On Time and Writing

I’m halfway through my second teaching artist residency. It’s a different school than the first, and the demographics are more mixed. Furthermore, the girls and boys are separated. It makes for a completely different dynamic than my first school.
The host teacher and I agree to teach a unit on narrative poetry. We are taking the approach of teaching them how to draft and write and edit the narrative (story) first, and on the next and last day we will be pushing them into poetry form. I’ve been very pleased with how this residency has been going. For one thing, we started off very strong: I had the kids pick a photograph and tell the story of what was happening. The pictures were from a collection of the Pulitzer Prize winners over the years. I chose to leave out some of the photographs; some of them are very graphic or have a vivid message. Some of them, however, are more upbeat—a couple color photos from the 1985 and 1992 Olympics, for example. The students in each class had to pick their own in a process of elimination. It was interesting to see how some of them gravitated towards the obvious, while others challenged themselves.
Then to see their imaginations and intellects at work! They really hunkered down and wrote. Sure, there is usually a degree of goofing around to put up with—and yesterday and Friday we worked in the computer lab. I spent most of my time monitoring use of MySpace. On the other hand, I’ve never seen so much use of the grammar and spell checks. Good grief! What will their children have as tech tools?
It’s really fun for me because it makes me think about narration versus story. The kids slide easily into a top-this mode—“There was a car crash, and an earthquake, and a fire, and then someone died, and then another person was shot, and then a bank was robbed.” Even the girls do this—lots of death! So we talked about plausibility and believability. And we talk about dialogue and detail and description. It’s quite something. And some of them can really write—-for example, the seventh-grade boy who has the most trouble with focus nevertheless wrote in a second-person voice that was completely believable and compelling. Another wrote a play about a forest fire—-Norman Maclean would be proud.

Speaking of writing, I had this horrible thought last night at about 4 a.m. (No more Mighty Taco!) I had this thought that I may never finish my book about my family. I hope that’s only a sense of panic and not a sense of truth. I hadn’t felt anything like it in several years. I often have this idea that because I made certain changes, I also paved the way for all possibilities. That kind of panic attack makes me think of my own limitations, my own mortality. And even now, even with a sense of life as I’ve never had before, I can fear that I will leave too much unfinished. Well…I guess if I keep eating Mighty Taco before bedtime, that will be true…