Writing under the influence of love
With the arrival of gray skies and a yearning to eat more baked goods, my winter nesting has begun. Last weekend I made time to clear my indoor space, assess what I'll need to inspire new creative endeavors and make way for inside projects. From the kitchen, I said good bye to unwanted cupboard clutters and hello to new a pizza stone for some winter baking.
After several unsatisfactory attempts at making the perfect pizza dough, I realized the ingredients go far beyond those that are written in a recipe book. It takes consulting various experts in the field about what works for them, getting my hands wet (and sticky), and thinking about all the necessary factors that go into a recipe that's just right- quality ingredients, kneading the dough, ideal temperatures and letting the dough rest and rise. Much of this thought takes place even while I'm doing other things throughout the day.
My first batch of winter pizza dough reminded me of teaching, writing and and falling love with the process. Since I've been evaluating the process of teaching writing in my after school writing workshop, I've been trying to think of ways to slow down and focus on the writing process itself. As always, slowing things down provides opportunity to observe and reflect. Rather than the focus of the workshops being geared toward the final product (publication) I'm turning my interests to getting to know my students as writers. In turn, I'm also getting to know myself as a teacher.
While purging material items from my home, I came across a box of journals I've kept over the years. Looking through them, it's easy to see the ebbs and flows of my passions and interests as I traveled through my early teens into adulthood. Pictures of family and friends, sketches, poems, newspaper and article clippings, and many reflective thoughts about my life at the time are still captured in those pages. Though embarrassing in many ways, my journals have preserved my memories of life's events that made me who I am.
Each student in my writing workshop has a journal for their work, but they have been leaving them at the end of each workshop session to pick up where they left off come next Monday. A week goes by, and their lives go on, but their stories remain stagnant. I fear they are losing context and emotion. A lot can happen in a week. On Monday I brought in some of my journals to show them. I told them I wanted them to make their journals truly theirs. During the week they can take them home and add to them in whatever ways they feel will personalize their them and possibly build ideas for future writing pieces.
Together we came up with a list of ideas for things they could add to their journals:
Recipes
Sketches
Magazine Pictures
A Single Word
Colors
Photos
Quotes from books
Song Lyrics
Poems
This week I've been reading The Writing Workshop by teacher and author Katie Wood Ray's. This book is a go-to for me when I start to feel lost with teaching writing. I believe this happens because I too am a student of writing, learning what it means to me to be a writer. Katie's book is an invaluable writing workshop guide because it reminds me that neither writing, nor teaching are processes with simple recipes that work in all climates. Instead, the book is about the work-in-progress attitude of being a member in a workshop- "where the focus is on the writers who use writing to do powerful things in the world in which they live" (Ray, K. 2001).
In other readings this week, I came across this piece written by children's author Elvira Woodruff in publicity brochure for Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. It summarized so eloquently her thoughts on what it means to be a writer, and I think I'll share it with my students next workshop session:
What a gorgeous picture. Writing under the influence of love.
The best I can relate to such a situation of working under the influence of love is to thing about a teaching situation outside of school. As a young girl, I dedicated myself completely to the practice of gymnastics. My bedroom walls were filled with famous gymnasts I admired. I spent six hours a day in the gym. I watched countless videos of world gymnastics competitions after school. I memorized their routines, the songs they danced to, even the words of the event commentators. My gymnastics coach didn't just teach gymnastics, he was also a gymnast. He demonstrated moves and body positions to us himself. I knew about him as a gymnast, how he fell in love with gymnastics as a young boy and about his struggles with injuries and fears. I knew about the comradeship he recognized in us as my teammates and I woke up early on Saturday mornings to travel to competitions, and celebrated our hard work together with pizza afterward. I knew well that certain look of pride he got after a routine that was flawlessly executed with every toe pointed gracefully and every landing stuck. I saw my teacher as a passionate gymnast himself, not just a teacher of gymnastics.
