Retreating

We call it The World's Greatest Critique Group because, well, why not?

This weekend I attended an annual writing retreat with my critique group of fifteen years. We rent a big old house in quaint, artsy Saugatuck with no internet, no TV, and no other distractions except maybe each other.  We write and some of us paint, and we share and eat and laugh and eat and write some more. I always have a good time, but this year was particularly soul satisfying. Having a writing group of some kind is essential if one aspires to write professionally, but I probably wouldn't be writing much anymore at all without the continued encouragement of these marvelous creative people. They are my writing teachers, mentors, and dear friends.  I always feel inspired to keep improving after spending time with them.

          Though I'm newish to the Slice of Life writing community, I see this place in a similar light. Here we teach each other and connect together as colleagues and friends. The pursuit of putting the right words in the right order to say something with meaning can be daunting for anyone.  To write in any context, be it a blog or a book or even in a private journal, takes a certain amount of bravery. Community builds courage.  So here's to writing communities, big and small, everywhere. May they nurture the voices of poets, and change our world for the better as they always have.

A Confluence

The river by my house.

Big changes and loss have challenged my family these last few years. Suffering most recently has been my husband, so we've found ourselves frequently looking for ways to cheer him up.  Some bad allergies, unresponsive to almost all medicine, have always made it difficult for me to enjoy the great outdoors, but guess where my husband feels most relaxed?  

Yes, indeed.

So I put on my big girl pants and decided we are going to spend as much time outside this summer as possible: Kayaking, hiking, biking etc. Saturday was a kayaking day. There is a river close to our house so we put in for a couple of hours, laughed a little, bumped into each other and splashed our paddles around. Husband pointed out different wildlife and oriented me relative to area landmarks. He took pictures and I looked for interesting things on shore. 

It appears one of the continued perks of my late-in-life third pregnancy a couple years ago has been a noticeable decline in my allergy symptoms. There have been times when tooling down this  river would have sent me to bed miserable with swollen, itchy, runny eyes and nose. I was all prepared to pretend I was having a thrilling time when something else happened:

Now, floating under some weeping trees, I experience what many people do when outside in nature. Ripples and swirlies make art on the water and I smell the warm wet without the distraction of an imminent sneeze. My senses, not being preoccupied with an allergic reaction, begin to immerse in the sights and sounds and smells of this place. Something inside me unfurls like a brand new leaf. I sink into the kayak.    

I watch my husband take in the sky and water and green and think, Now, just. . .now.  Breathe in this color, breathe out my worries, submit to the earth, usher peace to my soul, and send it all to my partner. He is relaxing and I don't need to be here for that to happen, but I'm glad I am. The trees have never been more perfectly green and each leaf has been carefully cut out and folded by hand, it seems, just for him. I listen to the quiet trickle of water from my paddle, behold this misty, origami forest.

Sometimes you're walking along, living your life, wondering what it's all about and a confluence of all that we are and everything that has happened results in this. . . thing: A husband whose healing can only be found when surrounded by a wooded landscape; a loss that makes you appreciate the beauty of the world a bit differently; a reminder that all marriages end and the love story lives on in its children; the continued discovery of gifts big and small brought by an unexpected baby, and the birth of an unexpected life for us all. You're overwhelmed with all this and then, just when you least expect it, there is this beautiful river. And your partner just happens to be floating on it. With you. And you can really, really breathe.  Literally, you can.  So you do.  And just like that a falling apart story ends, and a putting back together story begins.  You know you will be different when it's over. You will be better. Yes, indeed.  

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Why Sharing is the Most Important Part of Workshop

The most powerful classroom events can be kind of like the Northern Lights: Rare, fleeting, and only under perfect conditions.  As I plan for next year with third graders I vow that my students will have time to share in workshop. It's the most important activity for creating these conditions I'm talking about.  The best example I might ever have comes from Josh and his classmates from three years ago:

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Josh, a small-for-his-age redhead with dyslexia, had a troubled home life and spent a lot of time pulled out for extra reading instruction.  I had him all to myself for writing workshop, though, and tried to make the most of it. The second week of school he declared to me with excited eyes, and not an ounce of typical sixth grade sarcasm, "I'm gonna do it, Mrs. Van Hoesen. I'm really gonna do it. I'm going to live like a writer."  He carried his notebook around like a talisman.  During sacred writing time he wrote frantically and I had no idea what his sanskrit-like, illegible musings were about. He never shared, I assumed because he couldn't read it himself. 

