The Power of Authorship

I read 100 books a year, on average. I read everything. I believe in reading. Reading to me is a physical act like exercising or gardening, an engagement that demands something of me. The physical act of reading requires the tangible, archaic format of the tome, the printed, bound work, the book. Reading is activity, with effort conjoined with the palpable.

Rare these days, finding this with our students, the activity of reading. I am a teacher, middle school, eighth grade mainly, in the San Ramon Valley school district. An excellent district: well funded, strong families, broad perspectives and a willingness to be inclusive. The students are high-tech, as America is a screen-society now, with all that helps and hinders us enmeshed in that medium. Text now is illumined, images barrage, the dictates of the authors in whatever format one reads is moderated, filtered, compromised. It is no longer just the author’s work on the screen, but a compendium of editing, advertising and ancillary texts.

The pathway to achieving student success in the classroom is motivation, I believe. Students need buy-in, a raison-d’etre beyond just the points. My students are pretty engaged readers, appreciating the book as an artifact of learning and entertainment. Lucky for me to have such students to guide me as I commenced considering in my second year at my school how to bring greater depth of willingness to the research component of eighth grade English Language-Arts conjoined with United States history. I chanced upon the idea of having the students author their own book based on research around a given subject of their choosing that pertains to the history of this nation. To further the buy-in, I would have the books actually PRINTED as physical copies, the artifact of their efforts, a demonstration of their work that is not merely points in a gradebook, or a slide show, or a google doc lost forever.

This coincided with a generous bestowal upon me from a dear friend of a mid-four figure sum to “do whatever you think will serve you and your students best.” This happy happenstance allowed me to begin the Authorship Project as a semester-long assignment culminating in the publication of their book, which I provide to them without cost.

Four years in, and you can see from my photos how this has gone.

Here is the first year, interrupted by the pandemic, better than I could have hoped. Farm workers, SF Chinatown, LGBTQIA, reproductive rights among others.

The second year, all remote, a daunting challenge, but students stood up and completed exemplary books! Frida Kahlo, the Irish, gerrymandering (amazing), the Tamil and indigenous medicine.

Third and fourth year feels that we are now into a clearly defined groove, with higher expectations and an improving devotion. Now you can see the students with their books:

I also lucked out in finding the right person to do the printing for me: someone I know well, have done business with for many years on both personal and classroom work, and is right down the street from me. Behrang with Green Copy also satisfies my intention to support small independent businesses with my projects, and his work is careful, meticulous and superlative. Do check them out here:

Green Copy information

From the first year it was noted that this was a challenging project, meeting a multitude of curricular standards in both ELA and USH while nurturing a deeper sense of devotion to the work than I have seen in previous such efforts as class projects. Students are held accountable for their progress in a series of Socratic ‘check-ins’, a robust checklist of assignments that scaffold the creation of the rough drafts is rolled out in stages, and a rigorous self and peer-review process insists on multiple editing visits to the work to refine it to a high polish. It is an engrossing effort that takes up the bulk of the semester while working on smaller projects focused on select perspectives of the American historical experience.

It is the fifth year now, and i am out of the gracious gift from my friend, in fact having to have tapped into my own funds slightly to finish the last year’s batch of books, a stellar array of titles if I do say so myself: Selma-Montgomery march, AAPI hate (second title), bison (second title, thank you Cecil!) the Olympics, Islamophobia post-911, cartoons as political action, heavy metal, Jainism, the potato, to list a few. The purpose of this Gofundme is to support the next year going forward, with an eye to perhaps dropping a few more pennies to improve the covers (stiffer and better paper - more ‘cover’-like). Typically the total cost ranges from 1700 to 1900 dollars, that being for a copy for my students and selected copies for me to keep as a class set. Here’s another glorious benefit: students can use previous students’ work as some of the required texts for THEIR book, building a platform of student-generated knowledge that is robust in its own scholarship that now provides for the next generation of authors. I love that.

I am asking for 2500 dollars for this year, and we begin printing in mid-May. I suppose it needn’t be said that no matter what happens here I will see the project through even by using my own money, a definite bite to my overall well-being, being a CA. teacher despite working in a well-funded district. I believe in this work, this project more than anything else i do in the classroom, as 80% of my students walk away with a tangible, physical manifestation of their personal effort contributing to the grand scheme of knowledge on this planet. I walk away so far beyond proud of them it defies expression. I hope you will help in making this awe-inspiring Authorship Project the best one yet, and I am grateful for your willingness to read my proposal. Thank you.