Why Students Struggle With Writing — A Better Way to Teach Writing with Amber Parks

Why do so many students struggle with writing?

In this episode of the Penned By Design Podcast, host Destiny Jordan sits down with Amber Parks, founder of Writing with Design, to explore how writing can be taught in a way that actually works for students and teachers.

After years of teaching in classrooms around the world, Amber noticed a pattern: students didn’t hate writing—they just weren’t being taught how to do it step by step. So she created a writing framework designed to help students move from simple sentences to complex essays with confidence.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why writing feels so difficult for students
 • The difference between writing talent and writing skill
 • How structure can actually unlock creativity
 • Why brevity is often better than long essays
 • How teachers can make writing manageable again
 • What the rise of AI means for writing education
 • How students build confidence through the writing process

Amber shares insights from over 25 years in education and explains how her program, Writing with Design, is helping schools across the country improve student writing and thinking skills.

If you're a teacher, writer, parent, or creative thinker, this conversation offers a refreshing look at how writing really works—and why it's one of the most powerful skills students can develop.

Connect with Amber Parks

Website: Writing with Design.com

Recommended Book: Best Practices in Writing Instruction by Steve Graham

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Transcript

Destiny Jordan: 0:02

Hello everyone. This is Pen by Design, my humble host, destiny Jordan, and I have these lovely Amber Parks here. So every creator, eventually it's the same moment. Tools don't work. The system breaks, and you have to choose which or build something better. Today's guest chose to build. Amber Parks is the founder of writing with design a writing framework. Born not from theory, but from necessity. When the writing programs available can help her students think, create, and communicate with confidence. She designed her own. She's taught around the world scale the classroom solution into a national program and believes writing isn't just ac academic skill, it's a foundation for leadership, creativity, and impact. So let's get into it. So today we have Amber Parks, but the first things first, for those who don't know, who is Amber Parks?

Amber Parks: 0:58

For me to take on?

Destiny Jordan: 0:59

Yes.

Amber Parks: 1:01

Who am I? Why am I, why do I get to be here? First of all, I'm so honored to be here, Thank you so much for having me on. And, I think the best way to describe me is I am a classroom teacher by at heart and forever. so I always knew I wanted to be a teacher from the time I was tiny. that's what I played when I was little. and so when I finally got my own classroom, it was a dream come true. And what I realized very quickly is that it didn't matter where I was teaching. If it was in the States, if it was overseas. Anytime we had to write, my students would say, oh, do we have to? And kind of looking back at my life it was. It was my love of writing that allowed me to go to college completely on scholarship. And so that to me was why I love to write. It opened doors for me. It allowed me to better understand myself, to learn to process and, and honestly to win enough scholarships to, to make college a reality for me. So I knew it had that potential and I wanted my students to feel the same way. So by connecting the dots between my love of writing and also my degree in deaf and hard of hearing education I started To make some little strategies and ideas and not just tell my students we need to write now, but say, okay, let's take these building blocks of sentences and let's make something out of that. And, you know, let's take all these neat phrases and how can we rearrange them? And so we made writing more engaging and more step by step, and it really caught on and then that spread to neighboring school. And then I was asked to come talk to another school in another district, and it just grew from there. And so I've had a really incredible journey of always feeling connected to classrooms even as I stepped out of it, because I started to work with teachers and we would sit around, you know, I like to call them jelly bean tables. They've got lots of names, but to me they're always a jellybean table. And we would sit around and just talk strategies and talk ideas, and then that has grown Very literally page by page into what we now have as writing with design. So my job now is founder and director of Writing with design, where I travel the country, work with schools on helping writing become something that teachers and students both enjoy from pre-K all the way up through high school. And so I pinch myself that I get to do what I do and really instill that love of learning with everyone I meet.

Destiny Jordan: 3:13

Number one. That's amazing. Also, you said you had a degree in deaf and hard of hearing.

Amber Parks: 3:17

So I have a dual degree in elementary and special education, from Vanderbilt. my special ed degree, my emphasis area was in deaf and hard of hearing, so I worked with children who are profoundly deaf, who only knew American sign language all the way up to children who had cochlear implants. So it's a complete range of hearing skills, of signing skills of lip reading, of kind of all of the pieces that go into how children with all these degrees of hearing loss learn, and also what they are willing to learn. So, for example, American Sign Language, that's a, it's part of the Capital D deaf culture and deaf. The deaf culture does not look at being deaf as a disability. They consider themselves like a different population of people. And so there is no reason for them to learn how to kind of vocalize in ways that don't just happen naturally for them. or there's not a reason for them to learn ways to sign like all the pieces of spoken and written English. And so that's a really fascinating world to enter into and honor and respect everything about their culture and then also help with the academic skill of written English to say, yes, we're not imposing on your culture and if for writing, this is an important, these are important parts. Right? So that's actually where a lot of our lessons came from, initially was how do we teach. Like another written language to profoundly deaf children. And so one of our activities where we label for vocabulary and we talk about verb tense and we talk about articles and kind of all the little brick and mortar words of English that activity was truly born out of wanting to respect the American sign language as their primary language, but also build in what was needed to convert that into a written response anytime they needed to do that.

Destiny Jordan: 5:05

That's amazing. Also, shout out to Phil, special ed teacher.

Amber Parks: 5:10

We make the world go round, don't we?

Destiny Jordan: 5:13

Very true. But I have not yet had a conversation. those have worked extensively with the deaf culture. I've only had a few instances of working with the culture, but I'm like, I just love to have that and of how that shaped how you viewed writing

Amber Parks: 5:28

Yeah.

