Five Things I Love About Teaching Writing

Many of you know that my school is a tinsy-bit different, and right now we are in the middle of our J-term which means that I'm spending my entire day teaching 12 kids about the New Yorker Magazine. That's the whole day straight for 14 days, and it's really pretty cool to see how much they can grow in such a little time when they really get working. It makes me happy - which is very good because if I wasn't happy, I'd be tired.

5 - Writing is nothing more than speaking on paper. Most students won't write much when they get out of school, but all of them will speak - probably a lot. Spending all day honing in on their writing skills has actually helped my students speak better. They think faster, they think on a deeper level, and they've stopped saying 'like' (I hate 'like').

4 - Writing is not math. No offense to people who like math (I was once a high school mathlete, so I kind of get it), but math pretty much always works the same way. Writing rarely gives you a straight consistent answer. I like that.

3 - Writing is not life or death. Some people are just designed to life or death decisions all the time. They become doctors, or EMTs or nuclear war button pushers. I'm not. If the writing sucks today, nobody dies. It will just get better tomorrow.

2 - Writing can feel like life or death. As much as it doesn't matter whether or not you chose to use or abuse the serial comma, writing does matter when you put yourself behind it. Writing is taking a risk to say what you believe. If people don't respect your opinion (respect is not agreement), then I think that is like dying. And that matters.

1 - Writings is all about telling stories. Stories are all about life (I mean it's pretty hard to write a story about something that doesn't ever do anything or have anything done to it). That's why we tell so many stories to children. So they know how to live their lives. What's not to like about that?

Post New Year's stuff

So after getting blasted for requesting more frequent blog posts by my friends while never actually posting on my own, I feel as though it's time to give regular blogging more of an effort. I also read a very cheesy article in the "Living" section of the Indy Star about blogging and how you should develop a distinctive blog style - something like making every post a list of 5 things or being a huge snark (the paper did actually use the word 'snark'). I figure I'm a reasonably intelligent person. Certainly I can come up with 5 things to say each day.

To that end, we had a guest speaker in class today, and one of the things he said was that he is someone who is never bored. That struck a chord with me. I get bored a lot, or at least I think I do. What I really probably get though is lazy. So without further ado, here's a list of 5 things I'm going to try doing to stop being lazy. Consider it a late New Year's resolution.

5 - Take a short nap every now and then. As most know, there is nothing better than a nap. Maybe they will keep me rested so that I am less inclined to plop in front of the TV when I too tired to do anything else. And at least when I'm sleeping, I won't be bored.

4 - Blog more. See above.

3 - Read more. If you've been to my house, you know that the number of books I own is a highly contested point in my relationship. The fact that I haven't actually read most of them makes Suellen even more upset. I figure since I've got a wealth of knowledge sitting on shelves that I keep lobbying to keep, I better read them.

2 - Play more games. This is a recently acquired geeky trait I've gotten from Amy and Ben, but I figure that if I'm playing a game, I'm not zoning out in front of the TV, allowing myself to slowly die in the wake of its pale glow.

1 - Maybe - just maybe - I'll write poems again. I'm actually hoping that this will be a result of the 'bullocks to laziness plan'. We'll see how it goes.