After several unsatisfactory attempts at making the perfect pizza dough, I realized the ingredients go far beyond those that are written in a recipe book. It takes consulting various experts in the field about what works for them, getting my hands wet (and sticky), and thinking about all the necessary factors that go into a recipe that's just right- quality ingredients, kneading the dough, ideal temperatures and letting the dough rest and rise. Much of this thought takes place even while I'm doing other things throughout the day.
My first batch of winter pizza dough reminded me of teaching, writing and and falling love with the process. Since I've been evaluating the process of teaching writing in my after school writing workshop, I've been trying to think of ways to slow down and focus on the writing process itself. As always, slowing things down provides opportunity to observe and reflect. Rather than the focus of the workshops being geared toward the final product (publication) I'm turning my interests to getting to know my students as writers. In turn, I'm also getting to know myself as a teacher.
While purging material items from my home, I came across a box of journals I've kept over the years. Looking through them, it's easy to see the ebbs and flows of my passions and interests as I traveled through my early teens into adulthood. Pictures of family and friends, sketches, poems, newspaper and article clippings, and many reflective thoughts about my life at the time are still captured in those pages. Though embarrassing in many ways, my journals have preserved my memories of life's events that made me who I am.
Each student in my writing workshop has a journal for their work, but they have been leaving them at the end of each workshop session to pick up where they left off come next Monday. A week goes by, and their lives go on, but their stories remain stagnant. I fear they are losing context and emotion. A lot can happen in a week. On Monday I brought in some of my journals to show them. I told them I wanted them to make their journals truly theirs. During the week they can take them home and add to them in whatever ways they feel will personalize their them and possibly build ideas for future writing pieces.
Together we came up with a list of ideas for things they could add to their journals:
Writings
Sketches
Magazine Pictures
A Single Word
Colors
Photos
Quotes from books
Song Lyrics
Poems
Anything that seems interesting, even if you don't know why
This week I've been reading The Writing Workshop by teacher and author Katie Wood Ray's. This book is a go-to for me when I start to feel lost with teaching writing. I believe this happens because I too am a student of writing, learning what it means to me to be a writer. Katie's book is an invaluable writing workshop guide because it reminds me that neither writing, nor teaching are processes with simple recipes that work in all climates. Instead, the book is about the work-in-progress attitude of being a member in a workshop- "where the focus is on the writers who use writing to do powerful things in the world in which they live" (Ray, K. 2001).
In other readings this week, I came across this piece written by children's author Elvira Woodruff in publicity brochure for Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. It summarized so eloquently her thoughts on what it means to be a writer, and I think I'll share it with my students next workshop session:
"What you have to do as a writer is to feel, look and listen. Your story then becomes a celebration of those observations. And, most important, a writer needs to fall in love. I'm constantly falling in love- with colors, with flowers, with wings, with bubbles, with mud, with goofy baby smiles...When you're writing under the influence of love, there's a power that will weave your words into magic."
What a gorgeous picture. Writing under the influence of love.
The best I can relate to such a situation of working under the influence of love is to thing about a teaching situation outside of school. As a young girl, I dedicated myself completely to the practice of gymnastics. My bedroom walls were filled with famous gymnasts I admired. I spent six hours a day in the gym. I watched countless videos of world gymnastics competitions after school. I memorized their routines, the songs they danced to, even the words of the event commentators. My gymnastics coach didn't just teach gymnastics, he was also a gymnast. He demonstrated moves and body positions to us himself. I knew about him as a gymnast, how he fell in love with gymnastics as a young boy and about his struggles with injuries and fears. I knew about the comradeship he recognized in us as my teammates and I woke up early on Saturday mornings to travel to competitions, and celebrated our hard work together with pizza afterward. I knew well that certain look of pride he got after a routine that was flawlessly executed with every toe pointed gracefully and every landing stuck. I saw my teacher as a passionate gymnast himself, not just a teacher of gymnastics.
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