Getting Ready to Write? Just Breathe.

“Rule #1,” I tell my AP English Language students every year, is “to just breathe.”

It’s said in jest, mostly.  My Advanced Placement students are some of the most anxiety-ridden, uptight individuals I have from year to year.  They need a reminder to not let those anxieties get the better of them, to stop them from doing their best.

When students are confronted with writing prompts and timed writings and the pressures of the AP exam they tend to freeze.  I always told them “Just breathe,” but what I never did was actually give them the opportunity to breathe.  Who had ever heard of making time to breathe in the classroom? 

Caleen Jennings had.  Caleen was one of the many influential instructors I had at the 2018 Teaching Shakespeare Institute (TSI) this summer and she introduced me to the idea of breathing before starting any kind of writing.  Which, don’t get me wrong, even as I type it sounds ridiculous.  Who needs to be told to breathe?  But it’s true.  We get so tense, so stressed with the very idea of writing that our ideas become blocked up before we even begin. 

I had picked up on that, as evidenced by my #1 rule, but I hadn’t really practiced teaching students how to breathe.  I’ll admit, I’m still guilty about actually teaching this idea since it is now November and I haven’t brought it up.  I’ve let the other aspects of teaching AP get ahead of me and some of the ideas I swooned over at TSI have fallen by the wayside. 

But maybe breathing should be just as essential to writing as brainstorming, creating an outline, or supporting your claim with evidence. I still have time to incorporate this aspect into my teaching.  It’s not too late! I need to teach my students that before you jump into the prompt, before you put pen to paper, before you put fingers to a keyboard take a moment and breathe.

Just breathe.


Erica Johnson has been teaching for seven years in central Arkansas and currently works with juniors and seniors at Vilonia High School.  She spent the past summer transforming her teaching philosophy at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute in Washington, D.C.  When she isn’t spending time with her dog, she is visiting with her family and their latest addition: her niece Ivey.  She just started blogging recently with Teacher Captain’s (B)log and tries to post semi-regularly, but you can catch her more reliably on twitter @teachercap_e.