Stories are questions, not answers...

As I sit to write a narrative I believe will be about the tragedy of 9/11, I am drawn first by the details of the day. Crystal clear blue sky. Crisp autumn air. Brilliant sunshine.  I return to where I was when I heard the news.  School. Third graders. Laughter, chatting, jostling.  I think about smells. The fresh air, not a hint of humidity. Clean, September school smell. So I sit and write believing I have the answer – the point. But as the story unfolds new details come to my brain. Details I can’t leave out. It was Cory’s birthday. The kids were jostling because they were giving Cory his birthday punches. Now the story takes a twist. I continue to write but include more about the students. Writing workshop. It’s quiet when I receive the first bit of news; a plane has crashed into the pentagon. I wince but don’t yet understand the enormity of this news until the principal comes in and tells me about New York. I want to turn on my radio but there are 22 little faces looking at me, wondering if we will share our morning writing, wondering why there is so much activity in our classroom.Is this what I want to say? Why does this matter? Why do I remember these details?

My writing stops. More questions. How do I explain the enormity of this issue? How do I relate how this day changed my worldview? How do I express the raw feelings I had and still have when I consider this event? More questions, not answers. How to continue? Where will this lead?

In his book What a Writer Needs, Ralph Fletcher quotes novelist Richard Price, “The bigger the issue, the smaller you write.”  Price suggests you don’t write about the horrors of war, but instead you tell about the burnt socks lying on the road.  What telling detail can I use that will exemplify the loss I felt that day? What will show the fear and anguish I witnessed on the faces of colleagues?

A few years ago I worked with a student whose father had committed suicide. She wrote in her notebook about the morning he was discovered. I feared what she would write. Her words still echo in my brain. “The first thing I noticed were his shoes, still at the door, where they shouldn’t have been at this time of day.”  She reminds me to look for the small telling detail.

I return to my story and begin redrafting noticing the small details; the sky, the birthday necklace, and loss. I wonder if these details will leave my reader with more questions, and I hope so.

The First Day (again)

It seems a bit odd to call this the first day, we have had two already, but the summer days are when the Institute really takes off. It is in the summer when we come together daily as writers, learners, professionals, ...teachers. That order is significant.

First, consider yourself when you come each day as a writer. What a luxury! A day to pursue your writing, uninterrupted. You can turn off the cell phone, not answer e-mail, and just write. I like what Matt said this morning, if he wasn't here he wouldn't write. Unfortunately that is true for most of us. So let's consider this a gift of writing time and write freely each am, draft, share what you have written, receive feedback, and become a writer. Maybe you will write even when you aren't here.

Second, you are a learner. For many of us this is not something we are allowed to admit. We are the experts. We are the teachers. To admit to not knowing something and having to learn something can be unsettling. But it is in that admission that true freedom to learn lies. For when I am willing to lay aside what I believe, willing to be disturbed, to let my thinking be suspended for a bit, knowing that later I will be able to reflect on the experience and grow professionally, then I am empowered. I am energized. I am learning.

I love that it is teachers who come together to learn. Teachers who give up time during their summer break (and Saturdays and some Thursdays). Teachers who are at home reading and writing, doing homework, reflecting on what they did during the day. Teachers. Professionals. I embrace the word professional. Let no one say you are "just a teacher". This is probably one of the most demanding things you will do this summer. And you do it because you are a professional teacher.

Day One is complete. So much lays ahead. Here we go!

Sense of Place

The setting...feelings bound up in places...the crossroads of circumstances...the setting. There is something about watching a movie set in a locale I know well that is appealing, exciting even. I watch to see how the characters move through my city or town. I look for the familiar. Didn't you do that as you watched Silver Lining Playbook? I knew that was Upper Darby HS. I knew there was no way he jogged to the diner from where he lived, but the family home was so accurately staged. I do the same thing when eading a work of fiction that is set in a locale I know well.

While setting may sometimes seem trivial, it can make or create the tension needed to move the story on. I thought more about my own writing as I read this chapter. The setting is key in A Shot of Jack. And, my unfamiliarity with the setting causes the tension that creates action and moves the character and the story to a climax. I hadn't thought about that before.

Where are you in your writing? Is your setting a backdrop for your story or an integral part? Is there an odd fact that you can play with to bring your setting to life? It's your writing...play a little and see what happens.

Beginning and Endings

Beginning and Endings

“I think the end is implicit in the beginning. It must be.

If that isn’t there in the beginning, you don’t know what

you’re working toward. You should have a sense of

 a story’s shape and form and its destination,

all of which is like a flower inside a seed.”

-       Eudora Welty (pg. 93)

I know school is officially DONE when I begin to read for me. I love to read, but I have become a very picky reader. I won’t read just anything – even when on the beach. Time is precious, and books are plentiful. What does this have to do with beginnings and endings? Everything.

I need the beginning to be powerful, to draw me into the story, the characters, the plot. I need to connect quickly, or you lose me. And when I reach the end, I need to feel – something, anything – just don’t leave me with a neutral emotion.

My favorite writer is John Irving. I come back to him often because of what he accomplishes as a writer. Somehow this man can begin a book, and 400 pages later, end the book with almost the same words applied to a new situation and it all works and has meaning. Consider A Widow for A Year and the “It’s only Eddie, dear” that begins the tumultuous relationship between mother and daughter, and brings the relationship back together at the end of the book. Or A Prayer for Meany. I could go on.

As you consider beginning and endings, what strikes your fancy? What book beginnings and endings do you hold onto? A writer is first a reader and reads to hone his/her craft.  Tells us about your favorites and how they influence your writing.

