Celebrate: Student Writing

We've all been there. We have what we believe to be the ideal lesson plan, but something unexpected happens and we find ourselves brushing up on our tap-dancing while we scramble for Plan B. Just such a thing happened this week during our final week of summer school. Suddenly finding myself without the technology that was the foundation of my lesson (of course), I sprinted to the workroom to make copies of Ray Bradbury's short story All Summer in a Day.

I had never read the story before but had it sitting on my desk "just in case." The first time I read this somewhat dark piece of fiction, I was struck by its abrupt ending. I was convinced that I had forgotten to print or had lost the last page. When I learned that I did, in fact, hold in my hand the entire tale, I was breathless... and haunted. So were my students.

After reading, analyzing, and discussing the story, my students and I wrote our own endings to Bradbury's stunning piece. I had a preconceived notion of what their narratives would be like, but one by one, as each student read his/her piece aloud, my assumptions were shattered. The seriousness with which they wrote stunned and moved me.

This lesson, totally unplanned and done on a whim, turned out to be my favorite lesson of the summer school semester, as well as my students'. I was so touched by a couple of my student's pieces that I asked permission to share them here so that I can celebrate their writing. (These pieces are unedited.) Allow me to set the stage with the closing lines of Bradbury's original text:

Behind the closet door was only silence. They unlocked the door, even more slowly, and let Margot out.

Angelina G.
"She was heart broken, but she wasn't mad or sad. Just heart broken. When she was out of the closet, she just looked at them and walked away crying. After that, she was never seen again. William would go to the closet everyday and think, what have I done?"

Melanie T.
"Margot steped out of the dark closet. She walked back to the classroom without a single word. Everyone was saying sorry, they were begging for forgiveness. Margot broke the silence by saying 'I feel bad that all of you were jelouse that I have seen the sun many times, but I feel more bad that every seven years you have to wait while I'll be enjoying the sun' she laughs then walked away. The rest of the school year she didn't talk and eventually her time came she went back to earth. When she was gone everyone noticed Margot was the sun. She was the one who kept on telling us it will come, but now we have the clouds."

Day 1

I love new beginnings. There is something so rejuvenating, so invigorating, so empowering about starting something fresh. Whether it's the beginning of a new year, a new relationship, or a new goal, new beginnings fill me with excitement, hope, and the feeling that I can do anything! (Well, almost anything.) Today is a new beginning...day 1.

I am a sixth-grade language arts teacher, and I have big dreams for my new parcel of pupils that will make their way to my classroom in early August. This year, I am not simply going to teach the do's and don'ts of correctly crafting the standard argument essay, informative piece, or sliver of narrative. This year, after we master placing the elusive end mark in every sentence, I want to teach my students that, whether they know it or not, they... are... writers.

To make this dream even the slightest possibility of reality, I realized that I could no longer just be a writing teacher, but I now had to become a writing teacher. In other words, just teaching my students how to write is not going to be enough. I, too, must write.

Sadly, when it comes to writing I epitomize the idiotic idiom that mocks, "Those who can, do; those who can't..." (I can't even bring myself to complete the thought.) In a moment of panic, I reached out to Jennifer Laffin from Teach Write. "Where do I begin?" I cried. Not only did Jennifer quickly respond to my desperate plea, but after an encouraging, thought-provoking, and inspiring conversation, she triple-dog-dared me to have my blog up and running, complete with my first post, by the end of the day. (Note: No dares were actually used in the making of this inaugural post.)

So here it is.

Now I need to go and figure out what all of these gadgets, navbars, and sidebars do.

Happy Writing!

Gail