Category Archives: Writers

Painting With Words: Sold

Books, Jackie Catcher, Readers Workshop October 2, 2014 Comments: 3

c_soldPatricia McCormick is a painter. Not literally, but she might as well be given the way she writes. Her vivid imagery and poetic prose paired with her short vignettes make Sold a must-read.

Somehow, Patricia makes the heavy subject of sexual slavery both approachable and manageable. Whereas many of my heavier books on women’s rights or international affairs sit dormant in my classroom library, Sold has made it through many hands. I believe there are multiple reasons for this: first, Sold isn’t intimidating in length or size. It feels manageable for many students. Second, Sold is written in short vignettes with wide spacing between the lines. Students can find themselves ten or twenty pages into the book with minimal effort.

Furthermore, the book lends itself to close reading and craft study. Each vignette is chock full of exceptional writing as Patricia McCormick plays with diction, descriptions, repetition, and a wide variety of craft marks. In turn, I can’t pick only one example, so bear with me as I walk you through two of the many passages with which I am obsessed:

Everyday, students walk into my classroom burdened by mammoth backpacks and equally sized worries. It’s tough to be a teenager, which is why I love the vignette “What I Carry.” I hope to use this as a quickwrite to find out what students carry with them throughout the

One of the many passages I have photocopied and dissected in my writer's notebook.

One of the many passages I have photocopied and dissected in my writer’s notebook.

day.

WHAT I CARRY

Inside the bundle Ama packed for me are:

my bowl,

my hairbrush,

the notebook my teacher gave me for being the number one

girl in school,

and my bedroll.

Inside my head I carry

my baby goat,

my baby brother,

my ama’s face,

our family’s future.

My bundle is light.

My burden is heavy.

In the second passage, “Between Twilights,” I love McCormick’s use of sensory details. This is an excellent passage to model the concept of “show don’t tell” in writing.

BETWEEN TWILIGHTS

Sometimes, between the twilights.

I unwrap my bundle from home

and bury my face in the fabric of my old skirt.

I inhale deeply,

drinking in the scent of mountain sunshine,

a warmth that smells of freshly turned soil and clean laundry

baking in the sun.

I breathe in a cool Himalayan breeze,

and the woodsy tang of a cooking fire,

a smell that crackles with the promise of warm tea

and fresh roti.

Then I can get by.

Until the next twilight.

Please Don’t Judge Me

Jackie Catcher, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop October 1, 2014 Comments: 5

“So, uh, yeah this is pretty embarrassing for me.” I could feel my face flush in front of my 1st period Advanced Composition before I’d even begun. My voice shook as I stood in front of the 24 pairs of 17-year old eyes—the most vulnerable position one can be in. I had captured their attention at 7:45 in the morning, but I could feel my innards twist as I stammered through some of the usual excuses I hear from my student-writers: “I need to tell you the backstory first” and “I hope you get what I’m trying to say.”

Then I started, reading line by line the maid of honor speech I will deliver in fewer than two weeks at my best friend’s wedding. It wasn’t the first time I had shared my writing; I write with my students during quickwrites, share finalized pieces with them throughout the year, and discuss drafting pieces for this blog, but this speech was different—it was raw, personal, and untraditional. I had made some major stylistic decisions that pushed me, particularly as a writer, outside my comfort zone.

“I really need your feedback,” I said to them. And I was honest, practically on the verge of begging. “You see,” I continued, “writing happens throughout your life, and in this instance I need your help to make sure I don’t make a fool of myself in front of 200 guests.”

photo-1

My Advanced Composition class, pictured here, helped to walk me through the revision process.

“You’re going to trust us?” a student asked.

“Yeah,” I responded, “Plus, at the wedding I’ll be in front of 200 people I might never see again, whereas here, I’m with you guys for the rest of the year. So, if I’m embarrassed here, it’s going to be really bad at the wedding,” they laughed and they listened to me recite the piece with a calm voice and a racing mind, a mind that begged them to chuckle at the jokes and coo at the memories. When I came to the end, I looked up, realizing again, as I have realized so many times before just how vulnerable it is to share writing. This time though, as much as it made me nervous, I knew that the only way to teach writers was through modeling. If I was asking them to expose their writing to each other, I had to be willing to expose my writing flaws as well, even if it felt like singing solo karaoke stone-cold sober.

Then the suggestions came: “I’m not sure what you were doing with that transition, maybe try to make it more specific.” “I would like to hear about when you first met her fiancé.” “I think you could add another story.” Their words were carefully chosen as not to offend but instead encourage and help. While some students doled out praise, others helped to polish the piece. Even trailing side conversations pertained to how to make the piece stronger. I typed their comments into the document, repeating what each of them would say, and then I sent them to begin a similar process of reading aloud their personal narratives within groups of three.

