Outdoor Ed

My husband's bags are packed.  This morning he leaves to spend three days in the great outdoors with 150 sixth graders.  When we told our daughter about his impending trip, she cried for several hours.  The next morning she asked, "Is Daddy going because he HAS to go?  Or because he wants to go?"  Well, a little bit of both.  And isn't that how it is with so much of what we do?

Thanks to our bizarre winter weather, my husband's school district doesn't celebrate its Last Day until June 23rd.  As the fourth marking period began a mere two weeks ago, my husband said, "They're done."  A spate of spitting and binder-clip-throwing incidents this week has proved his point. A change of pace and scenery will do everyone some good. 

My husband's district has changed its curriculum substantially in the last few years.  Reading and interpreting novels has been discouraged (except as a supplementary activity) for on-grade-level readers. Most of the instruction is aimed at "reading to perform a task" (and pass a test).  Does this trend sound familiar to you classroom teachers?
 
Being a creative type, my husband tries to incorporate song lyrics into writing assignments in order to draw out his middle school musicians. A recent research project involved designing travel brochures for summer destinations. Thinking ahead -- to summer and beyond -- is always a good end-of-year theme.

On the other hand, my end-of-year activity for English 101 students is typically a boring (but necessary) portfolio review. 
Which was your strongest paper?
Which was your weakest?
Why?
What did you learn this semester?
What do you wish you'd learned?
What did you like about this class?
What didn't you like?

Of course the students are being graded on this assignment, so I rarely get honest answers about what they didn't like. I'll have to work on that one, because I really do want to know!

Writing Workout

It occurs to me that a really good end-of-year activity might synthesize the forward-looking and backward-looking inclinations into one assignment.  My daughter is "graduating" from preschool next week, and I must admit to feeling ridiculously sentimental about this passage. My 3-year-old son is simply graduating from one room to the next, and I feel almost almost as freklempt that wonderful Ms. Liz and Ms. Kim will never teach a Ford child again.

My brother-in-law, an English Lit major (now a computer programmer) was telling me yesterday with great intensity about his favorite English assignment, in which he was asked to write a letter applying for his dream job.  I had my students complete a similar assignment once and received mostly enthusiastic responses.  Of course there are always the students who have no idea what their dream job may be or who do not have the appropriate qualifications to list and don't feel comfortable making them up. :)

So...

I ask my students in their research essays to write about how they'd like to change the world.  This is a daunting assignment for many.  Some ignore this aspect of the assignment and simply research a topic of moderate interest to them, such as legalization of marijuana (a very popular choice!). But then I will get the essays that move me to tears -- the student who wants to be a dentist serving kids with special needs because her brother has autism and could never find adequate dental care; the student who has struggled for years with an eating disorder and wants to spend her career working with girls in similar situations.

Ask my daughter how she'd like to change the world.  When she grows up she'd like to be a doctor, a dancing teddy bear, and well, "everything."   (This in addition to the previously mentioned goals of cowgirl and writer.) But in this year, she's already changed my world, her father's world, her brother's world, her best friend, Lucy's world.  I'd love a memory book, a scrapbook, any sort of tangible memento of this precious year that she will, a decade hence, barely remember. I'd also love a record of her future plans to see how these change as the years go by. I want her thinking each day about yesterday, today, and tomorrow, because each is an equally important part of who we are. --Jeanne Marie

Kate Ford, self-portrait (age 4)

Writing an End of the School Year Poem

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Howdy--and happy Poetry Friday!

Ellen Hopkins, author of Young Adult novels in poems Fallout, Tricks, Identical, Glass, Impulse, Burned, and Crank, uses interesting alignment in her poems. They are often layered, allowing the poem to say more than one thing, as if she were writing two poems at once.

An example of this is the poem, I had to Explain, in her book Crank.  On the left side of this poem are stanzas; on the right side are a words pulled from each stanza to make a parallel poem.  The words down the right side are:

kiss

first kiss

best kiss

that kiss

kiss so tender

kiss me again

fused by kisses

Writing Workout ~
Writing an End of School Year Poem

I've wanted to play with this form for some time.  So let's write a poem about the end of the school year!

