Writing is Identity Building: The Value of Student Voice and Choice

Turn writing tasks into mirrors where students see themselves.

DR. KELSEY HAMMOND
Lead Professional Development Advisor

Why did a standard analytical prompt lead students to declare, "This is boring"? This article — the third in the Teaching Writing in the Age of Generative AI series —argues that voice and choice are essential because writing is a means of self-affirmation and identity construction, as articulated by scholars like Rudine Sims Bishop and Mary Ryan. Practical strategies include designing prompts that invite the self, offering a menu of modalities and genres, and using personal narrative to experiment with voice.

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​“Analyze at least three author's choices and how they shape a theme in the text.”

Students nodded, recognizing the prompt. Some immediately sketched three boxes on their paper, planning to “fill in” the author’s choices they would explore.

Then, the inevitable: “This is boring.”

As a K-12 writing teacher, I sometimes feel that my curriculum's structure, while necessary for meeting standards like the Next Generation Standards, can at times guide students into rather narrow pathways. My internal monologue becomes so driven by these standards, unceasing: Well, I need to ensure students grasp figurative language so they can analyze authorial choices. That goal naturally calls for stronger close reading skills, and in order to close read then students will benefit from targeted vocabulary instruction, and to teach that I’ll need to…

In my effort to anticipate student needs, align to standards, and ensure skilled instruction, I can sometimes forget the actual student experience of reading and writing. Hearing, “This is boring,” was painful, yet it served as an important moment of reflection for me. “They’re right,” I realized. “This is boring.” If I was being honest, I dreaded grading those assignments before students even started writing them, anticipating checking off the same three literary devices repeatedly.

I'd find that initial prompt just as boring as my students do. I enjoy authors’ choices and themes most as they relate to me. An author who writes about love or loss, a dissolving friendship, a difficult social order, or a hopeful engagement with the natural world sparks my interest. I want to discuss and write about those pieces because they reflect myself or something that feels like it exists in my world. I want to explore my connection to the theme, how our world might benefit from it, and how I might adopt the author's choices in my own work. Writing itself becomes a place of agency and choice that lets me explore what I care about most.

Now, returning to my students who we left bored at the beginning of this article — imagine how different the writing process becomes when we pose this question:

“What’s one message the author communicates, and who in your life would benefit from hearing it? Write to whoever that is: yourself, your team, your friend group, or your school leadership. As you explain your thinking, include some of the author’s choices and how those help communicate the theme.”

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Scholarship on Voice and Identity

This idea isn't new. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's famous "windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors" metaphor captures this perfectly:

​“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”

​Writing that stems from an authentic prompt encourages us to imagine, reflect, and self-affirm. These invitations engage students because the individual both shapes and is called upon by the writing task.

Writing offers a pathway to explore and construct personal voice and identity. When we invite students to write from memory or personal narrative, they build authorship. They write from within, not just toward a grade, and learn to value their own perspective. If student writing sometimes lacks voice or sounds generic, the question becomes what and how we invite them to write. Does the prompt itself invite individual perspective?

I acknowledge that students still need to master the skills required by the first, more traditional prompt, especially for standardized assessments. Nonetheless, my revised prompt—which asks students to choose an audience and explain the message's relevance—still requires identifying and analyzing the author's choices. But it also invites student voices. While it can’t be every prompt, it can certainly be some. Perhaps most? 

Writing scholarship strongly supports this approach. Student motivation to write increases when they perceive relevance and have voice and choice (Pink, 2011). When students see a purpose beyond the teacher’s gradebook, they engage more deeply. Furthermore, Mary Ryan (2014) argues that teaching writing as a series of decisions about how to represent their subject matter and themselves through language helps shape and represent students’ identities. 

In the context of new technologies, recent studies involving generative AI, such as Chan & Hu (2023), show students’ perceived concerns about how AI might misrepresent their individual values and/or cause harm to their teacher-student relationships. This perception suggests that students themselves recognize writing as a place for personal value exploration and relational connection — for that reason, they worry about how generative AI might misrepresent them or the things they care about, negatively impacting their relationships with their teachers. 

In a time when many young people feel disempowered, writing remains one of the few places where they can explore their experiences, shape their narratives, and be heard. 

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Practices: Writing Invitations that Build Identity

​How, then, do we support identity building as teachers of writing? How do we create student engagement and spark curiosity? How do we support students’ identity building through voice and choice? 

1. Design Prompts that Invite the Self
Consider: Am I creating opportunities for students to explore their own values and experiences in response to a text, rather than just summarizing it? Instead of asking students to analyze the setting's role in a story, I might ask: "Write about a place in your life where you felt the same sense of isolation or belonging that the main character felt. How did that place influence your choices? Connect that to the setting of this text." These prompts require analysis while grounding the response in the student's personal landscape.

2. Offer a Menu of Modalities and Genres for Response
Consider: How might I expand options beyond the five-paragraph essay to value choice in form? If an author's message is particularly impactful, a student might express their response best through a podcast script, a graphic novel panel, or a narrative poem. Allowing students to choose the medium based on their strengths and the message's nature validates their communication skills and encourages stylistic flexibility.

3. Use Personal Narrative and Experiment with Voice
Consider: How can I use personal narrative assignments as a laboratory for trying on different author's styles and voices? After reading a strong memoirist (like Kincaid or Sedaris), I ask students to retell a personal story twice: once in their natural voice and once "in the style of" the author they just read, focusing on devices like sentence length, humor, or tone. This active imitation helps students discover their own voice by showing what happens when they play with different authorial choices.

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Conclusion

​The frustration I felt grading those three-box analysis prompts stemmed from their failure to recognize the student as an individual. When we reduce writing to a mechanical checklist, we disconnect it from identity, the very source of its power.

We can meet curriculum goals—analyzing craft, theme, and evidence—while empowering students to see themselves in the texts they read and write. As Rudine Sims Bishop reminds us, literature offers a mirror. Our pedagogy can ensure writing functions as a tool for self-authorship. By offering choices in prompt design, genre, and modality, we move beyond compliance. We ask students to invest their voice, experience, and perspective.

This investment is the personal rhythm that distinguishes human writing from AI-generated text. By prioritizing voice and choice, we not only boost motivation and engagement but also give students a vital platform to name their experiences and actively shape their narratives. The most meaningful writing education doesn't just teach how; it teaches students why their voice matters.
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NEXT IN THE SERIES →​

​Writing is Connection: The Importance of Audience and Feedback
How human-centered responses guide students toward clearer, more purposeful communication.