Destiny Jordan: 5:28

Or making it accessible to really all children.

Amber Parks: 5:31

Yeah,

Destiny Jordan: 5:31

absolutely. And so with the program writing with design, why do you feel like that's necessary? What has it done to change your outlook on writing?

Amber Parks: 5:41

Yeah. You know, I think we set out to solve really a cultural problem, right? A school culture problem where writing is something that just gets assigned and that is not a fault of teachers. I reflect every time I'm in a school, what I put my own children with this teacher I can count on one hand out of working with schools now in writing with design capacity for 15 years, and then plus my teaching career, close to 25 years. I can. Literally on one hand, the number of teachers that I would say my children would not be in their classroom. Right? Meaning there are absolutely phenomenal people in our schools, teachers and administrators, I mean from in every state that I go to. And so what I really why I bring that up is that there's a hunger and there's a want to teach writing well, and there just hasn't been the focus on it. And so what we really set out to do was to make writing manageable and doable for teachers and then ultimately for students because of that. And so, I like to say, you know, when we think about treating writing like we do other subjects, we realize how far we need to come. You know, you would never hear a teacher say, alright, just get a sheet of paper and I want you to math about anything you want. You can math for 20 minutes, just math. The students will look around like, what? What's going on? Like, what are we supposed to math about? And it just makes it feel so daunting, right? Or to go into a science lab and just say, okay, well there's some chemicals and there's a bun and burner and just play around just science. No, no, we don't do that to students. We give them processes and structures and procedures, and that doesn't take away from the scientific discovery, right? Having a set of math problems doesn't mean that some kids learn math better than others. It actually helps them all see, do I understand, right? And for teachers to say, whoa, I see a pattern here. We've missed the same type of problem three times. Now I know what I need to go back and work on with this group of students. So there is power in structure and there's power in processes, and we use that across. Even you look at phonics, we don't just say, okay, you can look at a letter B and come up with whatever sound you want. No, there is a sound that that letter makes, right? And so that same idea, we just have brought it into writing to say, yeah, of course we wanna unleash students' creativity. We want them to think of words that make their stories their own. But we gotta start with the structure. We've gotta start with the steps that really help students learn how to tap into that. I like to say we teach the steps, the structures and the style to make writing manageable and doable and really enjoyable.

Destiny Jordan: 8:10

That is amazing. And so, in your making of this program, did you ever see yourself making a national program based on writing?

Amber Parks: 8:21

Yeah. No, I really didn't, I mean, it was called Amber's writing for a long time, actually, and I thought that kind of sounds egoic and I'm really not. It's definitely not about me. And so, you know, that's just what the teachers kind of latched onto whenever we would sit down and work together, they just say, oh, you know, we need more from Amber. We need to talk to her more about writing. And so it just became, Amber's writing. So that's really every single thing, every single step has been built by teachers and students, and I just am the one fortunate enough, and passionate enough is another way, one way to think about it is to kind of pull it all together. but to kind of pull it all together, because taking these ideas and then grappling with them, how can we. Those were a lot of good ideas that we just sat around and planned, but then what's the sequence? How should we walk students through this? And will it work for teachers in California like it does for teachers in Texas? Or does it work for students in fourth grade like it does for students in second grade? How do we need to change it up? And so to kind of grapple with how do we make this more accessible for teachers? How do we put it together in a way that shows reverence to teachers and what they're doing? And also makes it a certainly applicable and, and usable. You know, that's, that's been a big piece that I have been honored to be tasked with over the past, 15 years. So, yeah, I mean, I really set out to just work with teachers, to work with students and and I just have been it's been such a journey to get to travel the country and, and work and it keeps spreading, right? It keeps growing in different pockets. And one thing I wanted to share on that too is I was in, I can tell you exactly where I was. It was been conning middle school. In pin conning Michigan which is one of my favorite places to have ever gone in this country. It's a very rural community. about an hour and a half north of Detroit. I remember work, this was very early on. I was one of the first districts I had the honor of working with, and a middle schooler looked at me with some of the material that I was teaching and he said, you know, this doesn't work for me. This the way that the structure was set up for a paragraph that this doesn't make sense to me. I see it this way. And I looked at him and I said, you know what? You're right. Thank you for saying that. Thank you for talking us through about how the structure didn't make sense to you and what needed to change. And I said to him, you've just created a year of work for me. And as I patted him on the back, I said, look, I'm not being hyperbolic. I'm being serious, but thank you. You have just changed this in an incredible way. And so I think that's the neat thing about, and the magical thing about writing with design is that it's been built by and for. Students and teachers. So, it just keeps getting better.

Destiny Jordan: 10:47

That's amazing. And I really love how it's like, you receive the input to make the needed changes.

Amber Parks: 10:54

Yes. it's like once you do learn a strategy or once you do learn a better way, you can't unsee it. Right. You know, when you know better, you do better. Right. Maya Angelou, it's just one of my favorite ways of thinking about the world is that, we can wish and want, we had what we have now 10 years ago, we all do. Right. But to stand in that moment with that student and honor his bravery, honor his involvement in what we were doing, and then to honor his voice to say, I really don't see it that way. I mean, he's an instrumental part of what now is in the binders.

