Cherries

Flash fiction

She knew this was supposed to be like eating summer cherries, fleeting but sweet, the hard pits something to roll around in her mouth until all that remained were small bitter shreds of flesh, like the hole in the gums when a molar comes out. It was supposed to be sweet like that, pregnant with its own nostalgia. 

It wasn't terrible, torturous, or an aching grief. But instead of sweet cherries, it was the cherries you buy from the supermarket because they are plump and taut, a deep ripe red, and you buy lots of them because it is mid-summer, and these prices won't last, and you remove them from their ziplocked plastic bag and wash them in a colander because then they look like a feast. But when you finally try one, they are neutral. The texture is right, but somehow modern living has chlorinated out the sweetness.

You roll the cherry against the edge of your teeth, stripping the flesh free of the pit, because maybe, if you eat a whole mouthful, you can conjure the flavor. But no, just cherry-textured neutral. Not sour enough or overripe enough to return to the store. Any romance in the fruit has been lost as a thin film over the asphalt that stretches from the orchards in Washington to the air-conditioned interior habitats of summer in the desert.

So you are left with a pit, shreds of cherry in your teeth, and a colander load of subtle disappointment. 

That's how it was for her. It didn't sour her or leave her hardened. Just fed, in the least satisfying kind of way.

You Must Write Your Teacher Life

In my last Stories from School post of the year, I explain why every teacher should take time to write about teaching: http://www.storiesfromschoolaz.org/2013/05/you-must-write-your-teacher-life.html

On another note, here is why every parent should take time to put their daughter in pincurls at some point: 

Writing my Résumé

I've felt a little hindered lately in what I post here. I just removed a downright angry post from over a year ago, and I find myself wanting to blog, but feeling a bit imaginatively constipated (with a few exceptions).

For one, my life is "frittered away by detail" right now. Simplify? There is not much to be done unless I start preparing frozen dinners. Get help? I have some help, but life is full of the types of details most of the world would envy: Too much grading (because I am employed), trips to the bank (to pay the landscapers), dental appointments (because we have insurance), job search (because my spouse's new company is becoming successful and it's time to move there), attending to my children (because they are bright, curious, energetic, imaginative, intense and industrious--and they love me), cleaning the house (because it is so cozy and cute when we keep it tidy, and also free of stink) and tending to the doggie (because we are lucky to have Rox. She's just, as G would say, Haa-Hooooo.)

For another reason, every time I go to write anything online lately, I find myself thinking: "if a potential employer reads this, would it increase or decrease my chances of being hired?" And even though I don't share everything on my blog, the thought that, in effect, I am always writing my résumé stunts me. Ugh.

Having recently lived through our district's "professional boundaries" training where I learned that there is a lot of grey area but a word of warning about what we post online publicly, even though I do not believe there is anything on my blog that I regret putting there, and even though we were led to believe that the grey area is there so that we don't all become rulebound automatons, the grey area also leaves us vulnerable to painful trials should someone in the community feel uncomfortable with something I've posted. I really begin to ponder whether teachers who value their careers can truly exercise freedom of expression outside the classroom. Like politicians, or like back in the days of the small-town school, the teacher's public activities now become, to a certain extent, circumscribed by the school community.

What about art and poetry-- things adults create that might not be created to distribute amongst their students? We may not see any negative repercussions ever, but are we really free to express ourselves? Everything can become widely public in the fake click of a smartphone camera. In reality, our students are actually more free than we are to express themselves and critique the system. I hear them doing it as soon as they walk out the door of my classroom.

Perhaps these reflections don't illuminate anything, and managing a public identity is what any professional adult might face. These are just initial thoughts on the matter, anyhow. At the heart of the issue is that I need to do more writing that is just for me and my own growth and satisfaction. I do that often, but I must admit that for me, part of the satisfaction is knowing that someone somewhere read it or might read it, and that's where the head games begin.

What my Students Learned from NaNoWriMo

Summary of what I'm seeing in their reflections...

• Dedication to a long-term goal and the realities of time.
• How difficult it is to create a well-crafted story.
• Daily discipline and how it can add up to amazing things.
• Giving oneself permission to explore... giving oneself the freedom to not finish the story, to drop characters, to add in surprising ideas and elements into their writing.
• Becoming involved in their novels made them realize how much fun it can be to lose oneself in one's story... they liked that feeling of immersion in the characters, plot and setting.
• Genre-bending.  Fictionalization of reality; begging, borrowing and stealing ideas and making them their own; "lectures" on relationships, etc. 
• Google Drive.  
• How conversations with friends and supporters can move us forward. 
• Things don't have to be perfect for there to be a nugget of awesomeness in there somewhere.
• Even something unfinished can have value.
• Accomplishing a long-term goal that has been hard-won feels fantastic.
• Sometimes planning leads to awesomeness.  Sometimes planning leads to frustration and stiltedness.  
• Our minds are surprisingly fertile.
• For some people, noveling is not their optimum medium of creativity.
• It is surprising what we can accomplish when we invest time and energy in our own minds.
• It feels good to tell a story that NEEDS to be told.

