In advance of our Grace Paley event on April 20, Literary Hub is running an essay from me about teaching writing over the past decade: “Something More Than Correctness.” I lean heavily on Paley’s wisdom about teaching. Here’s a snippet:

Grace Paley presents a challenge for the teacher of young writers (especially the young teacher of young writers): to decide that, at some level, even we can encourage in our students something more than correctness. We can expect in their work the abstract quality of beauty, sentences that are pleasing and satisfying to the mind for reasons that may remain inexplicable, that reveal sources of drama that arise, or arose, in the streets and friends and homes of our students, and not in our streets or among our friends or in our homes. That reveal something specific and shameless about their lives and minds and say a thing we, their teachers, might never say, despite all we think we have to teach them.