Destiny Jordan: 11:25

That's amazing. So could you give us a kind of a breakdown of what would it look like, because you said it goes from elementary to high school, so how does it fluctuate going to those three major? Developments of writing,

Amber Parks: 11:37

You know, I love to say that when we work with teachers in pre-K and kinder, we know we're getting students who are picking up pencils for the very first time. And so I like to clarify, we are not a handwriting program. We don't have proper letter formation as part of our framework because we're more on the composition. So I want to honor that, that is a critical piece. We want handwriting to be something that teachers and schools prioritize and focus on. but what we want to work on and where we fill the gap. is how do you get kids to write, how do you get kindergartners to have that confidence and voice to share their ideas? We start very early on with both picture and sentences. and with the picture we're looking for detail. So this is something that anyone listening can take back. And if you work with young children, or you work with students with special needs who need those illustrations as a way to communicate more of their message. Then look for details in the setting and in the characters. And we mean the finer details. Like if they're drawing about springtime, we want little, tiny buds of flowers sticking out. Not big blooms of flowers, right? They're just starting, Or if the grass has been mowed in one part and not the other of the yard, things like that, that kind of help us say, oh yeah, these are the details that you're picking up on. We have a picture in our binder of a UPS driver arriving at the house, and there's lug nuts on the wheels of the truck, right? And UPS definitely gets the brown marker out. And so, you know, we joke that we all know it's the UPS truck because of the color. So, you know, those types of. Details in the picture, in the setting, and then in the characters are really critical. So can we tell height or can we tell who it is by the height in the picture or the finer details of an expression on the face? Not just a smile, but are they excited? How do you know that? do they have earrings on the much finer? details. and then we work on formation of a sentence. And we don't just start off with conventional spelling and super robust sentences. We start off with just getting initial sounds of the words and then final sounds of the words, and then those middle sounds. And what that allows students to do is develop their confidence. I don't have to know how to spell everything. I just, I can still get my ideas down. So we start literally from the, the, the start of drawings and writing and move into sentence level work Well certainly in kinder, but first, second, third, we do a lot of sentence into what we call our starter essays. So we teach essays with the minimum number of sentences possible to start off, which is six. So we teach a one sentence opening, a one sentence closing, and then two body paragraphs of two sentences each. and what that does as a blueprint is it lets students have everything they need for an essay without the overwhelm of, oh, I gotta write 20 sentences. So with our very tight essay structure, they develop the skillset to know, when do I change my paragraphs? What's the difference between an opening and a body paragraph? Are my opening and closing the exact same thing? And spoiler alert, they're not just a restatement in the closing of the opening. there's a different need for it, right? Different purpose. The very first time students pick up their pencil to knowing how to form sentences, to knowing how sentences then can create paragraphs and into essays. And where we go with our middle school and high school ultimately is into much longer pieces where we build the length when the quality is there. So that's what I really want to hone in on here, is that, you know, I just talked through length and yes, length matters, right? We do need students to know how to write longer pieces. But one of the biggest things a myth that I like to say, we break is that we teach teachers and students that link does not equal quality. And we want our high schoolers, we want our middle schoolers to know how to write a three sentence response that knocks our socks off rather than three pages of just fluff, right? We would much rather have that. So we take that feeling of I'm not a good writer 'cause I can't write a lot, and I say, look. That might be the best thing, right? Let's, let's, there's an art to brevity and there's a need for it. And so let's focus on that here before we stretch to a link that makes everyone overwhelmed and turns people off from writing. So we use levels so that there is this consistency of how we approach. So, short answer responses, essays, we have levels that we call them rather than a grade level attached to it. So it just allows us to move through the links, much easier. So that was a lot. But I think, really kind of hits on, how we use our blueprints, our levels of structure we call it in writing with design so that teachers can choose a level, students can find a level that fits for them or that's needed for the prompt. And then we always know we can grow into more.

Destiny Jordan: 16:23

Well that was like a great explanation. And I also had a question on, when you said rty against the club.

Amber Parks: 16:30

Oh

Destiny Jordan: 16:31

yes. I said that's a lot for the school riding community. So you're going towards brevity and not fluff.

Amber Parks: 16:36

Yes, absolutely. I will never forget the day I had this sweet little girl, Savannah was her name. She came running into my classroom. I was teaching fourth grade at the time, and she said, Mrs. Parks, Mrs. Parks. I wrote four pages and she handed it over and she was just. so proud. and I started reading it and it said, we went outside. I said to Gloria, do you wanna go down the slide? She said, yes. I said, do you wanna go on the swing? She said, yes. I said, do you wanna go play on the concrete? She said, yes. It was just nonstop question and answer, q and a, q and a all the way down. At that moment was not the time to instruct her on that. And I just oohed and awed over it with her. But in my mind I'm thinking, okay, we gotta address, how do we do really strong dialogue and let's work on not having length equal quality. What can I do with this student, with all of my students to help them understand that length is not what we need in terms of becoming a great writer, so that she could be just as proud when she wrote four sentences as she was when she wrote four pages. So, yeah, I like to say we do like a name that tune approach to writing. So that, you know, like if you can write it in four sentences, instead of five, and then do you think you can write it in three instead of four? Write that response, right? Like, how short can we get it? Rather than trying to just fill up a page thinking, well, that's what my teacher wants. Let's move away from that and let's work on what are we really saying? What goes into these sentences? How can we make them stronger so that we're not just filling up pages for the sake of doing that and thinking that it's writing because it's not

Destiny Jordan: 18:10

How do you break that myth when students come to you trying to write a thousand in one words and you only need a 50?

