‘Is This Anything?’

In 2020, comedian Jerry Seinfeld published Is This Anything?, a compilation of jokes spanning his 45-year career. The book’s title is a question comedians ask one another when deciding if a bit will work, and Seinfeld’s practice of jotting down every idea on legal pads he never throws away is a testament to how much he values the act of recording thought. His vulnerability in sharing the inner workings of his brain is not just admirable—it can also be a wonderful example for students who are intimidated by the written word. Furthermore, writing and speaking are language domains that students use across content areas, so no matter what we teach, helping students develop the consistent habit of expressing and recording their thoughts reinforces key messages about the validity of all ideas, however great or small.

One of the most persistent barriers teachers see in developing that habit is not lack of skill but lack of belief: Students often dismiss their own thinking before sharing it with others. They may believe their thoughts hold little value, so we must intentionally design opportunities to position their ideas as worth noticing, revisiting, and refining, whether through low-stakes daily writing, structured discourse, or routines that ask students to return to and build on their earlier thoughts.

These strategies do more than increase output—they help students recognize that their thinking has value, and that writing is just one possible tool for not just documenting but also developing that thinking.

Higher-Order Thinking

To combat the ever-increasing temptation to let a bot do the work for us, one of the best moves we can make as teachers is to facilitate student thinking by ensuring an ongoing level of output without any involvement from technology. When students are encouraged to record their ideas regularly, they build habits that can otherwise be difficult to develop, like elaborating upon their ideas and looking at what they learn more critically.

In college, I took a history course that provided me with a strategy I later implemented with secondary students. The teacher always began class the same way: He would put a complex thought or question on the board and then give everyone five minutes to write as many open-ended questions as possible about whatever came to mind in relation to what was posted. As the semester went on, I noticed that both my paper and my classmates’ would continue to fill up with questions throughout the hourlong period as we all became accustomed to approaching the content with an inquiry-focused lens. In addition, I stopped worrying about whether my questions were good ones, and instead came to value the collection of thoughts that sprang from whatever was on that page in front of me.

When I tried out this approach with my own students, I saw that not only did they gradually write more—they also expressed their ideas to one another with more confidence. In addition, they gradually moved beyond questions that were fairly literal and focused on what was happening in a text, and instead began to pose more inferential questions around how or why ideas were centered in what they read.

In every class, students have questions, so keeping a running list not only allows for additional processing time; teachers can also collect the questions (perhaps with a question parking lot) and either ask students to share them as part of a summarizer or use them to determine next steps.

Running Ideas Document

Much like Seinfeld’s legal pads, a running document of ideas for students to share whatever is on their minds (within reason) can become a treasure trove of thought, even if most of what we jot down is not helpful in the end. While it might be tempting to house such a document online, one of my tried-and-true methods for encouraging students to share as many ideas as possible is grounded in an age-old classroom staple: the composition notebook.

Composition notebooks tend to be more visible in language arts classes, but regardless of the content area, writers’ notebooks can be a regular part of the start to each day. In a math class, students might look at an unfamiliar problem or graphic and make a list of questions about what they see. In science, students can use their notebooks to make predictions about an upcoming lab or to observe a specimen and make notes about what they notice or have questions about. In social studies, students might think about cause and effect in relation to an event they’re learning about and jot down some ideas.

It’s perfectly legitimate to give students the space to write freely in order to organize their ideas or get settled into class. Writing studies expert Peter Elbow, who is credited with inventing the concept of freewriting, described the practice this way: “If your pencil stops moving, the room is gonna blow up. Just keep writing.” To phrase it another way, all writing has purpose, even if it does not have an agenda.

As Seinfeld shares in his book, “Expect nothing. Accept anything.” In my own English and writing courses, the notebook became such a staple for writing down random ideas and thoughts that students began filling several a year and sharing more thoughts with one another without making disclaimers—no more “This is bad, but…” or “I was really tired when I wrote this.” This was both heartwarming and a validation of how everyone can begin to see the value of their ideas over time.

Short and Sweet

Unlike speaking, which occurs naturally in the human brain, writing is not something people are instinctively wired to do. Therefore, providing frequent and accessible approaches for hesitant students makes the transition from writing to thinking more organic. Elbow recommends providing low-stakes writing opportunities so that students can practice often and with less ceremony: “The goal of low-stakes assignments is not so much to produce excellent pieces of writing as to get students to think, learn, and understand more of the course material.”

These lower stakes writing-to-thinking opportunities can take any form. For example, students can work on short responses to questions connected to the curriculum, but they can also practice generating ideas for enjoyment. One of my favorite practices is to take about 20 minutes for a “Fun Friday” activity that feels like a much-needed respite from the weeklong grind while still building skills. I might ask students to write five nouns on slips of scratch paper (one noun per slip), fold them up, and put them in a container. Then everyone takes turns pulling out five slips at random, with the goal of putting them together in a short paragraph on any subject, in a way that makes as much sense as possible. When the final products are shared with the group, everyone tries to guess the nouns that were inserted.

This writing game might seem a little fluffy, but it teaches students important cognitive skills, like being resourceful, thinking through challenges (no trading of nouns allowed), and figuring out what decisions their classmates make about how to write their pieces. Ultimately, having the chance to write without the specter of an important grade or heavy criticism sparks more thinking, more creativity, and higher engagement.

Students have a lot to offer, but they usually need to be convinced that people want to hear what they have to say. The key to delivering messages that validate identity is to lead with the perspective that any thought can ultimately become something significant. As Seinfeld explains in the introduction to his book, all ideas have great worth: “A lot of people I’ve talked to seemed surprised that I kept all these notes. I don’t understand why they think that… what could possibly be of more value?”