When I look at this list, I realize that I didn't teach most of this in the traditional sense.  We discussed some of these ideas during the process; I had lots of conversations with students.  But mostly, I feel like I offered them the space and opportunity to experience this learning for themselves.  That's the beauty of NaNoWriMo:  when we trust our students' minds, we see that indeed they can discover their own paths.  I provide time, structure ,goal-setting, strategies... they provide the rest.  They are not empty vessels.  I wish there was time in all my classes to take them through NaNoWriMo.

Art and Relationship

"An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not create alone."  -- Madeleine L'Engle

A moment's reflection in the midst of grading book reviews. The following thoughts are inspired, I suppose, by a former student's apparent philosophy that any kind of human relationships are basically illusions, and that they aren't really necessary or desirable-- maybe only tolerable at times.  The thing that has always made no sense to me about this person is that he/she is a gifted poet and drawer/painter. And so...

A writer, an artist, a creative person must both discipline and indulge oneself in order to create.  Discipline: of technique, of time, of practice, perhaps even of research, of precision.  Indulgence: of time, of imagination, of personal resources invested in oneself, one's mind.  Right?  My mom and dad can probably speak to this.

However, I have a hard time swallowing the idea of an artist as a complete nihilist, a complete misanthrope, someone who has absolutely lost faith in humanity.  I just don't think it is ontologically possible.  I haven't fleshed all of this out, but here's my basic line of reasoning (and I'm sure there are other philosophers and artists who have said the same thing...):

1. Being creative implies creating something.  This seems self-evident, but sometimes I think people start to think of "creativity" as this abstract faerie-like quality that artsy people have.  All creativity is is coming up with an idea that you make real-- you create something.

2.  In bringing something into the world, in creating it, I believe there is inherently an intended or implied potential transaction.  Plenty of writers write about writing for oneself, to see the thoughts of one's own mind.  However, although our concepts of reality are deeply rooted in language, really, why would thoughts need to be made into language unless there was the possibility of someone somehow reading them one day?  

3. Even if you can argue that language might be used for the artist's own reflection and metacognition without an outside audience, what is the point of refining that writing and fine-tuning language, if not for a potential reader?  Even if a writer is attempting to create new language to describe new concepts, I suspect every writer, if she were honest with herself, would be gratified if someone at some point read the writing and thought that the new concept and new language were works of genius, and not some impregnable code or gibberish. 

4. If life has absolutely no meaning, then why create art?  Art creates meaning.  Even in absurdity, meaning is created.  Even with lack of intention, art creates meaning when it is viewed, when writing is read, even if the reading or viewing is done by the creator.  And if there is no intention for a work of art to come out a certain way, or no intention for any ideas or inner feelings or thoughts of the artist to manifest themselves in any way in a work of art, then I would argue that it is not art, but coincidence.  Still, art can be made out of coincidence by a viewer with intention or imagination (hence, Dada or found sculpture). I wouldn't argue that anything has to be eternal to be meaningful.  Meaning can shift, sometimes abruptly. However, art is inconsistent with nihilism, because it inherently creates meaning.

Existentialism, sure.  Nihilism, no.  Art cannot be nothing.

“The poet, however, uses these two crude, primitive, archaic forms of thought (simile and metaphor) in the most uninhibited way, because his job is not to describe nature, but to show you a world completely absorbed and possessed by the human mind.” 

-- Northrup Frye

5. Art can be dark, can question our concept of reality, can condemn human folly and idiocy, and explore thoughts of destruction and violence and suicide. But a real artist can never be a complete misanthrope, because an artist has to respect at least her own mind.  And she is a human being, after all.  And she must extrapolate from there.  So, although I believe that art, if it is going to be honest, can definitely explore hatred, and an artist might feel hateful about certain topics, an artist must have some kind of small flickering of faith in the mind to create a better world.  Otherwise why communicate all of those emotions or ideas?  Why not just implode?  I suppose a person could be a self-loathing artist, but somewhere in the mix would have to be a desire to not loathe oneself, and even that is a glimmer. 