Amber Parks: 18:16

I mean, I think the part of it is, I think one way to do that is just to give them that a range that feels crazy, especially the older, student, right? If they're so used to, whether it's at the college level or it's a high school level, and they're just so used to five pages of writing and we say, no, no, no. All your writing, you only get. 10 sentences or you only get five sentences, whatever is like a complete 180 from where the assignments have landed for them for a very long time. That's such a wake up for students. Wait, what? So how can we first, as teachers start to break that myth? I think that's a huge kind of step for teachers to consider is I'm the one who decides what the length is here and because there is not a standard in any state that says it, a writing needs to be X number of sentences or pages long, that has all been implanted by curriculum companies or by the syllabi that teachers are doing. Or because my colleague that came before me, that's just the way it was and that I've just kept it going. All merited reasons, right? We've all got these influences that help us kind of gauge what length we need and so on. When I teach teachers that we do one sentence opening and closing paragraphs. Some of them have to hold onto the seat. There's what, what do you mean one sentence? Actually, a word can be a paragraph. I mean, there, there's not these rules that we think exist, right? We don't have to have five sentences in every paragraph and a neat and tidy five paragraph essay. No, that is completely an artificial construct. So by switching out of that, and teachers really thinking what do I, what am I looking for? What do I need in this response? And thinking through the response, like a blueprint, like there's a blueprint for every Walmart that's built in this country, but I guarantee you there's, well, I shouldn't say guarantee. I don't know this for sure, but every Walmart I go into, I have to learn it, right? It doesn't matter what city I'm in, I'm like, oh, okay, wait. Oh, their produce is that way. And gosh, their toy sections up front in my store. It's at the back. You know, it's different. And that's what I love about the blueprint analogy is. It's not formulaic. We're not teaching kids one way, but we're saying to teachers like, think about what you need in your response and then give students that as the focus rather than a an arbitrary page number. and what we find is that generally it needs to be a lot shorter, and what that will also do is it takes the pressure valve off students because if they aren't feeling like writing's their favorite thing or their writing hasn't scored well, then it allows for instruction and for quality control to happen at a much more manageable scale and amount rather than. If we can look at three sentences, four sentences, 10 sentences instead of 50 or 500 it is so much more manageable for us to give feedback and to give kind of the next step to boost their writing and thinking skills. So I think it starts with teachers. And then I think it also, one last thing is it doesn't, it shouldn't be attached to grade level. that's one of the things we start with a one level response and we go up to multi-paragraph. And when I teach that, I say our level one writing is not less than a level two, it's a level one. Writing should be impressive if it's in kindergarten or it's in AP English. And a level one writing should be happening in both classes, right? Yes. We want more length. We wouldn't ask our kindergartners to write multi-paragraph essays. But we do need to be asking our AP English students to be writing one sentence responses. So it's that it's a growing of length rather than a Oh, I, I don't write those short answer responses anymore. I don't write less than 50 sentences for a response. Why? It doesn't make any sense.

Destiny Jordan: 22:05

I love your thinking when it comes to level writing. 'cause I guess we know it's fed background, everyone comes in at different levels. So it's hard to say In sixth grade, we are all writing in paragraphs where we're, some of us are. We haven't been to school for a while, and some of us, we just got here

Amber Parks: 22:22

And that's honestly destiny, that's where it came from for me, is that nothing in writing with design is by grade level. Because I didn't want there to be any stigma. 'cause you're right when those sixth graders walk in, they already know, they have that feeling inside them that I am not on grade level. And so the last thing I wanna do is pull something out where I didn't white it out where it says first grade on it. Right? I don't want there to be a stigma attached to length. I want their writing to be judged for the quality first. And that matters way more. We like to say, length happens naturally when students are confident in what they wanna say, and that's the truth. When they have that confidence of, I know what I need to say and I need more sentences to get it down, that's way different than how long does it have to be? And let me just fill up a page and find a way to just cycle through my ideas over and over, or write larger or, or a space between my paragraphs, you know, all the things that I can do to just take up more space. We just, we wanna, we want writing to be something that students, whether or not they love it, that's not the goal. I I, although I do want them to love it, but if they still don't love it, at least to feel like I can do this. And I enjoy it because I know how to put it together. I know how to, how to compose a blueprint. I know how to structure my writing and get my ideas down.

Destiny Jordan: 23:35

That is amazing. You created writing with design because of tools you needed for your students. This didn't exist at the time and for even writers listening, that kind of sounds familiar. You have a book you think should be out there but how did that moment shift for you to come from a teacher to a creator? How did that shift go?