I don't know how Ellen Hopkins approaches her poems, but here’s what I did:
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1)    I flipped through my school year calendar, thinking about what happened each month.  Then I jotted down five events that brought up strong emotions.
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2)    I chose one of the memories.
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3)    I constructed a simple sentence (for the right side) that conveys some of what I wanted to say.
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4)    I wove the words of this short sentence into the stanzas on the left side.
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Here's a list of some of my memories from this past school year:
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1)    The pre-launch very first-in-the-entire-world reading of New Year at the Pier on the beach at sunset—I was scared, it was cold and there weren’t very many people at the event (Can you blame them?  It was freezing!)  See photo above.
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2)  Casting the three young actors for the launch of my book New Year at the Pier  (See a photo of them on the left side of my calendar page.)
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3)    Driving to the grocery store in Kauai when my agent called my cell to tell me she loved my novel (!)
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4)    Playing the tune Ashokan Farewell on my fiddle at the memorial service for my friend,  folk singer Fred Starner   
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5)    Writing a poem a day for National Poetry Month…then continuing to write one a day for (hopefully) forever.  (I send these new poems each day to my best friend, author Bruce Balan, who is sailing around the world.)
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So here’s my rough draft stab at this stucture—not a polished poem:
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MY BOOK LAUNCH AT THE BEACH
by April Halprin Wayland
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They told me, “You’ll really have to project.xxxxxxxxIt
will be a big crowd—the last onexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxwas
huge—at least a hundred people.
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There were maybe twelve people.  I wasxxxxxxxxxxxstill
a nervous wreck, wondering
if they could hear me over the waves.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxA beautiful
child with dark curls sat right in front. 
I focused on her.  I read the story as thexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxsun set.
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The next step would be to work on the words and the rhythm; to make it more lyrical.  (Lee Bennett Hopkins suggests taking out as many ands & thes as possible)
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When you have a poem you like--ta-dah!  Waving your poem in the air, run, don't walk to someone who loves you and ask him or her to read it. 
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And then?  Dive into summer!
 
poem and drawing (c) by April Halprin Wayland

An End and a Beginning, for Teachers and Writers

Here in the United States, the school year is drawing to a close. Around this time last year, we received an Ask the TeachingAuthors question about end-of-the-school-year writing activities. Unfortunately, we weren't able to address the question in time. To make up for that, we'll be providing a series of end-of-the-year Writing Workouts this week and next. If you're a teacher, you'll find the first below.

If you're a writer, this may be the time to look ahead and think about how summer will affect your writing schedule. Summer is a very productive time for some writers. Many of my adult students are teachers and librarians who look forward to summer vacation as a time to catch up on their writing.

Not for me. Maintaining my writing routine during the summer months is often a challenge. When my son was young, the challenge was not to let my writing interfere with his summer activities, and vice versa. Now that he's grown up, that's no longer an issue. But teaching has become one of my summer activities. I teach several week-long writing camps for young writers, along with adult classes. I love teaching, and I'm always revising and fine-tuning my camps to keep them fresh and fun for my young students. That takes creative energy, as well as time. I'm not complaining. It's just something I need to allow for when I set my summer writing goals. 

I'd love to know how other writers deal with this seasonal transition. Will the end of the school year affect your writing schedule? Does taking a vacation refresh you as a writer or do you feel you've lost your momentum and have to start over? Do you have any tips on staying creative during the lazy, hazy days of summer?  Please share your ideas via our comments.

And don't forget: today is the last day to enter our giveaway drawing for an autographed copy of April Pulley Sayre's picture book Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out! See JoAnn's last post for details.

Blogosphere buzz:

• How much can you read in 48 hours? Why not sign up for the MotherReader: Fifth Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge and find out. It's a great way to kick off the summer reading season, and maybe even win a prize!  I'm hoping to participate for the first time this year myself.
• Want to read an authentic, compelling teen voice? Check out Steph Bowe's Hey! Teenager of the Year blog. Bowe is a sixteen-year-old whose debut novel, Girl Saves Boy, will be published in Australia and New Zealand this September and by Egmont USA in 2011. If you are a young author, or know someone who is, you'll be interested in her post  "Does Age Matter in Publishing?"  
• If you need help with issues related to social media, be sure to visit Greg Pincus' The Happy Accident blog. This week he blogged about "Three Ways to Help Protect Your Facebook Privacy."

Writing Workout
End-of-the-school-year activities

I found a helpful list of ten end-of-the-year story starters on the abcteach website. These all involve looking back on the past school year. But we can also invite students to write creatively about the future. Here are two writing ideas you can use for your students (or yourself):

1. Create a 5 x 7" postcard from your fantasy vacation destination. On one side, draw a picture of the fun activities you're enjoying on your vacation. On the other side, write a description of your amazing vacation. 
2. Write a letter to yourself that begins: Next fall, one thing that will be different is . . .  If this is for your students, you can have them bring in self-addressed stamped envelopes for their letters. Then be sure to place the letters in the mail on the first day of fall, which is September 22 this year. If the letter is for yourself, attach it to the September page of your calendar, and don't read it until then.

April and Jeanne Marie will share additional end-of-year Writing Workouts in their upcoming posts. If you have an activity that works well with your student, please share it by posting a comment below.

Happy Writing!
Carmela