Next week I will arrive in class with another draft of my speech, and I will repeat the cycle. They must see me live the life of a writer if they are going to believe what I say. They must see me absorb their feedback if they are going to understand the value of peer review. And above all, they must watch me return, raw nerves and baited breath, if they are to believe that I see value in their words.

A Lesson in Craft: The Yellow Birds

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 29, 2014 1 Comment

If you have not read The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, go buy it and start reading it today. It’s that good. Maybe I loved it because Powers is a poet, and his poetry flows into the language on every page. Maybe I loved it because I have similar fears as the mothers portrayed in this book. At least one of my sons will join the Army in a year.

Whatever the reason, I love this novel, and I know many of my students will appreciate the beauty of it, too.

Many passages are worthy of study, but when I read myself into this one, I knew that the discussion around it in class would be powerful. What do you think students might discover about language by reading this?

I hadn’t know what I was doing then, but my memories of Murph were a kind of misguided archaeology. Sifting through the remains of what I remembered about him was a denial of the fact that a hole was really all that was left, an absence I had attempted to reverse but found that I could not. There was simply not enough material to account for what had been removed. The closer I got to reconstructing him in my mind, the more the picture I was tying to re-create receded. For every memory I was able to pull up, another seemed to fall away forever. There was some proportion about it all, though. It was like putting a puzzle together from behind: the shapes familiar, the picture quickly fading, the muted tan of the cardboard backing a tease at wholeness and completion. I’d think of a time when we sat in the evening in the guard tower, watching the war go by in streaks of read and green and other, briefer lights, and he’d tell me of an afternoon in the little hillside apple orchard that his mother worked, the turn and flash of a paring knife along a wrap of gauze as they grafted uppers to rootstocks and new branches to blossom, or the time he saw but could not explain his awe when his father brought a dozen caged canaries home from the mine and let them loose in the hollow where they lived, how the canaries only flitted and sang awhile before perching back atop their cages, which had been arranged in rows, his father likely thinking that the birds would not return by choice to their captivity, and that the cages should be used for something else: a pretty bed for vegetables, perhaps a place to string up candles between the trees, and in what strange silences the world worked, Murph must have wondered, as the birds settled peaceably in their formation and ceased to sing. And I’d try to recall things until nothing came, which I quickly found was my only certainty, until what was left of him was a sketch in shadow, a skeleton falling apart, and my friend Murph was no more friend to me than the strangest stranger.

Viral Titles

Books, Guest Post, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes September 25, 2014 Leave a comment

ifistay1Every year, one or two books go viral. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, and Hate List by Jennifer Brown have all held the Viral Title award in the past.  I couldn’t keep those books on my shelves, and students couldn’t read them fast enough.

This year, If I Stay by Gayle Forman is everywhere I look.  All of my students want this book–AP, on level, male, female, black, white, readers, non-readers.  I have six copies and all are checked out.

I got into bed Tuesday night with my Nook, where I’d recently downloaded If I Stay.  It’s been about a month since I’ve read a book for pleasure, so I intended to just read a chapter or two and then go to sleep after my 14-hour day.

I stayed up ’til midnight and finished the book.

Silent tears dripped down my face around page 15, when Mia’s family is destroyed in a car accident.  Forman’s writing shoves me into the moment and I am right there with Mia, feeling her anguish as she sees her parents strewn across the road.  I agonize with her over the whereabouts of her younger brother, Teddy, and I hear the eerie quiet of a post-collision highway.

I was captivated from that moment onward, terrified for Mia as she watches her own injured, unresponsive body be flown to the hospital.  Watches her now-daughterless grandparents in the waiting room.  Watches the surgeons and nurses frantically try to save her.  She vacillates between wanting to stay in this world, and wanting to leave it behind.

NPR calls this story “achingly beautiful,” and I would agree.  Its language, its structure, haunts me, days later, and I know my students and I will study Forman’s craft soon…the way she brings us into a moment, frozen in time, and suspends our disbelief as we stay beside Mia’s spirit, watching all of this unfold.  Please read this book, and get it into the hands of your students, too.

ifistay2

If I Stay, Gayle Forman, pp. 15-16

You wouldn’t expect the radio to work afterward.  But it does.

The car is eviscerated. The impact of a four-ton pickup truck going sixty miles an hour had the force of an atom bomb.  It tore off the doors, sent the front-side passenger seat through the driver’s side window.  It flipped the chassis, bouncing it across the road and ripped the engine apart as if it were no stronger than a spiderweb.  It tossed wheels and hubcaps deep into the forest.  It ignited bits of the gas tank, so that now tiny flames lap at the wet road.

And there was so much noise.  A symphony of grinding, a chorus of popping, an aria of exploding, and finally, the sad clapping of hard metal cutting into soft trees.  Then it went quiet, except for this:  Beethoven’s Cello Sonata no. 3, still playing.