Amber Parks: 23:55

I think it was because when I talked with colleagues, they would say, we all would agree when we read a piece that it was a really strong piece of writing. like, oh, that student's doing really well with writing great. This student's really not doing well with writing. When we read the next piece, right? we were aligned with what quality looked like in writing, but then they would just go back and assign more writing. And that isn't helping, that's just letting the good ones quote unquote, right? The good ones, the strong writers just practice more of what they're already doing, but it's also letting the habits of the ones who are not great writers keep practicing that as well. So what are great writers doing, whether they're in fourth grade, whether they're a published novelist, right? Whether it's, a Mo Willem or a Faulkner. Like who, what do they do? How do we break down their. Writing, and I think that's my gift, that's my knack, is that I look at the structural components of writing, whether it's on the piece level or it's across, kind of in the big, bigger swaths of student writing or professional writing. I look for what are replicatable structures for content or sentence structure or how to put together closings and openings. And that really is what led to this becoming more than just me sitting around and giving ideas. It's what really took it to a framework and made it teachable and made it something that. Is shareable and scalable in schools. So for example, we have 13 criteria. lucky 13, you know, we have 13 criteria and they're not things like voice and organization gimme a break. How, how do you teach that? How do you teach voice to kids? you say, put more voice into your writing. What are they supposed to like, speak into their writing? What does that mean? Right? And so what we looked at is, okay, pieces who have scored well on voice, what do they have in it? They have sophisticated word choice for one, right? They use words like yanked instead of polls, right? there's selection of words that is empowering, right? And that takes refinement of vocabulary. That's really important. So we know sophisticated word choice at the word and phrase level really matters. Secondly, believe it or not, it's transitional words and phrases. That's one of the key pieces of voice. And as we looked at high scoring pieces across the country, again, didn't matter. What we noticed is that high scoring pieces have a transitional word or phrase in almost, you're not gonna believe this. Every single sentence. Every single sentence, and we're not talking first and next, last and finally. Those are the megaphone transitions we're talking about. Once the birds were awake or after 15 minutes, the phrases that move the writing along but are so subtle that they're not, they're not the megaphones, they're not the ones that just are so easy to spot. But those two alone, when teachers focus on sophisticated word choice, and one quick tip on that, for example, is we have a rule in writing with design that adjectives cannot touch the period because that's what students love to do, right? They love to say the ball is blue, right? Or the dog is friendly, right? they put adjectives at the end of a sentence. And what that does is it truncates sentences. It naturally makes them so much shorter. So we have a rule, adjectives may not touch the period. So even if they say something like, the dog is a friendly pet, that is already giving us more. But if we say, okay, move friendly in front the friendly dog, what wagged its tail at me. Okay. Now we've already added so much more into the writing so when we know that teachers work on sophisticated word choice Adjectives. So I gave you a tip on that one for sure. and then the, transitional words and phrases, when those two alone are worked on, the quality of the sentences that students put together grows. So the 13 criteria is just one example of how we've kind of taken it from, okay, we know we can read good writing, we can all agree this one's stronger, this one's not. But how do we get our students to get more like the ones who are doing it well? And so I feel like I kind of tap into the minds and the processes of writers and help build steps and strategies that teachers and students, and quite frankly, anyone who's writing can tap into and pull from and utilize to improve any words they put on the page.

Destiny Jordan: 28:25

Look at that. You just ran into my next question, 'cause my next question was, many writers, adults, and kids believe writing is a talent. So what has your work taught you about the skill versus just having innate talent?

Amber Parks: 28:39

I have so many thoughts on this, but I'm gonna start here with my favorite quotation from Steve Graham. Who is the mega researcher attached to all the research about the science of writing? Science of reading has really exploded as it should. And I wish there was also, and there is starting to be more of a focus on science of literacy and writing, being a part of that. So Steve Graham has been doing incredible research on his own with his wife Karen Harris, with other incredible professors and researchers. And then also he's done these meta-analyses of what's already out there. What do we already know to be true about writing? And one of the things that when I heard it, it just, it truly gave me goosebumps and it has stuck with me. It's so simple. Yeah. It's so profound. He said writing is thinking on paper. That's it. Writing is thinking on paper and that. First of all can kind of stop us in our tracks of like, oh, mercy, if this is what's flowing through my students' heads, or like we, we got a lot of work to do. But that's also so powerful to harness that is truly what writing is. It's thinking on paper. So how can we cultivate our students' thinking both on the content and then also on word choice and Senate structure and organization, and kind of all these key pieces. So that quote really affirmed for me that that writing is definitely a learned skillset and that yes, I think there are natural aptitudes to all kinds of skill sets, right? I mean. For example, I could work with a voice coach for the next 15 years, and my voice might sound a little better than it does, I like to joke and say, I have a voice for the shower, right? I love to sing, but it's not pretty. so I could learn more and I could get better. I am never going to be a Beyonce, right? That's just not for me. And yet I can hone the skill, right? But for me, writing is, you know, it lives in both worlds, right? it is an artistic talent, right? I firmly believe there are people who are born to be writers, a thousand percent, and they have a gift, and that's an incredible gift really to the world, right? But I also feel like it is an academic skill, right? It lives in both worlds. And so because of the academic skillset. It allows us to really cultivate same kind of thing like natural born singers. I, you've heard me talk about American Idol already. I love that show. I love that show because it's people who come in who have maybe never sang anywhere else literally than church or just to themselves, to their babies, to, to just their family. And then they, they hear something and they're able to cultivate and grow that skill. I think I definitely honor that people have natural gifts and talents and writing can certainly be one of those. And I think there's a big old, and that it also is a set of skills that can very much be taught and be honed and be something that students and any of us can learn so that we can. Become stronger with it. And maybe not be a published writer by the end of the day, but be able to communicate very clearly in an email to tell a phenomenal story. That wins me a scholarship to be able to take on my schoolwork and know that I can handle the writing and not try to find a way out of that and or have that pit in my stomach. and that's truly I hope an inspirational message to everyone that writing is a set of learned skills and it's there for the cultivation by how we hone our thinking.

Destiny Jordan: 32:28

I love it. I love how you said how we hone our thinking. So a lot of this sounds like before you even put the pen to the page or pencil to the page or type your way through, you have to think about it before you write about it.

Amber Parks: 32:41

Yeah. Go ahead.

Destiny Jordan: 32:42

I said, no, you go ahead.

