Today, as a newly published book author, my book birthday wish is to know more stories. Inherent power exists in everyone’s story. Stories provide simple steps we can all take toward understanding—understanding we need to teach and understanding we need to learn.

My students’ stories continue to teach me. I have shed tears over narratives students have written, baring their souls as they craft their experiences. One student wrote about the racism she faced because of her choice to wear hijab. One student detailed the pain he felt losing his unborn child to an abortion he did not choose. One student detailed the domestic abuse she suffered for over a decade. So many writers teach me through their stories and yes, narratives are my favorite pieces to read, but my students teach me through other genres as well.

Through their argument pieces, my students choose topics important to them. Often beginning their arguments with a personal anecdote, my students have used the “power of one” to tug at their readers’ hearts to open their minds to the argument detailed across the pages. I’ve learned about a sister’s battle with anorexia, which made me care even more about individuals facing eating disorders. I’ve learned about a son’s struggle with dyslexia which made me focus even more on the argument against high-stakes standardized assessments and their effect on students’ socio-emotional development. I learned about a first-generation college student’s battle for access to higher education, even as she was enrolled.

And it is through their writer’s notebooks that I discover so much more about my students. Details of their lives that may never make it to a published piece, but are displayed across the pages, scribbled stories. Scribbles detailing a young woman’s battle with alcoholism. Scribbles detailing a young man who sees himself as worthless due to years of emotional abuse, but is trying so hard to see someone different than his family has taught him to see. Scribbles detailing a student at-home in the U.S., but homesick for his home country and his family he had to leave for longer than he wished.

And so today, my book birthday wish is to know more stories, especially those stories that my students scribble in their writer’s notebooks and never share. What is your scribbled story? The one you share in a journal, diary, or a writer’s notebook? Or the one you tuck away deep into your heart? Our stories matter. Our experiences matter. We must tell our stories and as writing teachers, we must empower our students to tell the stories that change not only their lives, but their readers’ lives as well.

I am honored to showcase some of my students’ stories in my new book Engaging Teachers, Students, and Families in K-6 Writing Instruction: Developing Effective Flipped Writing Pedagogies available for the first time today. Their stories have changed my life.

This Google folder provides a flyer with a 20% off code for my book and two mini-lessons I use with my students: Word choice using April Pulley Sayre’s Turtle Turtle Watch Out! and a lesson I created using candy bars to teach students how to synthesize literature.