As the year went on, Josh began to act out and had almost no friends.  With his quirkiness and slight build, he was an easy target for Joe, the class bully. Joe was by turns charming and toxic, an instigator and a ringleader. I did my best to focus on the positive and provide a safe place for sharing in our classroom, but I didn't know if it was working. In general, many of the students in this class really hated school and it all felt like a steep uphill battle every day. I went home exhausted. I cried and thought perhaps I'd made the wrong choice of careers. Why did I take a 6th grade job? I thought. I'm so much better with little kids.

Then one day during sharing, Josh decided to read one of his entries.  Our practice is to sit in a circle on the floor and listen to one another intently. Actively. No clapping allowed, but two snaps of the fingers when someone finishes reading, to thank them for their courage. I never censor what the kids can write about, but I ask them to consider appropriateness when sharing with peers. Now here's Josh:

He takes a deep breath, "Whooo!"  Then, a pause. Eyes roll and I give sharp looks, but also think, Oh boy, here we go. I review my mental script for appropriate content in our sharing circle.

Meanwhile, Josh begins, his eyes tracking across the page in his notebook, "I found out last night that my parents are getting a divorce.  It's tearing me up right now and I cry all night thinking about it. Things are already bad at my house.  My little brother just went in the hospital again because he has cancer and we don't know if he's going to live. When I think about life without him  it makes me wonder if I want to keep going at all if he doesn't make it. My parents are worried all the time. They fight a lot, and no one has time for my problems. I know I'm not dying, but sometimes it feels like it, and no one cares. No one has time. My heart feels messed up. . . ."

Tears roll down his freckled cheeks. He rubs them away and sighs deeply.

Our circle has gone silent, and there is an almost visible energy in the center. The hairs on my neck stand in reverence as I recognize this rare event. Josh can't read anything without constant stopping to carefully decode. He has just read with the fluent expressiveness and charisma of a radio announcer. As my throat burns my teacher hat is still on, assessing and noting some fascination with this context for a student like Josh. You never know what you'll learn in the sharing circle.  

Josh's head drops to his chest and he cries softly for a few seconds, then lifts his face a little and wipes his nose on his sleeve.  He doesn't look at anybody, and we all look in our laps. What can I do with a crying middle school student in front of his peers?  I make eye contact with Josh and put a hand on my heart. You can hear a pin drop. My eyes move over to meet Joe's, and the bully instinctively puts his hand on his heart, too. Like it's natural. Because right now the conditions are perfect, the curtains of light have appeared. Anything is possible. Right now.

We've all just stepped into uncharted territory and expectations have left the building. Hell, maybe we've all left the building because this certainly isn't school. Next to him another hand goes to a heart, and another and another around this circle, like the wave at a Tiger's game but like church it's so sacred.  Josh's eyes follow this until it comes back to him. He puts his own hand on his chest, taps his fingers, smiles, nods. The light is beautiful here.

I lean over to look at Josh's notebook.  "You read so well!" I whisper to him.

He beams, and I look closer.

It is completely illegible. Full of backwards letters and spellings that sometimes approach phonetic. No matter. Josh is a writer because he is living like one, just like he said he'd do. And when you live like a writer you think differently about your world, you think differently about people.

Josh's difficult behaviors didn't completely go away, he still sometimes had trouble with bullies. But he was changed in some small authentic way. Our classroom became a place where the conditions were set for frequent light storms.  It was a place where you could put your hand on your heart and no one would call you a pansy. We knew better because we had shared our stories with one another. A community grew. With each year I teach I'm more convinced sharing is what makes these conditions where light thrives and learning is rich across the curriculum. It's a rare and powerful thing but if we share often, if we provide the conditions, the light will come, and come.