Amber Parks: 32:43

I was gonna say, that's just where it can be teachable, right? Because at the heart of learning it, it is cultivation of thinking and making connections. And so whether it's learning how to put words together in a sentence or coming back and saying, you know, I just, I don't like how that sounds. and having strategies of how do I rearrange my sentences? All of that is very teachable. I was in the airport the other day in Colorado Springs, and I had a lot of material with me. So I was trying to finagle in my bags to make sure I was under my 50 pound limit. And, the check-in agents were so kind of, what is this? And I said, oh, this is a student writer's guide that I wrote for students. Would you all like one? Because I think it'll get me under my limit on the weight. And so I handed it to one of them, and then another one asked for it. And they were flipping through them there wasn't a line, I promise. they were doing their job, but it was a slow time. And they just said, I wish I had this when I was writing. And that's the kind of affirmation of, we have to make writing more doable, more teachable, demystify what feels like you either have it or you don't. Because it is teachable. There are steps to it. And When we teach students this and anyone the steps and structures and strategies, then they find their voice. Literally, they find their voice in writing.

Destiny Jordan: 34:03

Love it. And I just love how it sound, how you put it together, that writing is not this scary thing to conquer. It's something that you could attack piece by piece until you find your way through it, your own way through it.

Amber Parks: 34:15

It's not a paint by number, we're not wanting cookie cutter pieces. But there is still a structure, there's still a process to every famous painter. And that's what we're doing with the writing process. What are our options? How can we show all the different choices for students to think about, for any writer to kind of study? And that's what I would encourage anyone. who writes, right? Whether you love it or you feel like it's your calling or it's not your calling, but you have to do it. If you study the structure of. Pieces that move you? What do they do? What types of sentences? So I mean, things like, do they have a story? Do they pull in direct quotation? Where is that transitional phrase? Is it at the front? Is it at the end? Is that a complex sentence? Is that a compound complex subject? What do they do structurally in their writing that makes you sit up, that makes you listen, that makes you can't put the book down or you can't stop the audio book. What is it about it structurally that you can tie into your own piece or learn to weave in and pull into your own writing? And that's really at the heart of all of our resources and activities is saying, look we know what great writing looks like and sounds like, and we're going to show you step-by-step ways of doing that in all the parts from the ideal generation phase, all the way up to the refinement piece before you submit.

Destiny Jordan: 35:37

I like how you have levels that help kind of build their confidence before you get to that multi-paragraph situation. So with writing with design, it emphasizes you have emphasized process over your perfection, so you really want kids to understand the process. So why is that mindset important for writers to rebuild conference?

Amber Parks: 35:57

It because writing is thinking on paper because it is that grappling and that grit that all great writers have. I was just in classrooms earlier this past week and I opened up with asking students, how many of you feel like writing's hard? And they, you know, they kind of look at each other and then they kind of slowly raise their hand up and I'm like, I'm gonna shoot my hand up as high as I can. Writing is hard and I write every day and I write with students all over the country and I love it and it's hard for me. And so that Just honoring that, that there is grit and grappling that every writer feels. I hope is affirmation. And that's where we want teachers to model the process. We don't just put up a writing and everything's just flowing smoothly for us. We want teachers to write organically with their students and plan their writings collectively to really honor that. There is so much active thinking and processing happening and we don't like for students to erase, for example. We want them just to put a strike through, just a line through the word, not even scribble out, that's too much one line through it and keep on going. Or when you read your piece over and over and you think, oh, I, this just, this is just not, not landing well. When that word revision comes into play, cross it out and put the new words around it. We have to honor the mess of writing and I mean that very lovingly there, there is a messy process to deep thinking and writing is, to me the pentacle of deep thinking That the more that teachers can model that, the more that writers can share that with their audiences of like, yeah, let me show you how this whole chapter got completely rewritten because I realized this one thing didn't make sense between these two characters, you know, that type of openness to the process demystifies it for students and for all of us. I can't tell you how many times when I go to classes And I ask them, how do you write before they've worked with us and they just, when we go, we go to the computer and I start typing. Really, wow. There's so much thinking and organizing and grappling with that we need to do to get a great response. I really do think that most students feel like, I sit down at the computer, I open up a Word doc, I choose a font that's really pretty or curly or you know, that, no one else is gonna be able to read. Or I type it in yellow, right? Oh gosh, I've seen it all. and then they just start going and then that's their writing. And so what we do in writing with design schools is when teachers share students' writing out in the hallway, or if there's a student led conference and students are sharing their work, they show their designs, they show the pages of process and organization and revision work before they get to their sentence draft to honor. Yeah, there's all this thinking, this is what you need to see. not just the finished piece that's typed in pretty, It's show the whole process

Destiny Jordan: 38:50

that, so you see all the mess before you see the great product at the end.

Amber Parks: 38:56

Yeah. And for teachers too, I mean, there's so many teachers who look at me and they're like, you want me to do what? Yes. You gotta have words up there because it's organically happening for you. You don't have it pre-planned. You are coming up with an idea and then a student's giving you a better idea or you're realizing that you kind of straight off and you gotta cross it off and come back into the topic. That's what we want. We have to model that. Or students don't ever see that's what's gonna happen for them. So teachers really have a huge role in modeling for students every part of that process to affirm for them that We all got it and we're gonna grow our skill sets to get better at it.

Destiny Jordan: 39:34

That's amazing, especially for teachers being organic. Have you had any pushback against that?