6. Nihilism is an absolutist, materialistic and reductionist philosophy. Art, by its nature, is not based in the material, but in the imagination.  Art that is materialistic and/or reductionist and/or absolutist is propaganda.  Living one's life by propaganda is as bad (if you're a nihilist) as living one's life according to faith in God, right?  Propaganda requires a certain type of secular religious attachment...  which I would imagine any self-respecting nihilist would reject.  So, a person who sets out to create art to promote nihilism is, in effect, producing propaganda.  Which is not art.  So, therefore, art and nihilism are inherently in conflict with one another.

Sometimes, I'm really good at breaking down arguments, but not so good at constructing them.  So I appreciate any comments that would help me clarify or challenge these ideas.  

Perhaps it is too late.  I've been grading too many teenage book reviews. And none of this will make any sense in the morning.  It's certainly possible.

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear.”  -- Stephen King

Accepting Defeat: A Teachable NaNoWriMo Moment

I am planning a lesson on accepting defeat.

Part of teaching for creativity is helping students learn how to deal with failure, and it looks like I'll have a chance to teach them firsthand.

Last year, I tried NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time.  It was an intense ride, and thrilling to take on that challenge alongside my students.  For some reason, I latched onto my 50,000 word goal for the month, and wrote consistently almost every day of the month, finishing just in time and earning my button and winner's web badge.  At the end, I wasn't at all satisfied with my novel, but I was happy with myself for my achievement.

This year, I just haven't worked myself up into the frenzy.  Perhaps it is the anti-anxiety medication.  The little edge that anxiety gives me can a very useful little edge, albeit with plenty of drawbacks.

At any rate, I've been writing.  I should be able to reach 25,000 words, which is still a lot.  But I won't win.  There's no way.  I only see my husband on weekends; during the week I've been having to leave work early to deal with doctors' appointments, kids getting sick at school, cancellations of their other rides home after school... it seems like I can't get enough time at school to do what I need to do at school.

And at home?  I don't have my husband to rely on to interact with the kids at all.  So if I sit and write, they either play or watch TV with no attention.  It feels extra selfish.  By the time they're in bed, I'm pooped (not to mention way behind at work-- more than usual).

On weekends, I owe it to the man I married to save some of myself for him:  tidy up, do things as a family, give backrubs, receive backrubs, that kind of thing.  I can sneak away for a little bit of time, but... I've lost so much time at school during the week that I have to spend some time planning, grading.  And my lowered anxiety level has left me less willing to get up early in the morning and write. Last year I insisted on the writing time.  This year I've been more compromising.

And I've compromised my novel.

So... for my students, here are my steps in accepting defeat, and the lessons I can learn from it.

Steps:
1. Explore whether there is any way to meet my goal.  Realistically:  What would it take?
2. Assess: Am I willing and able to do what it will take?  Be honest with myself and others.
3. If so, then GO FOR IT.
4. If not, assess: What do I really want out of this process? Can I get some of what I want with the time and energy I have left?
5. Set new goal I can live with. One that is still challenging and offers me some success I can recognize.
6. Work to achieve my new, compromised goal.
7. Forgive myself.  Every day is a new chance to kick ass, after all.
8. Acknowledge what I did manage to achieve.
9. Analyze what I can do next time to meet a higher, more worthy goal.  Or, assess whether my priorities are really elsewhere.

Lessons:
Honesty is key when we set goals.  We need to be honest about our motivation, what it will really require, our level of intensity and our commitment to meet the goal.

Challenging ourselves to amazingness may not result in the exact outcome we had planned, but will probably lead to more amazingness than if we hadn't tried at all.  (I will have 25,000 words of a novel after all, and my concept is more cohesive than last year.)

Accepting defeat can free up our energy for other pursuits that turn out to be either more important or simply more urgent.  Accepting defeat lets us look toward the future, dwell in possibility and not the defeat itself.

When we accept defeat, we must also accept the consequences of not meeting our goal.  I'm certain that my inability to meet my goal will affect my relationship with my students who pushed themselves to meet their goal.  I have a student going for the 50,000 word mark.  What do I teach him by not meeting mine?  Still, I can't avoid it now.  There may be negative consequences, and I have to live with that. I'm not willing to be dishonest with my students just to preserve a veneer of amazingness.  The amazingness has to be genuine.  It's the same way when students don't earn the grades they hope to get in my class.  If they choose to cheat, lie or plagiarize, then I lose all respect for them.  A respectable C is  just that, a C, but respectable.

