Things I'd Like To Give My Students

I just wrapped up my last day of teaching for the time being, which coincided with the seniors' last day of classes. I had many of them in my creative writing class, and I wanted to leave them with something to think about as they start to imagine the shape of the rest of their lives. I was daunted by the task of saying something that wouldn't sound trite or hollow.

So I told them what I wish someone could have told me:

As you get older, you'll find that it's easy to get lost. Lost in love, lost in work, lost in life's dramas and complications. It's easy to lose your sense of who you are and who you want to be. Which is why it's important to make yourself stop: stop and reflect on what matters to you, on the things you never want to let yourself forget. Writing is a beautiful way to do that. So today I want you to write your future self a letter. Tell yourself what matters to you now, and what you want to make sure you never lose sight of. 

It was a really nice class, and a really nice moment. They all put different "open me" dates on their envelopes, and it was interesting to see what dates they picked. The first week of college. The last week of college. Their 25th birthday. I found myself fervently hoping that they hold onto their letters, and that whoever they turn out being is an even better version of themselves than they can currently imagine.

One of my favorite things about teaching has been talking to kids about books. It's given me the chance to reflect on what books helped change my world when I was their age. The books that made me fall in love with reading all over again and that made my last year of high school more memorable. These are the books I'd like to give my students:

 




 

Book Spine Friday

I currently find myself teaching 8th, 11th and 12th graders, which is proving an interesting challenge and, sometimes, a genuine pleasure. Amidst the chaos of trying to squeeze thought out of 8th graders and singing Dickinson poems to the tune of Amazing Grace, I always look forward to my creative writing class. I'm on a mission to find ways to make my classes both inspirational and useful (suggestions gratefully accepted). To that end, I had my students make book spine poems today. They could only use the books I'd brought in and borrowed from the library, and it was interesting to see what kinds of things they came up with. I can't claim to have dreamed up this idea, but I loved it so much I made one of my own.

Happy Friday!

Grammar Girl: Writing Concisely (Part 2)

I really wanted to figure out how to SHOW my students the power of writing concisely. So I told them about my Fiction class in college, the one during which I took my first real stabs at fiction writing. I wrote a story about my summer camp, a place that was special to me, and thought I'd written something fairly pretty. After reading it, my professor decided it would make a perfect exemplar for our upcoming class on writing concisely/word choice. He handed out a copy to every student and asked them to do just one thing: get rid of the words the story doesn't need. I thought this would mean maybe five or six words. But really it meant more like 50%.

I hated to show this example to my students, because the writing is horrifyingly bad. I really can't believe I thought so highly of this paragraph. I can't believe no one mocked me--I mean, I'm thankful no one did, but wow. But sharing it with students also (I hope) showed them the power and importance of critique for anyone who's serious about writing.

So this is the paragraph I started out with:

Swift walked through the mist of a late August summer morning. The lush green leaves of oaks, cedars, and poplars shifted gently in an infinitesimal breeze. Thick tufts of foliage hanging from forked branches twittered with the cacophony of cackling birds. Through small gaps in the forest canopy, lines of soft golden light filtered through, and slanted slivers of pale green and yellow cut through the air. Electric green moss crept around the roots and edges of the forest floor. It had rained the night before and the forest’s thick carpet of dead leaves was drying. Their crinkled white and brown spots gave off the acrid smell of wet mold and ancient stories. Swift’s feet pattered softly up the dusty path that wound through the forest like a creek would, babbling over small rocks and fallen branches. She walked without seeing; she could have closed her eyes and walked the path from memory. The putter of her feet was barely perceptible as she traversed the path that would lead her to the top of the valley. (176 words)

This is what the class did to it:

Swift walked through the mist of a late August summer morning. The lush green leaves of oaks, cedars, and poplars shifted gently in an infinitesimal breeze. Thick tufts of foliage hanging from forked branches twittered with the cacophony of cackling birds. Through small gaps in the forest canopy, lines of soft golden light filtered through, and slanted slivers of pale green and yellow cut through the air. Electric green moss crept around the roots and edges of the forest floor. It had rained the night before and the forest’s thick carpet of dead leaves was drying. Their crinkled white and brown spots gave off the acrid smell of wet mold and ancient stories. Swift’s feet pattered softly up the dusty path that wound through the forest like a creek would, babbling over small rocks and fallen branches. She walked without seeing; she could have closed her eyes and walked the path from memory. The putter of her feet was barely perceptible as she traversed the path that would lead her to the top of the valley. (176)