Amber Parks: 39:39

Yes, I have, but I think because I model it too in the trainings and we work on writing together in the trainings and they see me in their classrooms modeling where I'm stumbling over my words and I'm thinking like, I can't think of what I wanna say here. I'm gonna leave that right now and come back to it and move on to the next part of the writing that we're planning, and be then teachers feel like they get a green light to do it themselves. So I think that's one of the most powerful things of me getting to work with schools is to affirm for teachers that it's okay. It's okay to be stuck and not know where you wanna go and say, you know what? we're all out of ideas right now. none of us are coming up with exactly what we want there. let's just put a pin in it and let's move on to something else that we need to work on. And that's organic writing. That's true writing. I mean, very few authors sit down and just churn out an entire book or report or whatever it is they need to do in one sitting. It is months, if not years of collective work that ultimately gets to the publishing place. and I think we just don't, we don't do enough of that. The first part of the process for students, we're too focused on round and round of revision of the final draft, where it's honestly, at that point it's done. That's it. when it's in sentence draft, we tell teachers all you're looking for are minor edits in terms of like capitals and spelling and easy fixes. If you have to overhaul. A third of it, if this student is completely off prompt you've missed the instructional time. It's gone. You gotta look forward and plan better next time and plan with how we work with writing, with our structures, with our blueprints. Students will design their writing, not in an outline through one of our visual. Designs for essays they plan out the structure of their writing and teachers can assess everything on there in terms of quality, in terms of organization, in terms of, even the different types of sentences. Do they have direct quotations? Are they pulling in strong analysis? Do they have a counterclaim? Whatever they need for that writing. Teachers can assess all of that when it's still in phrases and fragments in their design. And then we have teachers say, okay, now you're ready to write your sentence draft. And so when that sentence draft is put together, when students put all that effort into taking their ideas and put it into sentences then teachers have very little work to do. At that point, it's much more enjoyable. And then students are open to it as well to say, oh, oh yeah, I totally forgot to capitalize that. You know, it's much easier to fix because it's not a complete overhaul of paragraphs two through four. No one wants to do that.

Destiny Jordan: 42:17

Very true.

Amber Parks: 42:20

No one's got time for

Destiny Jordan: 42:21

Did you work so intense, intensively and intentionally on writing and teaching teachers and students? How has this work shaped your own relationship with writing?

Amber Parks: 42:34

Yeah, it's really brought so much purpose for me in what I get to do. You know, I feel so grateful that my sphere of influence has grown. And I take that very seriously. And it also, you know, I love that Steve Jobs said, you can't connect the dots in your life looking forward. This all started for me in eighth grade. My mom was my US history teacher, and she put up a writing prompt on the board and she said, look, it's gonna be a grade, so everyone has to do it. She said, but one of you might win a hundred bucks because it's also the competition that the veterans of foreign wars are putting on. And the prompt was write about what democracy means to you. So I worked on my essay my mom's my teacher, she's gonna get me if I don't. So I turned it in and I ended up winning. And all my friends of course said it was rigged, and it wasn't, we didn't have any connection to the VFW in Laurel, Mississippi, I promise. So when I won that a hundred dollars, it's like in the movie Inside Out where RI has all those core memories, you know, and so many memories connected to those core ones. And that was it for me. That was a core memory to this day that I just remember thinking if I won a hundred bucks. We're working on this essay for three hours. First of all, that's an amazing rate of hourly rate of pay. Secondly, what else is out there? And that prompted me to look for scholarships all through high school. and that is just truly what makes all of this makes sense that I, when I go into classrooms, I see myself in that desk. And what a gift and incredible opportunity writing can be for students to yes, obviously to write, but to work on assignments, to find those scholarships, to find their voice, to process their feelings, to just better make sense of even the content that they're learning. And so that's where I feel it has really, has really stayed with me and shaped me is that I want every student, no matter their grade, to feel that core memory get formed. If I can in any way help with that around writing and it's power. And also it's doability and it is something we all can learn how to do Well,

Destiny Jordan: 44:58

I love it. And even with this day and age where a lot of things are changing technology wise and socially wise, especially with the major rise of ai.

Amber Parks: 45:09

Yeah.

Destiny Jordan: 45:09

So students, they are writing constantly. They're texting, they're Instagraming, they're writing AI prompts and ChatGPT, digital types of things, but not always thoughtfully. So how does writing with design address writing in this digital first aid, especially like our middle schoolers and high schoolers?

Amber Parks: 45:25

Oh yes. That's a. A truly fabulous question. I'm in schools that have a complete ban on AI to schools that don't even have a policy at all. And so I think we need to find a, a better place than neither of those two extremes. And so, what I encourage schools or anyone who's working with with people who have capacity to get under ai, right? Which is just about all of us now, that there needs to be a, an understanding that anything written is subject to a verbal follow up. And that has been a game changer for middle and high schoolers because, I don't think if we take a hard and fast stance and say you may not use AI at all. That they are going to say, okay, you're right. I shouldn't, and you have my word. And not that's anything that's not a slight on middle and high schoolers. I think that's a disservice to them because it is here and it's not leaving, and it's only going to become more a part of all of the professions that exist, that get replaced, right? That there AI is now, it is you and AI in terms of who you are in any kind of job form, right? Because AI is an incredible tool for for efficiency, for learning all the options, for getting over a moment you're stuck on. And so what I would encourage all students and writers to do is to be very specific with the questions that you're putting into ai. Not write me an essay or write me a poem or whatever the prompt is. I mean, that's an abuse of ai. Full stop. But to say, okay, here's where I am, right? I'm writing a report on the Egyptian God, Horace, so happens to be what my sixth grade son's working on. and he's stuck on one part about who the family members were for Horace. He's read different sources and they say different things and he came to me and said, I don't know which one is right. And so that was a wonderful opportunity to head onto one of our ai platforms and just say, I read both of these. here are the sources I've used. Help me figure out why I'm getting different information. And through that analysis and that explanation, he was able to say, oh, it actually is a discrepancy. there's two different competing versions of the story, so I'm gonna put that into my writing. So it helped him not get stuck and overwhelmed in that moment, but to know how to then move forward with it in his writing. I use it a lot when I say, okay, these are the three things I'm thinking about for what I want to do with teachers in the next training and I use it for idea generation, but I don't just let it give me one. I want your top five. And then from there, it's back to me where my creativity, my knowledge, my expertise comes back into play. So I think if it is used to enhance your ideas and then boomerang it back to you, that's a wonderful use of ai. if it is a pushing off to AI to get it done for you, that's where it can become a really slippery slope and really become something that I think you have to continually gauge and make sure that you are not losing your own understanding and knowledge of it. And so I think that's a really. important checkpoint for students that, number one, to know there's a policy of anything I turn in is subject to a verbal follow-up. So I better be able to cover that I know what's in my paper, right? And then secondly, to really teach it. To teach how to use it to be a boomerang back to you. To take something you're thinking of, give you some ideas, give you something so that you're not stuck and move on and then come back to you where it's back on your brain and back on your ideas coming forward.

