A chunk of memoir

I am having a hard time feeling like my memoir is telling a story.  What do you think of the beginning?

We were best friends. Jackie and Gwen. Guinevere and Jacqueline.

We met in Sparks- the preschool level of Camp Fire- and were fast friends.   We continued to be in the same Camp Fire group all through school and we spent all of our play time together.  Gwen and I dressed up in matching clothes each summer at camp so people would think we were twins. We signed up for camp craft and made fires side by side.  We slept in cots on wooden platforms side by side. We steadied each other when the mud got slippery as we creek walked side by side. Gwen was scared of spiders and I would grab the legs of the always present daddy-long legs and fling them out of sight. I was petrified of thunderstorms, and once we were on the camp bus on the way to a roller rink when a storm of Iowa-proportions hit.  The thunder shook the bus and the bus driver pulled to the side of the road and led us in singing songs at the top of our lungs to be heard over the smashing rain on the metal sides.  I sat trembling in my seat, and Gwen calmly took my hand in hers and squeezed.  She pulled me into the next verse of the song, swaying with her as she acted like a yodeler helped me forget my fears.  

My cat is attacking my homework

For real.  I like to sort and work on the floor of the living room, while he enjoying thundering romps across the room to pound his paws on my paper, leaving little crinkle dips in my homework.  So, some bits of my application to the TEP program are a bit disheveled.  Honestly-it was my cat.  I am just glad he has not taken to chewing on the corners, like he does the newspaper.

Admiral Dewi is a good topic for the blog. I got him about four years ago from a shelter in Bedford, New Hampshire.  He picked me out at the shelter, I have been told animals often do this. He was labeled "non social" and had been there for four months, never approaching a person.  I was admiring a very vain cat when a paw from the cage above tapped me on the arm and meowed a gentle hello. After a good 15 min cuddle and head butting session (and disbelief from the staff at the shelter) Bonzai II was part of my family.  He was renamed Admiral Dewi soon after.  He has fantastic strips that line up when he sits at attention, so he needed a title.  The name came from a song we used to sing at camp, the connection to the organizer of the modern library was a coincidence:

Dewey was the Admiral at Manila Bay
Dewy was the grass on the early morning may
Dewy were her eyes as she kissed her love anew
Do we love each other?
I should say we do!

Admiral has adjusted well to Iowa City, we have had house guests about five weekends already, and he has proved to be a good cat host and makes cuddle rounds in the middle of the night.  He had never done this before, and I am not sure why his personality has changed a bit, but it is amusing.  Admiral walks around chirping and talking.  He has been acting younger and more playful as well- and loves the bird and squirrel watching from our windows.
 I close this blog with two pics of the love:

Sent to publisher?

First Off:  I really need to handle a concrete portfolio in my hands. I am having a hard time with the "concepts" of rubrics and active learning exercise without handling them and experiencing the process first hand.  


 Secondly, I cannot get over a hang-up I have with the Wilcox article. 
Why are things "sent to a publisher"  What magical publisher is Wilcox sending student homework assignments to that they are getting published- let alone READ.  Has Wilcox figured a way past agents, slush piles, lengthy response time?  Is Wilcox sending writing to publishers as a reward?  As if to say "wow, this is really good. Let's send it to a publisher" ....whom you may or may not hear from before you move on to the next grade?  


Yes- this is a cynical response.  and No- I should not let this one method sway my opinion of the entire article, but I can't help but distrust the article.  Is the point that the teacher is doing something with the piece, rather than pinning it to a wall?  Why can't it be shared within the context of the school? Why can't the amazing piece be part of a compilation of amazing pieces to be shared via a printed mag or a website?  Why can't the active part be sending it to a Literary collection for teens?  Why "a publisher"?  


Actually, I think at that age, I would have more pride in the paper stuck to the fridge than sent off never to be seen again.  In fact, I want to make a giant refrigerator door on my class room wall. I will hang the stellar pieces up with magnets.  You are never too old for recognition.  I don't think this is passive if you encourage others to read the work.  Actually, if you can give the students the power to pick what they are proud of to be fridge work.  Proud to share with their peers. 


And yes, being published would be amazing. Beyond amazing.  But a bit of reality is needed as well.  What are the markets to which Wilcox sends the writing?  

Inspiration

The problem with school is that I am writing for school.  I am not writing for myself and therefore all my creative thoughts and magical tingly inspiration writing is on hiatus.  If I were not worrying about writing an intriguing, well-written, thought provoking, impressive one-pager for tonight I would instead being writing about a murder of crows.  

My husband and I like to take walks, find a nice segment of wildlife or some sort of nature and sit and observe. These are usually my most inspirational moments.  Bees copulating, ants swarming and killing a moth to then pull out it's eggs for dinner, crows playing musical chairs in the tree tops.  These are things that I can watch and at the same time let my mind wonder through storyline and characters.  We literally sat for over an hour one picnic watching ants take crumbs of baguette to their colonies.  