And this is what I ended up with:

Swift walked through the woods on a summer morning. Lines of soft light fell through the canopy, lighting up the path that stretched out in front her. It had rained the night before and the leaf carpet was drying. It gave off the acrid smell of wet mold and ancient stories. Swift’s feet pattered up the dusty path that wound up to the top of the valley. She walked without seeing; she could have closed her eyes and walked the path from memory. (80 words)

I was crushed by this exercise, of course. I thought the class was trying to kill all of my lovely description, all of my well-crafted alliteration. But looking back I know that was the most life-changing critique I ever recieved. Because my first paragraph was completely awful, and if they hadn't showed me why, I might never have understood what it means to write well. Writing well doesn't always mean pretty passages and lots of words: it means keeping the words that matter, and getting rid of those that are getting in the way of what you're really trying to say.

Young Minds on the Deterioration of the Written Word

I haven't been blogging much lately because I've been grading papers. Student papers. Well, actually, student blogs. They were asked to write a blog on a significant topic in writing and I was shocked by what turned out to be the #1 most popular blog topic: how social media and text messaging are 'destroying' the English language.

There were a lot of impassioned speeches about how 'the youth today' (umm, you're seventeen... you are the youth today... but alright) don't respect the glory of English at all. I even had a student tell me that, if we weren't careful, eventually we'd end up talking to each other in nothing but a series of grunts. A lot of them seem to feel that technology in general - including ebooks - are raping and pillaging worthwhile literature and eviscerating our appreciation and understanding of the written word.

I find myself... confused by this. I'll agree that 'text speak' is finding its way into our everyday language - after all, 'LOL' and 'OMG' have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary - and I'll agree that it can be annoying. But students are still learning 'real' English in school. They're writing 'real' English in classes and speaking it to other people. It is annoying that people don't check the grammatical correctness of their Facebook status updates... but in the end it's just their Facebook status update. I don't think a misplaced apostrophe or a ZOMG mean that English is tumbling downhill.

I find it fascinating (in the way you find a car crash on the side of the highway fascinating) that so many of my students feel we're experiencing not only a decline in English usage, but also in the quality of published books. A lot of them like to site Twilight's popularity as a prime example of how the mighty literary canon has fallen. They like to say things like 'books with the beauty of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice just don't get published anymore'. But the thing is... beautifully written books are being written and published all the time. I just re-read Cold Mountain - it wasn't written all that many years ago - and I challenge anyone to read that book and tell me that masterpieces aren't still being written. Twilight may not be the best written series of all time, but guess what? That doesn't make it trash. It brought millions of non-readers to the written word. That's more people getting interested in language, trying their hand at writing themselves. More people falling in love with storytelling. Because that's part of what makes 'quality' literature, isn't it? The author's ability to tell us a story that sets us on fire, regardless of whether their work is considered 'literary' fiction.

And while we're talking about how technology is ruining us... I find myself blown away by the attitude towards ebooks. Because - well - ebooks are still BOOKS. They are exactly the same as the hardback original, just packaged for a different format. I think that, if anything, ebooks are getting more people to read. Sure, reading on a screen is always going to be a different experience than reading 'in the flesh'. But they can be bought and consumed instantly, and that is appealing to just about everyone. It worries me that we are so stuck in this romantic ideal about reading and writing that we aren't able to be open to the exciting possibilities that technology presents for literature.

In sum, I'm as keen and romantic about hardback books and beautiful prose as anyone. And I think that it is important that kids be taught the basic rules of our language so that, when they play and experiment with it, they are adding something to the evolution of our language (or, at the very least, know that emoticons will never be as powerful as using real words to evoke real emotions). But I'd hate to see us put our hands over our ears and pretend that technology and genre fiction = the end of the good book as we know it.

Rant concluded; back to grading.