Halloweening In Progress

Serious grading-time crisis.  No time to read papers.  I started five online communities in the past three weeks, though, and students have posted writing about neighborhoods, podcasts about themselves, book reviews. A group of students has voluntarily come together to write and talk about writing once a week for an advisory period.  Today we took a cue from Maurice Sendak and the illustrations where Max's room transforms into the forest.  We wrote about a familiar setting, and then transformed it. That was fun.  And I'm encouraged, because they want to sit all in one circle and have in-depth critical workshopping of their work. Yea! I'm excited.

Meanwhile... very little gets graded.

Because the other priority is making Halloween costumes. G's Steamboat Willie costume is coming along. He's going to be Steamboat Willie in black and white. How cool is that? We made him a plaster mask, and just have to paint it. The rest of the costume is ready to go. Except the shoes-- Goodwill Crocs covered in white felt, somehow. I will blog about that costume in detail when complete. I am so excited.

This is actually my daughter showing off the unfinished mask
 (with her bridal Minnie ears from the summer trip to Disneyland)

O is going as a vampire princess. Really, all princesses are vampires, because they suck the life's blood out of any other form of imaginative play a little girl might have. For example, look at the mouse ears she picked out. Princesses are all-consuming. So a princess vampire is fitting. I talked her into a sort of Victorian bustle, and she has a short train on the dress we got from Goodwill.  It'll almost be a sort of a steampunk vampire princess, if I can make the short little cape work over the bustle. I'm not much of a seamstress, so we'll see. I do better in plaster-maskage as a medium. But her veil with a red and black rose and a homemade papier mache/glitter tiara should be cool.

Me?  Athena.  In honor of kicking off Homer's Odyssey with my froshies.  Sneak peek... (I still need to fashion a helmet out of something somehow.  Cereal box and duct tape? Bubble wrap and papier mache?  We'll see.).  I also need to make a spear and shield.  I ordered an owl. 

I have to figure out how to attach the "cape/drape" to my shoulders, and shorten the fabric. 
Then on to making a helmet, and figuring out my hair.  Not bad, though!  Yea!

Artists are Necessary

Have you ever come to the realization that a theme has been festering in your life?  Not festering-- that's a terrible word.  Incubating.  Thinkubating.  And you haven't purposefully sought out information or perspectives on it, but instead they seem to have come to you because of a great need you never even allowed yourself to acknowledge? 

The theme that seems to be floating toward me on what Emerson would call the "currents of the Universal Being" is the simple idea that art is necessary.  Art is a necessary and vital part of our human experience, and our ability to resist being human when we need to.  The often-excerpted passages from Thoreau's Walden came my way, about us living meanly like ants, the urging to spend our lives observing only realities and thinking, breaking away from the habit, routine and useless gossip of daily life;  Emerson's ideal of finding the unique Genius in our students and guiding them as they meet its needs; Northrup Frye's The Educated Imagination-- read that for the first time in the last year. I read This article about why the market economy model does not work in education, which rests partially on the premise that minds are NOT commodities! And then after that I read Chris Hedges' article about why the subversion of art is essential to democracy, which echoed a poem I had read at the beginning of the school year last year and really liked: Ferlinghetti's Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signalling you through the flames].

The idea that art is necessary to human experience, and also to a thriving democracy, is almost absent from mainstream curriculum mapping and standards-writing.  Whenever art programs are justified, they seem to be justified in terms of their ability to prepare students for the creativity that they may have to use to do their 21st Century job.  Innovation around the conference table.  Or they are justified in terms of their ability to build "basic skills" like math, reading and writing.  Take OMA in Tucson, for example.  I respect their program and their teachers-- they've done WONDERFUL things for my children, but I don't understand why art has to be justified only in terms of basic skills or its ability to generate future income for our students. I mean, I do understand it.  It's about money.  And our public policy, when it comes down to it, is largely money and safety driven. It's almost impossible to explain in a language that can be taken seriously by policymakers how important it is that folks are able to appreciate a well-written poem or novel, or interpret subtleties in a work of independent film, or write those novels, or make those films. And that's too bad. 

I believe the arts (visual arts, performing arts, writing) allow individuals, communities, and humanity as a collective group to, by representing ourselves, to understand ourselves and each other better, and on a level that is, perhaps, spiritual without pertaining at all to religion.  The arts take us both outside of ourselves and into our imaginations, beyond the daily grind, and ask us to consider things a little more slowly, in a way that is not about budgets, mileage or calories.  And goodness knows we all need to slow down a little, or the world will soon spin off its axis.