I am inspired by animals' actions and if there is any correspondence to humans.  I like to sit and watch people and make up their life stories.  One of my other favorite games is to "talk" for people that you can see but can't hear.  It is much better when you have someone playing this game with you.  

I love cemeteries for quiet.

I love the library for people's movements.

I love the grocery store for interaction.  

I am always inspired by reading.  I love voices and language style.  If I listen to a well-read audio book I will usually talk like the reader for a while without meaning to.  

But when it comes to writing for school- I am not inspired.  I am motivated.  These are two very distinct concepts.  Inspiration is emotional, flighty, unpredictable and for me.  Motivation is driven by my desire for good grades.  

Grammar?

I observed a Jr. High English class this morning and they started with a grammar exercise.  I was thrilled to learn that every day they start with a sentence in need of correction- to teach basic rules. It was also scary because I found myself utterly questioning myself and my instinct in what was grammatically incorrect.  I am going to have to study up on this!

I have opinions on the Oxford comma (YES) and ending in a preposition (A-Ok with me) but I don't know the actual 'rules'.  Do the rules matter?  What do you think?  

Grabbing Clarity

There was this moment in class yesterday where I wanted to hide out under the covers- because I was tickling that point of absolute honesty with my self and my story. It is a frightening feeling. Thank you Mike for being such an open listener- you let me talk through the moment as we workshopped yesterday. It isn't even that horrible of an act, but it is upsetting to me and how I see my character.

The exercise of writing down your thoughts as you write your words was fascinating. I never, EVER realized I thought so much more than what ended on the page. My thoughts (not words) were searching for purpose- for clarity- it was for capturing the scene as it was at that moment. My mind is a hazy dream and I am trying to make sense of the images floating there. Those moments of actuality that happened so long ago.

It got me thinking about this exercise from a language standpoint as well- how I think about meaning and intent when talking. I must do it while writing.   How do you get to the point of free form? I don't know if it exists truly. There are always factors in play. There is always the time of day, the temperature of the room, the desire to get to the next point for me.

The deeper we get into the memoir writing, the more I look forward to talking about how we as English teachers can put a value on it. I love what Bonnie said about grading the presence, not the quality. But there is a level of expectation as well. A level for an age, an individual. When I think of myself as an English Teacher, I think of myself as the type who pushes her students to achieve greatness (by greatness I think I mean discovering something about them-self through writing and reading) . This probably will involve pissing them off sometimes. And their parents. I think I can handle it.

I hope I can.

Creative Non-Fiction in the Classroom

Our discussion on teaching non-fiction, or the personal essay, or memoir- whatever you identify with- really got me thinking about the dynamics of a classroom.  I really did not like the idea of sharing a blog at first, as it is like be forced to read your journal to your classmates.   The more I thought about it, however, the parallel between this task and the actuality of teaching any form of creative non-fiction in a classroom is painfully obvious.


There is an aspect of teaching this area of writing that I felt was missing in the discussion last week- the chance to create a powerful atmosphere of respect and understanding among peers.  I imagine this can be a tricky task as teenagers, all people really, are so quick to laugh at what is uncomfortable or shocking real.  A really well managed writing class could be a safe haven for those struggling to identify who they are.  It could be a moving semester of personal growth.  It could unify people who felt like they never had anything in common until sharing a mutual feeling or experience though a story.   


Has anyone else watched that MTV show "If you Really Knew Me?"   If you haven't, a brief overview:  MTV sends groups of counselors that lead the students (or sometimes just the leaders of the cliques) in a day of sharing exercises.  It challenges the teens to really think about who they are within the context of their High School existence.  It is very powerful. (Pretty much every other show on MTV kills the happiness this one show creates.) 


Maybe a writing teacher needs to think about how they are leading daily challenges.  I was lucky to have amazing writing teachers throughout High School.  My senior year AP class was split into two semester- one semester with one teacher who taught us grammar, form, different necessary writing styles and we ended with a big ethnography project.  The other semester was personal and creative.  It was the most amazing class of writing workshops.  I recently ran into the mother of one of my classmates from this semester. I inquired after her daughter (a girl I would have never been given the opportunity to be friends with outside of this class.  Our social lives, our upbringing, our religion, were not at all in line).  I gave her the context of this class being our connection.  


 "OH" said the mother. "Was that the class with Mrs. D?" 
"Yes!" I said, excited for a conversation about this amazing teacher. "That was the best class, it influenced me in so many positive ways."
The mother paused with eyebrows drawn tight: "That was the class where you knew too much about each other."
I was dumbstruck- she departed.  


It was senior year.  We were all leaving for colleges and starting to find grounding as individuals.  I can recall sitting in Village Inn with my classmates eating breakfast before school and marveling about how I was eating with people I had not even spoken to prior to this writing class. 


That was the whole point. To get to know each other.