Abstract
This
reflective essay explores how using the freewriting model as a
pedagogical strategy helps students move beyond the performative act of
writing for grades, or “bargain writing,” toward a more authentic and
genuine approach to engaging with learning. Drawing on experiences
teaching in a university child and youth care counsellor program, the
essay examines how freewriting activities were integrated into both a
first-year introductory course into the profession of child and youth
care, and a second-year practicum seminar course. Using ungraded
freewriting activities, students were asked to explore their thoughts,
experiences, and emerging professional identity. The author contends
that freewriting creates opportunities for vulnerability, reflection,
and relational connection, allowing students to access deeper levels of
meaning and develop their writing voices. Instructor observations
suggest that freewriting enhances student engagement, discussion, and
quality of written assignments. The article highlights freewriting as a
relational teaching practice that supports professional identity,
growth, and development within child and youth care education.
Keywords
Freewriting, reflective practice, relational pedagogy, child
and youth care education, student voice
I teach in Mount Royal University’s Bachelor of Child Studies, Child and Youth Care Counsellor program, a professional discipline focused on caring for children, youth, and families within their life-space environments, including homes, schools, and communities. Child and youth care counsellors work with young people in the care and custody of child and family services, youth criminal justice settings, schools, and community programs. The primary aim of the discipline is to promote well-being, resilience, and positive developmental outcomes in young people, particularly those who may be at risk or facing challenges such as trauma, behavioural issues, or social exclusion (Stuart & Fryer, 2024).
Practitioners in this field are trained to engage directly with children and youth in their day-to-day lives, offering support through therapeutic relationships, crisis intervention, advocacy, and life skills training (Freeman & Garfat, 2014). This means that I need to teach students the integration of theory and practice, how to act with young people who often display volatile and sometimes violent behaviours, such as screaming and throwing a chair, while at the same time hearing as accurately and sympathetically as possible what the young person is communicating. While being versed in the academic vernacular of the discipline, students must learn to communicate with young people and their families or caregivers in simple language. The writing done by child and youth care counsellors needs to perform many tasks simultaneously. To be accessible to the people most affected by it, it needs to avoid the formality of academic writing (Healy & Mullholland, 2012). Yet since it is also the vehicle used to document case notes, observations, and assessments, it needs to be designed to be useful within institutional settings to ensure that these reports meet professional standards (Healy & Mullholland, 2012). This writing prioritizes clarity, relevance, and accessibility (Healy & Mullholland, 2012). It must often be adaptable to different professional contexts and audiences, such as multi-disciplinary teams or legal bodies, and may need to convey complex ideas in straightforward language (Healy & Mullholland, 2012).
Students in the Child and Youth Care Counsellor program are often new to the university and the discipline of child and youth care; many are fresh out of high school. This combination creates a challenging environment for students when they are asked to write about their learning. My experience reviewing student writing assignments is that students often require more depth and connection to their writing voice. I have found that students write for their grade, meaning they write to receive something in return instead of writing for personal fulfilment. My teaching experience tells me that, for the most part, students do not enjoy writing and that they see writing as a hoop to jump through to receive the grade that allows them to move on to the next assignment.
Their situation reminds me of my own as a new university student. I was not prepared for academic writing, nor did I have a genuine interest in writing at all. My earlier experience with formal education had taught me that writing was not a positive endeavour. High school had not prepared me for paraphrasing and citing sources, nor had I learned how to present a compelling argument based on critical thinking and evidence. I certainly did not want to write and only did so to meet the requirements of an assignment. I would put together a paper based on the assignment criteria and what I thought the instructor wanted, but I knew I needed to improve at writing. I would never have called myself a writer. Gourlay (2009) confirms my experience, explaining that students need help to decode unfamiliar information, such as the difference between essays and papers or the difference between a bibliography and citation sources or referencing, causing confusion and disengagement. Many students have not experienced a positive outcome in their writing in the past and have yet to reach a sense of legitimacy (Gourlay, 2009). With this in mind, I want to provide my students the opportunity to learn how to write in higher education and to enjoy writing. In doing so, I aim to help students in my class produce in-depth, well-written papers and to capture their voices.
I am aware that there will always be an element of what, in his introductory comments about freewriting, Richard Harrison called “bargain writing,” based on the fact that students are given grades in exchange for the work they are asked to do in their courses. However, I want to introduce a new kind of bargain, where writing is used as a reflective practice instead of a performance.
Over the last three years, I have been working with scaffolding writing assignments for a cohort of first-year students in a course I teach entitled Introduction to the Child and Youth Care Profession. These students are all part of the same program and are together in most of their core courses throughout their degree. Scaffolding assignments with increasing expectations and levels of technique has been helpful, but something still needs to be added. The missing piece was their authentic voice, which was stuck behind fear. Taking part in the Writers’ Guild provided an opportunity for me to use the freewriting method as a way of helping students find their voice.