Pie Perfection is Over-Rated

This slice is like the first piece out of the pie: Kind of a mess. The piece the server keeps for themselves so they can give everyone else something pretty. It's a who-do-I-think-I-am-obsessing-over-every-little-thing slice. It's a looking-for-my-own-flickering-light kind of slice.
One slice
is not the whole pie, though. It is not.
Not even close.
And who said a triangle was the definition of beauty?
So, on second thought, here it is. A rustic slice, for what it's worth, in all its crumbled, messy glory. You don't need the whole story. Just eat.

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Pomp and Circumstance

She wore pigtails.  I see her on the front stoop in a purple shirt sprayed with daisies and wearing a backpack almost as big as she is. This, before posing for a picture and climbing into the van to head to a place called "Sunshine House Preschool."  If you picture a place called Sunshine House and think about the kind of people that might work at such an establishment, you would understand the excitement of little pigtailed girl.

My excitement, while fed by the quality of the program at Sunshine House, was mostly due to the impending birth of a foreign-to-me concept for the previous five years--Time To Myself.  Time to write, time to grocery shop in peace, time to ponder life without interruption, time to go to the bathroom in solitude, time to wander through any store of my choice without the worry of little hands touching or little feet doing wandering of their own. Did I mention Time To Write?

 

I was Giddy. We couldn't get in the car fast enough.

I turned on NPR for the classical music I always listened to since I had heard about the "Mozart Effect."  My mind wandered as I drove, listening to a peppy violin concerto while the pigtailed one babbled, "Violins! Violins! Violins!" in the backseat.  She loved listening to violins, which eventually led to violin lessons and that's a slice for another day.

 

As I fantasized about all the different things I might do after dropping her off, the pull of the bookstore won out. Definitely, the book store.  That's what I'd do.  Oh, the glory of uninterrupted book shopping!

 

The monotone of the NPR announcer, explaining the history of the piece we'd just been listening to faded to the background of my consciousness. I was far, far away in my new old land of myself, of motherly independence. Of sweet freedom. And then, in an unexpected way, I was jerked back to reality. It wasn't a fender bender or a child throwing up in the backseat.  It wasn't something in the scenery on our drive or a passing ambulance.

Music. "Here's a little Pomp and Circumstance for your morning," the announcer intoned.  Immediately the car filled with the opening notes of the familiar graduation march. My first thought was the last time I'd heard it, when I walked in my own graduation at Michigan State University less than a decade before. My second thought came upon looking in the rear view mirror at the pigtails in the backseat.  She was looking out the window, listening and swaying a little to the music.  Today was the first day of "The School Years."  A journey that would end with Pomp and Circumstance.  I pictured her, processing with a cap and gown, years down the road, and I filled with a knowing that these school years would fly.  The excitement of my new found freedom would ebb, and someday I would grieve a bit for all the interruptions of which I was currently celebrating a welcome disappearance.  I wiped tears away, laughing at myself, feeling bittersweet already about an event to happen fifteen years in the future.

This month we will listen once again to Pomp and Circumstance as that daughter processes to receive her high school diploma. Sunshine House Preschool recently closed its doors due to low enrollment. So many school districts offer preschool now and times have changed. Only a couple of years ago did I get rid of that backpack.  And little did I know then that I'd be toting another almost preschooler to her big sister's high school graduation in 2015.  We'll be back at our old stomping grounds of nearby Michigan State as she walks, smiling in anticipation of her sweet freedom and not fully knowing the burden of such things or able to see the golden glow of a childhood in the rear view mirror. It will just be our girl, caught up in a moment of her own Pomp. Her own Circumstances. And that's as it should be.  

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Breaking down the Door. . . .