The Pedagogy of Poetry, A Modest Proposal

We should no longer teach teenagers poetry.
1.  Most of them will never have appreciation for its finer points anyway.

2.  Education and educational spending are often currently justified based on the number of students that get into colleges and/or the types of jobs students can get and the amount of money they will make after their education (just one example).  The current buzz-phrase of the past few years has been "college and career readiness" for every student.

Poetry does not help this cause at all.  In fact, it takes away valuable time that students might spend learning to consider experimental design, to create marketing campaigns, or to weld.  These efforts are much more worthwhile to our society than the ability to lose of oneself in a book, or even in a couplet. Or, even worse, to find oneself reflected in a poem, to be inspired by the subtle, beautiful gulf between what one finds in a poem and one's own thoughts and experiences to waste even further time writing more useless poetry.

Instead, students should be productive citizens. Students must be ready to enter the economy, of which poetry is an increasingly small part.

3.  More importantly, poetry is dangerous and subversive.  Poetry allows these teen minds, unfettered by adult responsibilities, to roam free within only the boundaries of language, which really is only limited by any ostensible boundaries of human imagination.  And imagination, oh, that, my friends, is a dangerous thing.  Imagination subverts reality.  It creates new worlds.  It has nothing to do with completing assignments.  It rejects grades and all sorts of measurements.  Poetry, with its reliance on slippery metaphors and lack of empirical evidence or even, really, causal relationships, well, it allows students to simultaneously complete the assignment but subvert not only the assignment, but the idea of all assignments. To subvert the teacher. This will undo school as we know it! Why, a poem can meet the highest standards of any rubric while destroying the system that trained the teacher who developed the rubric.

As educational professionals, we cannot allow this to happen.  How can we put such a powerful weapon in the hands of those so young, so easily swayed by the wrong influences? The idea is irresponsible.

However, traditionalists in the canon will persist.  So.  If poetry must be taught, let us teach just the elements, divorced from any real meaning.  Study rhyme with nonsense words.  Metaphors should be familiar.  Images can be learned by rote.  Tropes and conceits:  write poems upholding the glory of the school mascot.  Themes:  Stick to circular reasoning and self-evidential statements.  Symbolism?  Universals, for sure.  None of this creation of private symbols-- that's where the subversiveness starts.  Once a student has the power to make a tree or a stone or a grain of sand stand in the place of anything in human experience, well, there's no telling what their writing actually means.

And irony must be slashed from the curriculum at once.  If young people get control over it, there will be no way to assess their work.  Who will be to say whether they are kidding or not?  If poor grammar, violence, accusations or inappropriate language can be written in the name of an ironic effect, students are liable to begin taking risks they have never taken before, to be brave, bold and brash, to machete their way into new territories of idea and image... even to create the most sickening slander of the very teacher who must read the writing.  Worse, awash in irony, metaphor, and the concept of a speaker separate from the poet, a teacher will be truly bewildered, and, really, powerless to do much about it without stifling the young artist, which any good teacher would never, never do purposefully. 

In fact, the good teacher must cheer the young poet forward, set her ego aside and take it all like an idiomatic man.  The teacher has been the character foil to thousands, and thousands more to come.  It's part of the martyrdom of the job, perhaps.  Part of why English teachers burn out and resort to grammar worksheets.

And so, in the interest of creating a humane environment for teachers and janitors and cafeteria workers (who, unfortunately, also bear the brunt of teen irony and recklessness), poetry must be stopped.

What can one person do for the movement?  Rein in your irony.  Eliminate all but the most banal metaphors.  Purchase corporate-created curriculum geared toward standardized assessment.  Nothing is too much to protect the mental health and economic futures of our children.  (Oh, and ourselves, of course.)

Agh!

63 Romeo and Juliet essays and 20 Creative Writing portfolios, all before 8:00 tomorrow morning.  Can I do it?  Is it worth giving very brief feedback before they leave for summer vs. no feedback if I don't finish?

I found a Starbucks Via packet in my desk drawer.  I thought I was all out.  So there is hope... slight hope... though I have less than $10 in my pocket till payday and my house has been invaded by ants, so probably half of that will go to Home Depot on the way home.  Still, I have some coffee right now.  And I probably won't have ants after tonight.  Whether my freshmen and writing students will have any feedback tomorrow remains to be seen.  This spring I've started actually falling asleep in the middle of writing feedback comments, so I'm afraid some student papers have those strange half-dream words and sentences on them which make no sense and come from a part of my brain they have no business visiting.  Maybe sentences that start out by making sense, such as "Your overall thesis is real wooden feeeet chickfrog ice cream."