Destiny Jordan: 49:11

Love it. So making AI a tool exactly how it should be. It's nothing more,

Amber Parks: 49:17

right? It is a tool, you know, do I think AI is gonna replace writers? No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I think more than anything it is making that the humanness something that we all crave more I have found that I'm getting more responses from schools wanting in-person sessions, not even virtual sessions, because they want that 3D version, right? They want us to be right there all together and not just something that feels artificial. That feels like it could be just generated by some technology source. They want to know the person and the heart behind it. And that's something that AI will never have, right? It's not going to have our hearts. it's not going to have that ability to connect with people. And that's something that writers do through their words. We do that in person. We do that when we're doing our writings read aloud and we're doing that through the way that we put together our books and then connect with our audiences and connect with those who, have found solace or entertainment or motivation in our words. So I think more than anything, AI is going to, elevate the profession and the power that it takes to be a writer. because of the utilization of the tool to further our own thinking and creativity. I think AI has made me a better writer. I don't think it's taken away from what I do at all, but it definitely has elevated my thinking, the way I process, challenged me on the way I am putting together even a sentence, right? To say, here's two other structures for that sentence. which one do you think sounds better? Right? it's all in that processing and programming that we all have the power to do with our AI platforms to help us really get better at our own craft.

Destiny Jordan: 51:00

I love that express. I think you're the first person I've heard say that it's going to elevate the profession. usually I get the opposite, so I breath, refresh air for that one.

Amber Parks: 51:09

I think with anything new it can feel so scary, right? I mean, when the internet first was developed there was such a fear that it was going to lead to such misinformation and no more use for schools or for education, or everything's gonna be online and we won't need to go anywhere anymore. And it hasn't, it's elevated our connection, it's elevated the way that we can work together. It's given us an opportunity to connect and do this podcast, for example. And so, I think anytime there's newness, anytime we don't have, we're going into an unknown. It does feel scary and it does feel threatening. And I think more than anything though, we have to model great use of it. We have to teach our students how to use it well. And for writers. I do truly feel like it's going to to make it more of a human art and skillset rather than Yeah. Oh yes. The book my AI just wrote for me. Nobody wants to read that. I wanna know Destiny wrote it, right? I wanna know the person. I wanna have that human connection to the work rather than something that just got spewed out because of a computer code.

Destiny Jordan: 52:19

That's true. Amber, we're gonna have to have you back on the show we're running out of time. So we are gonna be hitting our fire round.

Amber Parks: 52:25

Oh, let's do

Destiny Jordan: 52:26

first question is. For young writers and creative listening, what is one piece of advice you would give them on their creative journey?

Amber Parks: 52:36

Read a lot of phenomenal books. Study the authors. Study what they're doing. ask yourself how they do that, how they put that sentence together, how they put that paragraph together, how they put those chapters together. What is one nugget I can take from each piece of writing that I read, whether it's the driest research report you're reading, or the juiciest novel? Doesn't matter. Read and study the structure. Read like a writer

Destiny Jordan: 53:01

All right. What book do you recommend for writers or creatives to read?

Amber Parks: 53:06

I, I would, oh, lemme grab it. Best practices in writing instruction. It's right here for me. it's a Steve Graham book course, so I'm gonna recommend his phenomenal work. This is just an incredible kind of just encyclopedia basically of all the writing research that's been done on how to teach kids to write. And it is, it's just an absolute guidepost of how to, to teach writing.

Destiny Jordan: 53:34

Awesome and most important question. Where can people connect with you in the work that you do?

Amber Parks: 53:39

Yeah, so, we're on all the socials. LinkedIn is, one of my favorites to be on and to connect with people, so definitely would recommend that one. Facebook and Instagram are the other two, main social platforms that I'm on. And then we also have writing with design.com, so that's our website. There's a contact place on there as well, so I'm always just a couple clicks away that way. And then certainly through all the platforms would love to stay connected. We do have a YouTube channel as well just writing with design and we have lots of, videos on there that just are supportive of writing instruction. We can get on there and vent a little bit sometimes about things that we see and the issues that we see, going on in schools and instructions. And then we even have some drawing videos. So that's something really helpful. If you have littles or work with littles, or just want to get better at drawing things, we have very simple, videos. They're all silent, but they just walk you through steps of drawing the kind of the simplest version of a couch, for example, how do you take something 3D and turn it into 2D on your paper? And so our videos will help with the steps to do that.

Destiny Jordan: 54:44

Thank you so much, Amber, for being on the show today, and I hope you get a chance to come back on the show to tell us some more good stuff about writing.

Amber Parks: 54:51

Yes, I would love it. Thanks Destiny.