What kind of teenager is your writing? By Georgie Tennant

I have the joy / terror / privilege / delight (delete as applicable, according to the week, day or hour) of working with teenagers.  On an average day at work, upwards of one hundred of these creatures pass through my classroom. Every week there are many, many moments that make me smile and many others that leave me wondering what on earth has just happened.

This week, I was reflecting on my own almost-teenage son.  He is at the stage of life where he is a bit like an oversized puppy – I’m sure you’ve all met or owned teenagers of this sort. He has not yet grown into his size 12 “paws,” frequently tripping up the stairs.  For him, all of life is an opportunity for humour and comedy and wise cracks, in our house, come thick and fast.

One of his tales of the “banter” he has with his teachers at school made my husband ask me whether I thought he was being too lively, too silly in the classroom.  I replied that I would rather have a whole class like him and “tame” them, than quiet, compliant students who stare blankly at me with no enthusiasm or zest for life.

It got me thinking about the “types” of teenagers that come through my classroom and whether our writing can sometimes feel like a teenager personified, with all its mood swings and moments that delight and horrify.

So my question to you this month is…what kind of teenager is your writing? I’ll give you some options to start you off:

1. The silent, sulky, glowering type

This can be a tricky one to navigate.  Your writing is there.  You scribble and type and do your best with it but it just doesn’t seem to be happy, sitting there on your laptop.  In your presence, it scowls back at you, ruing the moment that it came to exist. Once you have typed this sort of writing into a draft, you hardly dare to re-open it for fear that its looks might strike you down if you try to suggest any changes or improvements to it.

2. The really exuberant bouncy type that won’t stop putting its hand up

My school is trying to implement a no hands-up policy.  They haven’t met my Year 7s.  Short of making them tie their hands to the legs of their chairs, this is a somewhat unrealistic undertaking.  Is your writing like this? You are trying to chat to a friend and it sticks its hand up, shouting “BLOG POST IDEA!” It might even emit “oo, oo, oo-ing” noises to accompany the enthusiastic hand up to really get your attention, particularly late at night when you would ideally be asleep.

3. The type that says it knows all the IT hacks but leaves you in a worse position than you started

I live in fear of I.T. Going Wrong. I.T.-Going-Wrong-on-the-Morning-of-Ofsted-Next-Week dreams have had me waking in a cold sweat over the last couple of nights. My projector, having a mind of its own, will suddenly decide to change the screen resolution so you can only see the sides of the PowerPoint I am trying to display.  Or the speakers will decide they operate from “output 1” instead of “output 2.”  But never fear, there is always a teenager on hand who will insist they can resolve the situation, pressing buttons until, eventually you can’t see or hear anything at all. 

Is your writing like this?  It teases you and tempts you to invest in new software (“This is the answer,” it croons – you will surely be able to publish me properly if you own this flashy, platform.” Or “don’t just press ‘Save,’ back me up, back me up,” and then “I told you so!” when you fail to follow its sage advice).

4. The type that flatters you and says nice things about you even though you know deep down they’re not true!

We all need this type of writing in our lives, but we also need to keep our beliefs in the accuracy of its views firmly in check. I love my students that come in and tell me I look great today – though I usually advise them to go and get their eyesight checked! 

Does your writing flatter you? Does it tell you that it truly is the best thing it thinks you have ever typed, that it is sure that it will get you a spot alongside the best-sellers on the Waterstones bookshelves, that it is a work of genius akin to Dickens alone? We all need this little, encouraging voice in our lives, but we need to keep it in check a bit, to avoid crushing disappointment when not every publisher we share it with immediately agrees.

5. The type that has decided they won’t even try because they fear failure

So many of these types have dwelt in my classroom over the course of my career.  If your writing is like this, it might appear in your head whilst you’re in the shower but refuse to come out when you sit in front of a notepad or screen. Worse, as soon as you tell the in-your-head-writing that it’s time to come out, it will drag you off to clean a bathroom, hoover a floor, or bake a cake so that it doesn’t have to even attempt the painful journey from grey matter to page. Even better, it will tempt you to clean your teenager’s bedroom, knowing it won’t have to face the thought of having to try to come out of your brain for hours or even days.

Teenager-Taming

Being the owner of an almost-teenager, I’ve been reading all the books I can for help surviving the years that stretch ahead of me.  Some of the best advice I’ve read is to make sure they feel valued – loved not just for their achievements and accolades, but for who they are.

Perhaps this can be translated into our writing too.  Taking the pressure off, giving it some attention for enjoyment and pleasure alone and telling it, occasionally, that you are proud of it, however long or short, published or unpublished, might help to coax it out, calm it down, tell the truth and believe in itself a little bit more.

Georgie Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive.  She is married, with two sons, aged 12 and 10 who keep her exceptionally busy. She writes for the ACW ‘Christian Writer’ magazine occasionally, and is a contributor to the ACW-Published ‘New Life: Reflections for Lent,’ and ‘Merry Christmas, Everyone,’ and, more recently, has contributed to a phonics series, out later this year. She writes the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local newspaper from time to time and also muses about life and loss on her blog: www.somepoemsbygeorgie.blogspot.co.uk