Of F-Bombs and Freedoms

So, all year my creative writing class and I have been going around and around about the ubiquitous (well, not ubiquitous, but almost daily by a small handful of students) f-bombs and other expletives hurled during sharing time.  The "bad" language is not being used to bully other students or put anyone down.  It's usually just pure expressionism, anger and frustration expressed about human hypocrisy and the breakdown of policy, reasoning, common sense, respect or kindness.  It doesn't personally bother me, but as a professional in a public school, and as a teacher of (ideally) good writing, I must pause and consider the cost/benefit of allowing such liberties.

Classmates have privately and openly asked these students to tone down the use of "fuck."  I don't think they necessarily are offended by a single use of the word; they just seem tired of the daily barrage.  So I outlawed it for a few weeks, just as a little break, since we're all "forced" to be in that room together.  But it spontaneously came back. If Jurassic Park has taught us nothing else, it is that chaos will always find a way.

Well, now it turns out that in this era of accountability, and creating "college and career readiness" in my students, I can support my practice of permissiveness.  Check out this article which cites a study that shows that dropping a few f-bombs in the workplace lowers stress and increases group solidarity.  In terms of reducing jihadist threats, vandalism and off-task behavior, group solidarity has to be at the top of the list of school priorities.  Why else have pep rallies?   

In celebration of my newfound classroom liberalism, I offer my favorite literary manifestation of f-word frivolity and other crassness, David Sedaris's essay "You Can't Kill the Rooster" published in (I'm pretty sure...) Me Talk Pretty One Day.

Click image to link to my highly intellectual wordle.

Passive Voice

Passive Voice

These intentions of yours are
confounded when they are
inverted into the passive.

Power once wielded
by poet becomes
toy: The sins that are
committed,
the crimes that are
wrought, any repentance,
the concept thought.

The subject is
sought. What subjection
of the reader is
imposed in the name
of what?

A labyrinth of
folded statements is
wound to
the cliff’s sheer edge,
crumbs consumed by
reader who by
her guesses must be
led.

When the codec is
omitted the reader is
left hovering midair
a caricature
grasping back
for the last blind purchase

the subject a blankness
flung from
the sentence’s ledge

 
I am finding this year that writing is like stirring a pot that has settled.  You can't just stir the top half of the pot with that big wooden spoon, but all the contents that have settled at the bottom come whirling around with it.  So I sit this morning to begin working on my National Board portfolio for the day, and what comes up but a poem.  I'm sure it can still use some revision, but it's got potential.  Feedback welcomed. 
 
This happens a lot for me while I am grading papers, and it also happened during NaNoWriMo.  Have a good weekend, everyone, and send good writing/ revising vibes my way.  Good thoughts, prayers, lit candles, encouraging e-mails.  None of it can hurt!

Blargh! NBC Writing Process

Warning.  Pure ventage ahead.  Potentially little to no intellectual value. 

I cannot believe how long each little part of my National Board portfolio takes. 

I finished Entry 4 today (Professional Accomplishments) except for one verification form, but I swear it took me at least four to five hours total just to screen-shot, scan, format, label, print, put in order, etc., all the documentation for the five accomplishments, plus chasing down people to sign verification forms.  Thank goodness I ran into my old student teacher at Ike's one day.  That time does not even include the three dozen or so hours (at least) I spent evaluating, planning and writing up my description and analysis and reflection on each accomplishment (at least two accomplishments I had written about got completely chopped out.)  This is one of those tasks where, by the time you're done with it, you actually know what you're doing, but then it's done.  

Now I'm working on Entry 2.  I've already spent two hours today alone editing my written commentary for conciseness, trying to get 14 pages down to about 10 so I can add more reflection and end up with 11. I probably spent two hours last week writing and then paring down my descriptions of my instructional materials for this entry to get them onto one page.  Then I go to double check the formatting and find a post-it I wrote MONTHS ago, and a small footnote on the cover sheet that says I get a page PER ITEM to describe the materials and relate them to the video.  BLARGHY!   

By the time I get to the reflective writing, I feel incapable.  I mean, I have plenty to say (always) but is it the most intelligent distillation of all I have learned about teaching by analyzing my practice?  Hmm.  I can't guarantee that.  I have a feeling that if there is extra time at the end, I'll be pulling out all my reflections on each entry and rewriting them.  But at this rate, I've just got to capture whatever intelligence might be lurking in my 1" margin-Times-New-Roman-size-12-font-page-numbered-candidate-numbered consciousness and get it into the right page length.  And hope there is a tiny bit of time to regroup at the very end.

