It seems like it's never silent anymore, like I've somehow made peace with certain amounts of noise as they contribute to learning or the flow of ideas. Either I'm talking or they are, and that's mostly perfect. Silence now inhabits the realm of top-shelf punishments, saved for the class so unruly that they "lost the privilege of talking" for two days. The first day, it was a clever novelty, and they dutifully read the short story and answered eleven questions. By Day 2 they were sufficiently horrified. "When can we TALK again?" they whispered. We like talking, all of us.
Today, though, the silence is neither a grudging disciplinary measure nor the sullen blankness of early morning. It's 10:55 AM, and my students are awake, not hungry, and writing.
To be fair, some of them are writing. A few are drawing spirals on sheets of scratch paper or staring at lone sentences as if they splash words on the page with their minds. My class isn't perfect; it's just quiet for a while.
Most of them, though, are writing, pencils and pens crawling across paper, slowly and quickly, tracing large and small letters back and forth like switchbacks descending down the desktops. I should be planning or grading or doing something, but I'm watching them write, because I love watching students write. Not just write--create.
We've been writing stories this week, the last of the semester, participating in what I've cleverly named The Great Story Contest. It's a convoluted tournament of fiction, combining team creativity and individual literary skill, that I made up during Period One yesterday, when "Just write a story together this week" seemed like too sparse a lesson plan, even for me. Yesterday, they arranged the skeleton details of the story, the real words with instructional merit like protagonist, antagonist, setting, and theme. Today, everyone is writing their own versions of the stories.
I love assigning stories entirely because I loved writing them in school. I remember the refreshing freedom of writing creatively to a prompt, having a structure within which to control a tiny world. I especially loved them after I'd been laboring away at the clinical primness of research or history papers. It's pure nostalgia that leads me to fill this last week of the semester--the week after students finish a month-long research project that's drained most of my energy for a long time--with stories about babies who fall in love, villainous Lasercats, or a race of blueberry people. It's relaxing to me, after so long dwelling on finding answers to pressing questions, to leave the answers alone for a while and enjoy the freedom of arranging tiny worlds the way we want them. You want your kangaroo protagonist to fight a fox named Roxy over the privilege of eating the "little leaping lemur" they found? YES. Let me know how it turns out.
With two minutes to go, I have to break the silence.
"OK, students. You can pack up your things. Nicely done today, by the way. I'm excited to hear these stories."
"Do we finish them tonight?" someone asks.
"You can if you want to. We'll have about 15 minutes tomorrow to work on them."
"I'm finishing tonight," the boy replies. "This is getting good."
I hadn't intended this game to be homework, hoping to give them time to finish projects in other classes this week after working so hard last week.
"OK, but don't prioritize this, you know, over your other classes. I'll give you time tomorrow. So if you have a project or a final to study for, do that first."
It's one of those surreal moments, retro TV commercial territory, where the kid is begging for broccoli while his mom pushes calcium-infused chocolate pudding on him.
"Sure," he finally says. "But if I finish everything else--all my work--then can I work on the story?"
I start to laugh. "Of course," I say. I don't tell him that I ask myself the same question nearly every day.
1 comment:
love this, Kristi. I'm jealous of your life right now. wish I could watch people write. two of my favorite things put together. you're great.
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