Writers Branching Beyond Academics

The students at Beyond Academics are continually practicing the fundamentals, or academics of writing: vocabulary, syntax, grammar, sentence variation, etc. However, our goal is to challenge and inspire the students to go beyond these foundational components. What does it mean to go beyond academics? It means to reach beyond the confines of rote learning and begin to think and create independently. Academics are rudimentary to learning, but true teaching does not stop there. We are not interested in creating robots. Writing rules and formulas provide a concrete platform from which students can begin building personal concepts and style. The academic tools are provided so that the students can learn to think, decide, and create. This is a process; it does not happen overnight. Children must be gently guided toward this goal of going beyond academics. As instructors, we must think of ourselves as facilitators and guides rather than fountains that unrelentingly gush information.