The following interview took place virtually over Zoom with parental permission.

Rae is

currently a high achieving sophomore attending high-school in Eastern Kentucky.

Karina: The first question I want to ask you is; do you consider yourself a writer?

Rae: Well… I don’t know how to answer that.

K: It’s okay to say no.

R: Sometimes? It depends on what I’m writing about. If I’m interested in it, then yeah, but if I’m

not, no.

K: A lot of your writing, I imagine, is taking place in school. At least, I hope you’re writing a lot

in school. What kinds of stuff are you writing in school that you feel like okay, I'm a writer of

this thing, but I'm not a writer of this thing?

R: Like, it depends on what were writing about. Right now, we were going over a Streetcar

Named Desire and I liked writing analysis about the characters but then we started poetry

analysis and I don’t like that.

K: I understand. I don’t like poetry analysis, either. I hate poetry. I’m so bad at it.

K: Has a majority of your writing been analysis writing? What else have you written in school,

even thinking in the past couple of years?

R: We haven’t done a lot. We really only do analysis or argumentative writing.

K: What does argumentative writing look like in your school? Do you like argumentative

writing?

R: In eight grade, all the time, we would read a passage, choose a side, and then write about it.

K: Okay, so it’s more of a prompt with a provided source to use. You aren’t really able to chose

your own topic and argue for things you really want to argue for with these prompts.
K: Do you feel like COVID has really changed writing classes for you? Has COVID changed

how your English classes are set up? Is there more or less writing instruction now compared to

reading or is it equal?

R: When we were doing virtual, I didn’t have a writing class at all. We had a reading class and a

writing class at one point, but then they cut writing out of the schedule. When I got to eighth

grade, we still didn’t have a writing class, just grammar and reading. But we did some writing in

reading.

K: I can’t believe they just cut it out entirely.

R: Yeah.

K: And you’re a sophomore in high school now. I don’t think writing gets really intensive until

your junior year, especially if you take AP English. I know you are planning to go that route and

I want to ask, do you feel confident to head into such a writing heavy class with the way your

previous writing classes happened?

R: I have an AP class right now and sometimes its okay, but sometimes I feel like its really hard.

K: I can only imagine. Do you feel like COVID has really impacted you in that?

R: Yeah, I feel like I could have been a little bit of a better writer if they would have had writing

classes in the seventh or eight grade.

K: I want to kind of jump back to something you said earlier. You said you don't identify as a

writer when it comes to certain things you write. Do you feel ownership of your writing? Like

would you post your Streetcar Named Desire analysis on the internet and say, “Yeah, that’s me. I

wrote that.”

R: Probably not.
K: Would you post anything? Like do you feel confident and proud of things you wrote like

that? See that they're yours?

R: It really just depends.

K: Would it have to be over something you like?

R: And something I understand really well. Like with poetry, I don’t really understand it.

K: Do you feel like your teachers make you feel confident about your writing? Do you think

they give good feedback?

R: The one I have this year does. The one I had last year didn’t really care.

K: What made you think she didn’t really care?

R: She picked favorites a lot. And one time I asked her if my writing was okay. She said, “Yeah,

it’s good enough for you.”

K: I’ll go ahead and start wrapping it up here. Is there anything further you want to about your

writing experience in highschool?

R: I don’t think so.