Help! My Students Write Like They Text

IMHO, LOL, OIC, OMG. If you’ve recently graded middle school or high school writing, chances are you’ve read terms like these; or my favorite, “wtf - idk” which also happened to be an answer on a student’s quiz. As a middle school English teacher, I became more and more perplexed to see students using texting talk on their homework, and classroom writing assignments; not to mention answers on the writing portion of the state standardized test. My students were not differentiating appropriate writing contexts. The answers written on the unit test were written the same way that they invited their friends to hang @ *$ (Starbucks).
How do we as educators and parents allow students to creatively express themselves, support them academically, and prepare them for a professional world built on written and verbal communication? Herein lies this text. Hopefully it will alleviate the concerns of those who are worried about the disintegration of the English language and help those ISO (in search of) strategies to support textspeaking learners.