Reflecting on learning the freewriting method as a guild member, I connected most personally with how freewriting can help a person overcome their fear of writing. In an excerpt from my freewriting journal, I wrote, “The way to get around bargain writing is by freewriting because it bypasses the hyper level of consciousness about writing and unlocks what writers are thinking about behind the curtain of self-protection.” Realizing this, I changed my approach to help improve students’ relationships with writing assignments. I wanted to allow them to enjoy writing and the process of inner reflection that comes with freewriting.
My teaching philosophy is to teach in relational practice, which means providing a safe environment where the students and I make meaning of our experiences together collaboratively. I wanted to incorporate freewriting relationally by being vulnerable and sharing my freewriting entries as I demonstrate to students the power of the freewriting tool and the connectedness that occurs in the group environment emerging out of the vibrations evoked from vulnerable sharing and noticing done in the group. The freewriting tool unlocks the areas of the mind that have been closed off due to the feeling of being overwhelmed by busy lives, perfectionism, fear, stress, and a collection of other reasons, allowing the writer to get in touch with what is behind the curtain in the mind. The writer can show up in a more present way to engage with the group in conversation or writing activities. With this in mind, I also thought about how impactful the freewriting method could be for a practicum course I teach where students are asked to reflect on their practice learning experiences. Therefore, I used the freewriting method differently in the two courses.
The Child and Youth Care Counsellor program includes clinical competencies required to enter professional practice upon graduation. For second-year students, one area of required competency is to complete a practicum at a partnering community organization. The course accompanying the practicum is a seminar, where experiences and competency are reflected upon and discussed in a group supervision format. I first focused on using the freewriting technique in the practicum seminar. The second place I decided to try the freewriting technique was in a first-year lecture-style course entitled Vulnerable Children, Youth, and Families. It is important to note that I did not assess or assign grades to the freewriting activities I asked my students to participate in.
For the practicum seminar, I asked the students to bring a notebook and pen to each weekly practicum seminar in the second semester of a two-semester practicum experience. I chose the Winter semester because I was learning the freewriting method and technique in the Fall semester myself. Each week, I started the class with a five-minute freewrite, asking students to reflect on their experience at their practicum over the last week. The prompt I used was “This week at practicum I …” The freewriting method allows students to settle down and focus on the seminar and their practicum experiences. I found that this improved how the students engaged in the discussion portion of the seminar compared to the Fall semester, when the conversation was at the surface level, with some students seeming to not even remember their experiences of the week prior. But with a page of their freewriting in front of them, students in the Winter semester were able to speak in detail about the topic or experience under discussion and engage in a deep dialogue about it. As the instructor, I facilitated and guided the conversation occasionally, connecting to the required professional competencies. However, I noticed that much of the conversation was student-initiated based on what was read aloud from the freewriting activity.
The second course in which I used the freewriting method was a first-year child and youth care counsellor course. In this course, I asked students to do a five-minute freewrite after they had listened to presentations about issues that impact vulnerable children, youth, and families.
Students were asked to reflect on the issues they heard, write down their top three areas of interest, then choose one to freewrite about for five minutes, using the prompt “I have chosen the issue _____ because …” The students were then asked to share what they wrote and notice what stood out about each other’s writing. The students who read their freewrites out loud were asked to write down in their notes what the other students noticed in their writing and then go home and continue writing a twenty-minute draft to evaluate if they had enough to continue with a short paper on the issue they chose. I noted that student papers were significantly better written than they had been in previous years in terms of students connecting ideas and writing in a way that was meaningful to them.
The best experience I had using the freewriting method was with the second-year practicum course when an Indigenous guest speaker joined the class to talk about his experience as a young man growing up on a First Nations reservation. The students listened to him give his presentation and afterwards were asked to do a five-minute freewrite about what they noticed about the speaker’s presentation. The prompt was “I noticed …” I followed up by asking them to read their freewrites aloud and then asking the other students to respond with what they noticed. This was an incredible experience. Students were open, honest, and vulnerable in their writing and discussion. I did nothing in particular to build the capacity for this experience with this group of students. However, they are part of a cohort of child and youth care counselling students and have built some trust and safety with one another in their other courses. The cohort model is part of why they could so quickly share the intimate thoughts and feelings expressed in their freewriting. The other factor that helped create the environment for vulnerability was that I participated in the freewriting activity myself and was the first to read my writing aloud. The energy in the room was intense. The connections drawn between what they heard from the speaker and what they experienced in their lives or their practicum experience were deep. If I could only pick one of my experiences to replicate, it would be this one. I will continue to use the freewriting method in my courses as it is a powerful tool to help unlock thoughts and ideas, allowing students to access more depth in their writing by finding their voice.
References
Freeman, J., & Garfat, T. (2014). Being, interpreting, doing: A framework for organizing the characteristics of a relational child and youth care approach. CYC-Online, 179, 23–27.
Gourlay, L. (2009). Threshold practices: Becoming a student through academic literacies. London Review of Education, 7(2), 181–192.
Healy, K., & Mulholland, J. (2012). Writing skills for social workers (2nd ed.). Sage. Stuart, C., & Fryer, K. (2024). Foundations of child and youth care (4th ed.). Kendall Hunt Publishing.
Courtesy: Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal Fall 2026, 19(2) https://doi.org/10.59236/td2026vol19iss22096
