When Students Become Authors: A Classroom Newsletter Comes to Life

When Susan Kaplan—known to her students as Teacher Suzi—began tutoring adult learners, she was struck by how much experience, creativity, and voice her students brought with them into the classroom. What emerged from that realization was a simple but powerful idea: instead of only reading English, her students would write it—together.

Below is Suzi’s introduction from the student-created newsletter, shared here in her own words.

Susan Kaplan, also known as Teacher Suzi

I volunteered to tutor in the Literacy Solutions New York program in Rockland County libraries in January 2024. My professional life experience included teaching in the Bronx, NY and tutoring in English. I have met adults in my literacy classes from around the world including Ecuador, Cuba, Ukraine, Haiti, Italy, Russia, and Iran. I have met doctors, lawyers, engineers, hair stylists, teachers, actors, and more.

I love helping people with their English and life skills. I studied French and Spanish in high school and college and lived and studied abroad extensively. I understand the challenges of learning a new language and making yourself understood, and I enjoy helping my adult students overcome adversity.

This idea for a newsletter was sparked by my ten-year-old niece Emma, who recently joined her school newspaper. I thought, “Wow, I’ll create a newsletter with my literacy students,” and that’s how the idea was born. We started off discussing “What is a newsletter?” and looked at examples. We also played journalist and interviewed each other.

What followed was a classroom transformed. Students became reporters, interviewers, and authors, writing about their lives, their families, their careers, and their hopes. The focus shifted from completing exercises to communicating meaning—using English to tell their own stories.

The finished newsletter, Voices from Around the World, stands as a record of that process. More than a class project, it reflects how literacy grows when learners are given ownership, audience, and purpose. For Suzi’s students, writing was no longer just practice—it was participation.

The full student newsletter is shared below, exactly as created by the class.