AWE

       I am retiring in 2-3 years. I love my job as an English teacher, because I love reading and writing and children. I’ve been lucky enough to be touched by the lives and inner words of many children over the past years. I’ve received papers on muscle cars, Minecraft, best friends, pets, a first scuba dive, summer camp, baby brothers, hunger, second hand smoke, and the best method to pick up dog poop. I am constantly blown away by amazing poems, passionate persuasive essays, and clever short stories crafted by my students. 

  It takes about 2 years for a young writer to really take off in writing with solid skills and confidence.  I’d like to take credit for that, but really it’s simply all the practice. Laid out mathematically, it takes 26 in-class writing activities plus weekly homework per year, times two years, to attain a fine level of mastery. (I meet with homeschooling students in a classroom setting once a week during the school year. ) So that’s 52 weeks in all, concentrating on writing, to begin to feel very confident.  I’d say that 75% of that is playing with language.  Play with sound, rhythm of words, vocabulary, figurative language, etc. And play with voice: Who are you, writer? Who are you today? Who have you become as a writer? How do you tell your stories?  

My goal in writing this blog weekly is to pass on my teaching materials and enthusiasm. Not every skill or suggestion works for every child. I can throw crazy assignments at kiddos, and some run with them. Others don’t, but something else will inspire them. The goal is not the product but the process. I never comment on content, only on the writing itself.  Even with literary analysis, the students are learning, and it’s not as important if their answers are right in their essays as the clear, strong presentation of ideas.

For my weekly assignments and handouts, I have snitched from all over. To name a few: the internet, books of course, The Writer magazine, my daughter’s college creative writing assignments, Natalie Goldberg’s quintessential Writing Down the Bones, and my college literature anthology, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama by XL Kennedy.  I will give credit where I remember. Please excuse when I cannot recall where my information originated from.  I’ve created my own handouts from compilations of several sources over many years, and my documentation is spotty at best. The main purpose is to teach children with the knowledge and suggestions of ones wiser in the field. 

Last, my advice to all teachers is to have fun yourself! If you are enthusiastic about the assignment or the subject, you exude the highly contagious AWE virus. (AWE = art, wonder, excitement. ) Learn beside your students, and you are subtly passing on the love of learning. Be as clever as you can, and allow your students to be clever too. One kudos for cleverness jettisons a student to new heights of aplomb, trust, and courage.