The Gaping Maw of "The Box"

Across the desk, it stares me down.  The gaping maw of "The Box,"  mock-packed with construction-paper representations of each document which still needs to be finished for my National Board portfolio.

I ruthlessly chop away at what I've written, paring it down sliver by sliver, page by paragraph, into concise, glistening gem, cut to specification yet retaining, hopefully, enough of its natural essence to be appreciated.

This is not the fun part.  But I'm trying to finish an entry by dinner, so I'd better get off my blog. 

Cheers!

Planning For Ekphrasis Poetry

Whenever I have a lot of papers to grade, I find some other way to occupy my mind.  Something that is urgent, creative, fun...  usually planning my next units.

I'm not sure exactly how it will work out, because I want to cover various poetic forms and techniques at the same time, but I want to teach poetry through its relationship to other art forms, and somehow I found out that there is a word for this:  Ekphrasis.  A work of art based on another work of art.  Fantastic concept!

I've started a small Diigo collection of websites I am tagging "ekphrasis" for use in my unit.  I would love ideas!

Poetry about Art.
Art about Poetry.
Poetry about Music
Music about Poetry
Poetry about Other Poems & Lit.
Poetry & graphic novels
Related Topic: broadsides  (Drooling to do broadsides!)

Links for Use in Ekphrasis Poetry Unit

List of Possible Works to Use:
"My Last Duchess" Robert Browning
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" John Keats
Pictures at an Exhibition Mussorgsky
"Green Light and Gamma Rays" by Thylias Moss
Iliad-- description of Achilles' shield
"The Man With the Hoe" by Edwin Markham based on painting by the same name by Jean Francois Millet
"Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies, A Sestina for the Douanier" by Sylvia Plath (based on Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies by Henri Rousseau

Accidental Rip-Off. NaNoWriMo Tragedy.

Like I needed any bad news today. 

I went to the library catalog online to see if they had a copy of the children's book about the boy who swam with the seals, which is supposedly based on a Chinook story, which I was hoping would help me with my story. 

So, turns out after searching "boy" AND "seals" that The Secret of Roan Inish is basically a rip-off of my book.  Or actually, my book is a semi-rip-off of that movie, except the problem is that I have never seen this movie. 

Rgh. 

I mean, my "novel" (i.e. collection of disjointed scenes and concepts which is working its way toward being a novel) is a little more complicated.  There are two strands written in two different POV's.  The first is a girl who is a double amputee & competitive swimmer, and sort of her coming of age story and story of getting her first prosthetic legs at an older age.  The second strand is a story she is writing or creating in her mind in which her mother turns out to be a selkie (but they are called something else in my book-- they are sea lion people) and it turns out that instead of losing her brother in the ocean as a baby, he transformed into his selkie form and has grown up in their community, and is now a leader of sorts and is figuring out how to transform into his human form.  Then I haven't decided whether in that story she actually figures out that she is a selkie, too.  I think she probably does, because why not?  It's all part of her fantasy world that she is creating.  I think there will be tsunamis in both stories-- one more devastating than the other.

So, now my question is, do I go watch the movie just to make sure I'm not completely ripping it off?  Or do I refuse to see it just so I am not tempted to rip it off or refer to it in any way, shape or form?  Or do I incorporate the movie into my novel purposefully?  The third option could make some sense, because both stories are based in the selkie and chinook mythology anyway already.  But I don't like the idea of popular culture references because they go dead after a while for the reader-- they date the story.

Rgh.  Just when I need to be chugging out amazing word count which is going to wrap up this sucker...

Art Hike / NaNoWriMo Day 12 / Should Be Doing Nat'l Board Portfolio

Here I am at the TOB (the Transitional Office Building) which sounds like quite an uninspiring place to write, but in fact is filled with the history of dozens of SAWP writers buzzing away at their keyboards and notebooks; before that it was filled with hundreds of sorority girls for however many years blow-drying their hair and writing each other's mid-term essays.  We are not sure what it is transitioning from or to... but we are part of that mysterious transition.  It's been this way for years and years.

Yesterday, I took the kids for a hike to Pontatoc Ridge trail, I think my favorite trail with quick and easy access. It's closer than Sabino, with fewer people, and within a couple hundred yards you are pretty much in the lush desert, with lots of ups, downs, arroyos and, intermittently, gorgeous views all around town and beyond. I get tired of having to hike the road at Sabino. 

