I Asked For It

My students are writing fiction and over the last couple of days they have been experimenting with techniques to develop their characters. As a starting point, we use a list of strategies from Nancie Atwell's Lessons That Change Writers. She suggests Reflection, Dialog, Letters and Journal Entries, Action, Reaction, Other Characters, Quirks, Setting, and Beloved Object as ways to reveal important details about the character to your reader.

As a mini-lesson, I gave the students three short paragraphs from a fiction piece that I am working on and asked them to identify the strategies I had used to help develop the two characters.

Here's the passage:

It was his grandfather who had taught Ned to ride a bike. One evening after dinner when the sky was that watery blue-before-pink, and Ned could tell that his grandfather was tired— he had been working at the waterfront all day— they went out to the quiet side street and up the gentle hill a little ways from his grandparents’ house.

He loved his grandfather and trusted, him, too, but Ned was scared and put his feet down every time. It was so hard to believe that he and his new blue bike could defy gravity and avoid the hard, cold pavement. “Have faith in yourself, Neddy!” his grandfather told him. “Falling and flying are shipmates. Embrace the sweet fall forward.”

When the fireflies came out, there was only time for one more run. The armpits of his grandfather’s shirt were wet, and the old man was breathing hard, and Ned felt that huge, steady hand on his back pulling away like the gangway from a clipper, and this time he wobbled but stayed upright, finally underway, with a fresh breeze at his back. That night, as he rode away from his grandfather who had eased to a stop and was clapping and laughing in his wake, Ned caught a balance he felt that he would never lose.

The number one comment? The grandfather should use more deodorant.

Totally Worth It

Maybe it's a little sentimental, but since I have spent the last six days replying my proverbial butt off to all my students who are participating in the SOLSC challenge, you'll forgive me if I paused a bit longer at this particular post today:

A Big Slice of Me

Ms.S- your reply to my post from yesterday got me thinking about what is important to me and I see that you're right. My family is very important to me and I don't often think of it like that. I mean, how many people in the world think that I am super special? Almost all of them are my family so they are really important. Lots of people say stuff about how evil someone in their family is, or how they hate a sibling. I may be angry at them sometimes, expecially my little sister, but I could never hate her or anyone else in my family. They make me who I am and I need them.

Yes, family is very imporant to me and they are so special that I have decided to spend a whole slice tellling you about how much I love them- too much to fit in this little tiny post. <3 -abby=")</i">

Love it!

So They Do Listen

As I mentioned, my students are doing their own SOLSC this month. I introduced it last week and they started it on Thursday, but Friday was conference day and so today was my first chance to touch base with them about the first few days. I had some technical notes about the logistics of the challenge and posting to our class website, and I had a few suggestions about the content of their posts as well.

My commitment to them this month is that I will read and reply to every post, every day. It can become consuming to be sure, but to be able to talk to them knowledgeably about the topics they've chosen to write on is invaluable both in terms of writing instruction and relationship building.

Today my advice was mostly to avoid the bed-to-bed narrative that can be so tempting when no idea immediately presents itself. "Pick something and focus on it!" I encouraged them, and over the course of the day, I tried to point out possibilities when I heard them.

In education, immediate gratification is rare. So often we teach our hearts out knowing that our advice and guidance might not kick in for weeks, months, or even years. Still, we understand and hold on to the frequently immeasurable value of our effort.

You can imagine how I laughed tonight when I was reading through today's posts and found the following two:

The Skate Disastor
By Rania

"Does anybody have any comments or questions about The slice of life challenge?" 
I raised my hand up high. "Yes,Rania?" 
"Well can you right about anything that hapenned before?" 
"Yes you can. Do you mean skate night?" 
"Oh yeah."I said outloud. 
Ms. S. gave me a puzzled look. Then began to tell her my story. "So I was at skate night and i was having the time of my life there and the next thing you know I was on the ground because I bumped into this little girl and once I said sorry, she got up and looked at me like I was crazy. My friend Annabella was their to witness what happened and of course she started laughing!" 
"Ok then Rania you could write about what you were saying," Said Ms.S. 
After that I was so excited to write about my skate night discussion with Ms. S.

 My Reading Log
By Adrita

"Okay everybody get your reading logs out, get your English binder out, write down the homework and put your big binder on the floor!" Ms. S. said in one big breath. I grabbed the home made log from my binder, skipped writing down the homework as always. Wait I wasn't supposed to say that, oh well! Ms.S. stared at my reading log.

 "What!" I said breaking out the silence

 "Your reading log, it's so unusual!" She said Then I gave her this whole story on how i lost my reading log.

  "Well I went with Camilla to the um... movies and the log was in my north face pocket all folded up. So when I went to grab popcorn the log had dropped but I never noticed." In all of my explanation she had just said...

