles for the National Writing Project publications, Quarterly and Voice, and for California English. She also was the principal writer for the California Department of Education's CAHSEE study guide: Preparing for the California High School Exit Examination. She has written and self-published two children's books and several chapbooks of her poems, essays, and personal narratives.

For over 50 years, her enthusiasm for teaching literacy has kept her in the profession. Her goal: to share her love of the written and spoken word with students and teachers and make them life-long readers and writers.