I love reading about how different books shape people's reading lives.  A couple of my favorite literacy autobiographies are Anna Quindlen's book, How Reading Changed My Life and Sherman Alexie's powerful essay, "Superman and Me,".  Currently, I'm reading Pat Conroy's, My Reading Life. At the end of the year my sixth graders write literacy autobiographies that document their life in books so far.  This year has been different, though, because of a few students who claim they truly hate books and try to be quite vocal about it. 

At Nerdcamp last summer, honing our door-knocking skills.

I can hear these kids now. "Whatever. My literacy autobiography? It's a BLANK PAGE."

I continue to build my classroom library and offer self-selected, independent reading time. I share my own love of the printed word, do book talks/commercials and continue to hone the skill of powerful conferring. We've had a few successes, which is wonderful, and I have some theories about the failures. Considering where I've gone wrong is humbling and necessary. Accepting that I can't reach everyone is humbling, and necessary. 

It is, of course, important to give focus to the successes. There's the girl who still talks about how much she loved The Night Gardener she read last October.  There's the girl who couldn't stick with a book at all until she read The One and Only Ivan and discovered animal books and verse are her go to (Will someone please write more animal books in verse?).  There's the boy who exited special education in December who has continued to improve his reading ability all year. Yay! 

When a student doesn't know what kind of books they like I usually ask what television programs and movies and video games they enjoy. This has prompted the opening up of the literacy autobiography assignment.  I've decided to make it a more inclusive media autobiography about stories my students have experienced as a film watcher, gamer, viewer of YouTubes etc. Hopefully this will lead more students to a mention of a book or two that meant something to them, too. And even if it doesn't, the exercise might finally connect story to their lives in a way they had not previously imagined.

So now I have an assignment that everyone can do, and that should make me feel better. But I can't get Sherman Alexie's essay out of my mind. It's about him being a young Indian reservation boy and reading, literally, to save his life. Now, he visits schools and teaches writing to Native American kids.  Many are eager to learn from him, and others are similar to quite a few of my students this year. He writes, "They carry neither pencil nor pen. They stare out the window. They refuse and resist. 'Books,' I say to them. 'Books,' I say. I throw my weight against their locked doors. The door holds. . .I am trying to save our lives." (Alexie, 1998)  

The school year isn't over yet, but there are still too many doors holding tight. I will continue to throw my weight against them until June, and admit to hoping next year's are a little more saloon swinging, a little less Fort Knox bolted. In the meantime, I open my own door wider still, and throw open every window. Miracles can happen, even in the waning days of May. 

What is your secret to staying positive during the last leg of the school year?  

Alexie, S. (1998, April 19). Superman and Me. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 19, 2015, from http://articles.latimes.com/1998/apr/19/books/bk-42979/2

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Plugging into Things that Matter

My Happiness Coach

Recently I watched a Ted Talk on "positive psychology" and it caused me to reflect on the role of happiness in my classroom. I told my students about it and put the following quote on the board, "People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest." by George Matthew Allen.

I told them how Shawn Achor, the psychologist presenting the talk, explained that when someone is experiencing happiness, all of their learning centers essentially open wide for business. I said, "This made me wonder if the most important teaching I can do is make sure I show you the ways to be happiest, for life and for your learning.  This quote is our first lesson. People with many interests are happier than people with few to none.  So, let's write about what interests us."  I modeled my own first and then let them go.

I found we needed to discuss the difference between an "interest" and a "preference." (tacos=preference;  cooking, Mexican cuisine, nutrition, history of the taco=interest) I teach social studies to four groups of students throughout the day and did this exercise with all of them.  Many are not aware of their own interests, to the point they don't really know what an interest is.  Eye-opening. Not surprisingly, the students who had no trouble identifying their many and varied interests are some of my best students and among the happiest kids I know. They also mostly have home lives that allow for them to have interests beyond survival. 

A new curriculum is born: Happiness 101. That day I realized lessons in joy must continue, and maybe the most essential question of all is, "How can we be happy right now in this learning?" Happiness is hard won, in sixth grade and everywhere. In a time where negativity travels faster than you can say TTYL, it seems only natural that my first job is to connect kids back into contentment somehow.  Here's to plugging into things that matter.

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