Inside Doing Outside Work

Monday was not a terrific day in my class.  I’m sure I was a factor along with my students.  I hadn’t slept well (it was, after all, a Sunday night), and I enhanced the problem with the hyperactive intensity I get in the week of Back to School Night. Must create bulletin boards to create the illusion that I care about important things like bulletin boards. Must have classroom charter posted on 15-sheet poster that I puzzle and glue together…because parents really care about our classroom charter. Yes, after 30-plus years the evening gathering still makes me anxious. So, at 7:45 a.m., when sleep-deprived hyper man meets 24 “I’m-a-little-too-tired-to-pay-attention-to-anything-academic” children, it’s something less than synergy. Collectively we had “a case of the Mondays” (a favorite scene)

Today, though, dawned even less promising.  I walked the dog in a steady drizzle. That’s okay, because it’s now dark at 6:00 a.m., so I wasn’t going to be enjoying much scenery anyway.  The temperature had dropped, too, so I had my first cause to practice the winter hunch.  I splashed my way to work, remembering that when I arrived I had to meet with my assistant principal to learn  how to check and uncheck accommodations on the standardized assessment I’d be giving to my students today.  So, a test instead of real reading, interruptions from instrument lessons sprinkled through the day, and then, of course, indoor recess. It looked like school heaven, for sure.

Imagine my surprise, then, when in the afternoon, around 1:50,  the time when fatigue and cabin fever turns ten-year-olds punchy or giddy, or giddily punchy, events took a surprising turn.  The rain intensified outside. I had abandoned a plan I’d had from the weekend: tracing our shadows over the course of the day. Hard to do in the rain…the chalk washes away!   I had also abandoned the plans I’d had from the day before. No, I’m not sure we’re going to try looking at art cards and writing poetry (though it might have been ready by Back to School Night!).  Instead, I told the class I wanted to give them a challenge. I told them about the field trip that was coming up. In true reverse pep talk form, I told them that I was a worried about the trip. I warned them of the challenge of a 500-acre outdoor sculpture museum.  I told them it would feel like the world’s biggest playground. The structures would tempt them like climbing equipment. The hills would beckon like ski slopes or runways. Each distant object would call to them, urging them to race from piece to piece. But they could not.  They needed to remember that they were in a museum… without a roof…or walls. I warned them that they would need to slow down, not speed up. They would need to stop and observe. Sit and sketch.

Next, I showed a few pictures on the smart board and then set out a hundred photos from previous trips, spreading them over the tables.  I said this afternoon’s challenge would be smaller. They needed to walk among these photos until they saw one that seized their attention.  Then they should stop on the spot, sit down, and sketch for 5 minutes, about the time that they might reasonably pause in an outdoor museum on 500 acres of forests and fields.  

And they did.  

On this dreary, soggy Tuesday afternoon, the room was silent for 30 minutes as we wandered, paused, sat, sketched, and wandered more. When it seemed like some were beginning to tire, I asked them to return to their seats and reflect in writing.  And they did. And they shared. And they listened to each other! When it was time for dismissal, many didn’t want to stop. Several asked to take photos home so they could sketch more.  I sighed (as though it were a great sacrifice I was making), and said, yes, they could, as long as they promised to take good care of my photos.

It was a better day inside than out, and it gave me hope.

Bridging the Divide – How I Can Nurture New Slicers

Note:  I wrote this draft way back in April, but I never published it to the blog.  I guess it seemed too practical and not “slicey” enough.  Still, I returned to it because I’m trying (struggling) to get things rolling this year.  I have a number of students who really like to write, but I also have quite a few who clearly don’t.  Changing their minds about writing will be another kind of challenge.

The  March writing challenge worked well for me, but it also created a disconnect between my  writing life and my teaching life.  It doesn’t have to be like that.  I need to figure out what I can do to build bridges next year.

First, I need to lay the groundwork for the challenge much earlier in the year…like September.  I think I’ll have kids do something like the Tuesday Slice of Life, creating a once-a-week routine.  Even more important, I think, will be having kids keep lists of possible slices.  Every time I created a list, it gave me a burst of energy for my writing, a sense of being full, or even overflowing, and that made it much easier to head to the computer.  If we create lists throughout the year, tapping into them each week, but adding to them, as well, then I think we’ll all feel more optimistic about entering the big challenge.

Certainly, we’ll also try to stay open to the moments that actually happen during March.  That, too, was an important development for me, cultivating the sense of alertness that can make ordinary moments seem slice worthy.

With the foundation in place, I will also feel better about pitching the idea of the big challenge.  This year, I really had no idea how hard it would be for my students.  A few persevered, but it was not really due to any external supports I had provided, and I think most writers need some bolstering.  I will have this year’s slicers write a note to next year’s students, letting them know how they managed the time and how it helped them as writers or observers.  I think if I get more students to try the challenge it will become more self-sustaining.

I also learned how important  feedback is if you want to keep the energy flowing.  I wrote, in part so that I didn’t let myself down on a pledge, but I also wrote because I loved having an audience.  I loved getting responses.  I think next year I will create a system for kids responding to other kids, similar to the welcome wagon that Two Writing Teachers employs.  I may recruit other teachers and parents as well.  I think I could have done much more to help those kids who started the challenge keep it going.  Similarly, I didn’t encourage the slicers from my school to respond to students outside of our school.  If we had paired with another school and focused on writing thoughtful responses, I think that camaraderie would have created more incentive to push forward.

That divide between my writing world and my teaching world made it tougher for me to feel good about the time I was spending on writing.  I felt like I was neglecting my class at times.  In addition, I longed to bring more of my experience into the classroom workshop, but it only seemed to relate to a few kids.  The chasm for me was that I only had five students slicing, and that meant that I could rarely do any whole-class  writing or sharing.  I had a parallel experience going on, where I was working on my own writing, but I was maintaining (or trying to maintain) a dialogue with students about their writers’ workshop projects.  I felt like I had drawn a line between my personal work and my professional work.  They were competing instead of blending.   Next year I’ll try to build bridges between those worlds.