The request was simple enough: Please come and talk to 11 separate Southern Indiana grade school classes about writing. You know, the thing you do for a living. Rearranging the alphabet into words.

One of America’s greatest living writers also happens to be one of the country’s longest-running teachers of creative writing. I’m talking about Joyce Carol Oates, author of more than 50 novels, whose ...

The result: In 2012, when NYC rolled out Common Core, some teachers became so anxious that, in one school where I was teaching, they walked around the room criticizing the kids’ creative writing ...