We took a)  the dog, and b) sketchpads for each of us.  Oh, and my daughter would not want me to leave out c) snacks. 

My son spent at least an hour going through my drawer of hiking equipment and packing his small frame pack so that he could carry the dog in back.  I took out many of the items he had included, such as hand-warmers and the knot-tying game.  But I enjoyed seeing him so focused and excited about the hike.  Both kids did great-- many of the rocky parts of the trail were a real challenge to my daughter, who is a tall five-year-old, but she loved scrambling up them and felt very accomplished.  Markey was patient, though a little anxious, in the backpack, and we didn't even receive any disapproving looks from ethical hikers who follow the rules (no dogs).  I don't think Markey would have run after a javelina or taken down a bighorn sheep.  He only weighs 4 1/2 pounds.  My daughter carried her own water in a reservoir-- yea!  That was (literally) a load off my shoulders. 

We had kind of a late start, and it's getting dark early, now.  We made it maybe 3/4 of the way up the switchbacks, and ran out of time, so we found a good spot and stopped to sketch. 

I am amazed at his drawing.  We only sat for about 30 minutes.  Wow.
My daughter drew this and that-- she would draw something and then have me guess whether it was something that she saw around her, or something that wasn't here.  First she drew part of the ridge across from us, which I recognized.  Then she drew vampire teeth.  Then a butterfly.

Good times!

Now I'm warmed up and should move onward toward my NaNoWriMo novel before my students out-wordcount me into oblivion.  Perhaps I will have a scene of artwork en plein air. 

Pink Martini at Starr Pass amid Documented Accomplishments

Shuffling Pink Martini on my iPod.

Documenting my teaching accomplishments.

Curled up on a couch in a boulevard-sized passageway outside the ballrooms with massive glassed views of saguaro, ocotillo, a golf course, and, farther down the vale, the city stretching across the floor of the valley.  The crispness of the day refreshes me.

Enjoying the last couple hours of solitude among colleagues and music, writing and thinking.

NaNoWriMo No Naps! Day 5

I'm sitting here in my room at Starr Pass at my National Board Candidacy Working Retreat, trying to write the instructional context passage for Entry 1 of my portfolio.  And it is so quiet.  So quiet.  And my eyes keep drooping mid sentence. 

Several times today, I took a break from my National Board work by opening up my novel and adding to it.  I am writing in fragments, writing the chunks I know I will need.  I am allowing myself long paragraphs of telling, figuring I can go back and turn those passages into scenes at a later time. 

I have decided to have the point of view shift from first to third person throughout the novel, although I'm not going to tell why... that would be giving too much away.  If it doesn't work out I could always go put it all in first person...  see?  right there I was falling asleep in the middle of a sentence.  It's so quiet here.  I haven't had a good night's sleep in weeks.  The weird thing is, I haven't had any vivid dreams for a long time, either.  I was hoping writing fiction would maybe bring some dreams on, but so far, no.  Not even anxiety dreams.  Isn't that funny?

I'm going to go lie down, now, and snooze a little.  I'm sure I'll be continuing to work tonight.  On my professional writing and my nanowrimo novel.  The professional writing, I'm sure will be fine if I devote the time and effort to it. The novel?  Well, it's getting better as we go onward.  I'm thinking it's a young adult novel... unless I can find a way to bust it free.

Can My Setting Be Wonderland? Young Writers Want to Know! NaNoWriMo and Intertextuality

Yesterday, a student wrote me with a great question.  She wanted to know if she could set her NaNoWriMo novel in Wonderland. 

I answered her question the best I could, saying that fanfiction was all about borrowing from other texts, and literary allusion was all about borrowing from and referring to other texts.  To me, the biggest issue is one of ethics.  Are you openly borrowing and transforming, reinterpreting, and reinventing?  Or are you stealing under the guise of originality?

She answered the question for herself somehow by finding out about the issue of public domain.  To her, now that she knew there was no copyright ownership of Wonderland, she could use it in her novel.  But I told the class that although copyright is certainly a consideration, the issue really goes beyond that to one of ethics and artistic integrity, but that there were multiple grey areas we could discuss.

I googled intertextuality, and of course a boatload of postmodern academic linguistic semiotic mumbo-jumbo came up, which I could read and interpret and try to simplify for my high school students... or I could spend the next half hour working on my own word count on my novel, from which I am drawing on Celtic mythology, and Chinook stories and language. 

If anyone out there knows of a plain-language explanation I could use with my students, or an interesting and accessible set of interconnected texts we could use to discuss the issue, please leave me a comment.  Thanks!