Writing Prompts for Chapters 5 and 6

Chapter 5: Creating a Character

When Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, came to our school last October, one of his many thoughts about writing concerned "the job." He said, "When you're a writer, you're never off duty." You have to always be on the look out for something to happen, to use, to add." This particular piece of advice applies to many elements of writing, but I see it as particularly pertinent to that of creating character. How do you see the relationship between observation and creating character? What do you do in your classroom, or can you see yourself doing in the classroom that will help your students develop character. This can also be looked at as details, significance and ramifications of events, etc...

Chapter 6: Voice

Ahh, voice. Probably the most difficult to define of all the facets of writing. Well, voice and style... Anyway, Fletcher says, "When I talk about voice, I mean written words that carry with them a sense that someone has actually written them. Not a committee, not a computer: a single human being" (68). When you think of voice and what you've read in Fletcher, what thoughts or nuggets have you pulled out or created for your own discussions of voice in writing?

What a Writer Needs - Chapters 3 and 4

Please consider the following prompts from the two chapters and respond to at least one of them.

Chapter 3: A Love of Words

Considering your own practice with vocabulary, whether it be content-specific or more general in nature, how do you come to learn words? What words do you know that you wouldn't know unless you came into contact with them in some special way? How can you help your students come to know words in the same, natural way that you came to know them?

Chapter 4: The Art of Specificity

"The bigger the issue, the smaller you write," is one of Fletcher's main points in this chapter. How might you help your students learn that concept. For example, this past September I had a student who wanted to describe and "adventurous" wedding she had attended. During the week-long celebration in the islands, they went ziplining, hang-gliding and deep-sea fishing, yet she would only describe it as "awesome." How have you helped your students, or how do you see helping your students get from "awesome" to "the swordfish, its tether a millimeter thick, leapt from the water with it's own determination to free itself from my determination to haul him in."

What A Writer Needs - Chapters 1 and 2

Please consider the following prompts from the two chapters and respond to at least one of them.

Chapter 1: Mentors

Fletcher discusses the influence his mentors had on him as a young writer and as a person. How do you see yourself as a writing mentor to your students? How might your students describe you as a writing mentor?

Chapter 2: Freezing to the Face

When we look back at Freire's "Banking Concept of Education," we can see that many writing assignments "Freeze student writers to the Face." What do you seen in Chapter Two that can help students "defrost" their writing? How do you envision this happening in your classroom?

Problem Posing Pedagogy

As I was reading Freire's "Banking Concept of Education," I opened a word document, changed the format from portrait to landscape and wrote "What is your Problem?" I did this to remind myself to be a problem-posing pedagogue. As much as I purport to be one, I know that I have banking tendencies. The only way that I'm going to remember to pose problems, is by having a big sign on my wall. Otherwise, I tend to resort to making deposits when things aren't going well, or when I feel like I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It's because of the way I was taught in high school.

I think my approach to each lesson must be foreshadowed by this question, or at least some form of it: "What is the problem that I would like my students to work through in this activity?" Further, "How can I get my students to pose problems which I can participate in "solving" within the activity?" If I'm posing all the problems, then I'm still banking. I think that's the case anyway.

An example:

I am currently teaching a Humanities course in which we study cultural phenomena and how the arts impact humanity and society. One of my favorite activities is the "album study" in which each student analyzes the lyrics of one song on an album. The idea is for the students to see how the album becomes an "album" of songs and to see what problems or ideas the band in question was dealing with at the time the album was created. This year, we have studied The Rolling Stones' Beggars' Banquet (1960s), Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (1970s) and Michael Jackson's Thriller (1980s). The problem I'm seeing, as a recovering banker, is that I've chosen the albums. As such, I've dictated the important albums of the decade. That said, I'm not sure that there is a "problem" to be "posed" here. Sure, I can have the students work in groups to decide how they want to study the album and what they want to do with it, but that's more of a "democratic" process than a "problem."

I guess my questions are these: What should a posed problem look like? What should it entail? How do I go about getting students to see problems that they want to pose without dictating the problems to them? I could go on and on here, but my point is that a discussion is necessary to help create problem-posing atmospheres within our classrooms. What does that atmosphere look like? How is it taken care of and fostered by those of us responsible for doing so?

I'll leave it at that... Thoughts?

Communication and learning

I communicate daily, in numerous ways. My day begins with a one-sided chat with the cat who begs for me to get up and feed him. (He communicates non-verbally by walking across my face. I return the nonverbal volley, and push him aside.) My husband and I do the early morning acknowledgement of each other’s existence and after coffee expand on our thoughts. Then it’s on to work where the communication picks up: meet and greet with colleagues, bemoan the day, chit-chat with the principal, check in on the IEP of a student. And then they come. Now communication takes on a different level – or does it? Does the hallway banter actually represent learning?

I’ve been thinking about the talk that happens in the hallways, in the faculty lounge (now there’s a word I’d like to discuss), during prep periods. If we intentionally reject the banking notion of education, then we must consider that any communication that attempts to problem-solve is a form of learning and coming to know.  As my colleagues and I whine about the end of year assessment schedule and then unknowingly morph the conversation into how to deal with students who struggle to pass assessments, are we not learning? When the principal and I discuss how to help students of poverty access books over the summer break, are we engaging in “problem-posing education where we develop the power to perceive critically the way we exist in the world…and see reality in process, in transformation.”? Freire states that "problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality." Isn't that what we do when we engage in professional conversation - knowingly and on purpose or unknowingly and accidentally? 

I think this is a jumping off point for the summer. What do you think? Where has Freire taken you?

Welcome

Welcome to the 2013 Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project's Invitational Summer Writing Institute. We are so excited to get started with such a wonderful and talented group.

We will write our blog on this page, posing questions, offering thoughts and opinions and sharing ideas in this forum. Our writings will be more sporadic than many of our participants, but we will be writing!

We hope you're looking forward to this experience as much as we are.

Sincerely,

Brenda and Rich