 "Well you should write about this for the slice of life challenge!" And here I am writing about it!

THIS STORY MAY BE SLIGHTLY EXAGGERATED!

The Obvious, Child

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and found it nearly impossible to go back to sleep. At my age, like Paul Simon said, I don't expect to sleep through the night, but I don't expect to lay awake for hours, either. For me, there's always a tipping point when I can tell that I might be up a while. It usually happens when specific things I mean to do both at home and at work start seeping into my consciousness. After that, all the meditation and relaxation breathing in the world won't let me drift off.

In our recent economic downtrend, I've often heard it said that one of the bright spots is an increase in worker productivity; companies are able to do much more with fewer employees. While that looks great on the balance book and sounds even better on the stump in this election year, I can't help wonder about the toll it's taking on the human beings involved in all that production. What is the objective?

This year, for the second in a row, my sixth grade students are participating in our own Slice of Life Challenge, and over the last four days, I've noticed a couple of bothersome trends in their posts. The first is boredom. So many of them write about being chronically bored. Ironically, the second is stress. They feel anxious and over-extended.

I don't think the two are unrelated. It's hard to feel engaged in anything with so much hanging over your head.

At least they're sleeping, though.

Pack Animals

Back when our dog was just a puppy, we took her to the dog park almost every single day because we wanted to make sure she was getting enough exercise, especially considering the fact that she stayed home alone most days in our modestly-sized condo. At any rate, the dog park had a social structure of its own. Not only were the dogs trying to decide who was alpha, some of the people seemed engaged in the same kind of contest. After a while though, we were accepted as regular members of the pack. It was rare that we went and didn't know several people, and in a true sign of belonging, almost everyone called our dog by name.

As she grew older, we opted for different forms of exercise, mostly walking, running, or hiking, as well as swimming in the summer, and visiting the dog park became a rare occasion. A few years later, we happened to stop in one evening, maybe because we were in the area, maybe for old time's sake. I guess the relatively short lifespan of dogs accelerates social turnover, because although the place and the culture had not changed, the pack members were all different.

How odd it was to be in such a familiar location and yet treated as a total newcomer. The clear feeling that we would have to find our place in the community all over again was irritating. Frankly, we had other butts to sniff, and as we pushed our way out into the real world, the double gate clanged with finality behind us.

Wrestling

Today was student-led conference day for us. We have a student on the team who has stopped doing most of his work. He seems apathetic, and his effort has declined to nearly nothing. In the conference, the father explained that it was because his son is convinced that the world will end on December 21 of this year. This boy has seen several television documentaries about the Mayan calendar and he is convinced that there is no point in doing anything.

I was not in that particular conference, but I laughed when my colleague shared the story: it seemed so absurd and so easy to dismiss as a rational adult. It wasn't too long though before I remembered how crushing it can be to carry such a burden of fear and hopelessness.

One night, when I was 9 or 10 years old, I overheard the adults talking. Our neighbor, Vlad, was telling a story about a time he wrestled the devil in his motel room.

A man in a business suit knocked on the door and asked to come in. Vlad gestured to the two chairs by the window and offered the man a drink. Over the course of the conversation, it became clear to Vlad who he was speaking to."Go away," he told the man. "I'm stronger than you." That's when the devil laughed and challenged him to a wrestling match. They struggled there in the middle of the room, arms locked, each one's fingers digging into the other's shoulders. It was a draw until the devil pushed him away and disappeared.

The next thing Vlad remembered was waking up in the morning."But I knew it wasn't a dream," he said, "because there were two vodka glasses on the nightstand."

"Time for bed," my mother declared when she saw my wide-eyed stare. She hadn't known I was listening, but who could have failed to be riveted by the image of our burly neighbor physically grappling with the prince of darkness?

That night, I couldn't sleep. I was sure that the devil was going to come visit me, too. The next day, my mother did all she could to reassure me that no matter what he said, Vlad had been dreaming, and I was safe. I tried to believe her, but I felt that fear wrapped around me for weeks, and it seemed like a long time before the persistent love and happiness of my family and friends helped me get out of its hold.

As for our student, we referred him to the counselor, and now that we know what's bothering him, we'll do our best to convince him to at least have a contingency plan, just in case 12/22/12 dawns with all the promise it should for a twelve-year-old boy.

We all wrestle, but fortunately wrestling is a team sport.

Psst... Hey Coach

This morning I heard a piece on the radio about how Virgin Atlantic has hired a "whispering coach" to teach their staff in the "Upper Class" how to speak at between 20 and 30 decibels, a level chosen for both its calming effect and its unlikeliness to disturb other passengers.

I think there might be a place in middle school for such a professional.