Getting Students Hooked on Poetry

Guest Post, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Strategies to Add Some Zip, Writers Workshop September 24, 2014 Comments: 3

“Poetry is boring.”

“What does poetry have to do with anything?”

“What does poetry even mean!?”

“I hate poetry.”

Poetry is a timeless form of writing, yet students struggle to see its relevance to their lives.  Further, they struggle to understand the themes and messages poetry attempts to communicate.  After weeks of asking them to read like writers, my students did begin to find some value in poetry, but they still didn’t like it.

Thus began my endeavor to present poetry as exciting, interesting, and most of all–fun.  What follows are three poetry activities my students were engaged and challenged by.

IMG_5382Spine Poetry

Creating book spine poetry is not a new concept–it can be found all over the internet.  I first got the idea to do this activity in last year’s UNH Literacy class with Penny Kittle.  Not only does creating spine poetry get students playing with language, it also exposes them to a wide variety of titles.

I modeled the creation of a spine poem for my students, stacking and re-stacking titles by John Green, Max Brooks, Jon Krakauer, Malcolm Gladwell, and more.  I modeled, with their input, until we had a poem that satisfied us.  I also showed examples of a variety of spine poems on the projector.  Then, students worked in groups to create their own spine poems, eventually writing their finished products in their writer’s notebooks after adding punctuation and a creative title.  I noticed many of them adding new titles to their what-to-read lists, too.

IMG_5332Cemetery Poetry

Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology is a wonderful collection of poems inspired by graveyard epitaphs.  Lives and legacies are explored in Masters’ work in a variety of styles.

I wanted to have students practice imitating this poet’s craft, as he is a master (pun intended!) of showing, not telling.  We have a beautiful old cemetery quite close to our school, and it was a gorgeous September day for a walk.  My students toted their writer’s notebooks to the graveyard and we read three of Masters’ poems together.  I asked students to wander the cemetery and find a gravestone that appealed to them, then imitate one of the poems we’d read, using that headstone as a subject.  My boy students especially loved this assignment–they were drawn in by the quiet atmosphere of the cemetery and its prevalence of Civil War graves.

IMG_5125Spoken Word Poetry

Shane Koyczan, Taylor Mali, and Saul Williams have soared to YouTube fame with their spoken word and slam poetry performances.  They are forceful presences on stage, and their-in-your-face styles often hook my students.

Sarah Kay provides a lovely contrast with her soft-spoken performances, her clear voice spinning tales of love, motherhood, and femininity.  We read “Point B”, pulled out its richest lines, and hung them around the room.  There were eight in total, and students responded freely to these beautiful words on post-it notes in a silent discussion.  They wandered the room, sticking their responses onto their favorite lines, and then responded to one another.  Their close readings gave way to analysis as they challenged each other, left questions, and cheered classmates on.  Weeks later, a student quoted a line from “Point B” in a discussion–this activity had seared “this life will hit you hard in the face” into her memory.

Stacking books into spine poetry, imitating poems about gravestones in a cemetery, and silently discussing spoken word poems transformed my students’ perceptions of poetry.  Words that were once lifeless on the page came alive.  This week, they reshape their own identities and wear new hats as poets and writers–hats that, thanks to our poetry fun, are not as unappealing as they once seemed.

Sometimes There’s This One Book

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 18, 2014 Leave a comment

Before the first day of school this year, I learned that a student who was to attend our campus took her own life. She was 15. This would have been her 16th year. It should have been a shining time for her:  a junior in high school, a driver’s license, maybe her first job, and if her family was like mine, her first date (I had to be 16).

Her family, of course, is devastated. I didn’t even know this child, and I am devastated, as I am every single time I hear of the awful reality of suicide.

We have to do something.

I don’t know what, really. I do know that the world should be a hopeful place. I also know that so often adults refuse to act like it is. I am as guilty as the next guy of going through the motions, mirroring the depressive nature of my Bad Day. But I vow to stop.

I want to be an example of hope. I want to smile more. Love more. Laugh more. I want my students to see that I love my job. I cannot wait to get there. (That’s what being at a new school has done for me this year. I’ve let the negativity that I let nag at my soul so long go, and I feel new, reborn, liberated. Strange to use those words, I know, but they describe the “freeing” best.)

Recently, I read Matthew Quick’s book Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, and it rocked my world. Seriously. You know when you read a book, and then it haunts you — like forever? This is one of those books for me. I am, and will be, a better teacher, friend, wife, mother, daughter, colleague, leader, consultant because I read this book.

Here is a bit that I will use in class. Maybe we’ll use this passage for close reading. It’s a good one for tone or sentence structure. Maybe we’ll use it to launch a class discussion about hopes and dreams and how to hold on to them. I don’t know yet. But there’s something important here — for us and our students. Read it. You’ll see what I mean.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick, p46-47

The whole time I pretend I have mental telepathy. And with my mind only, I’ll say– or think?–to the target, “Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a roller coaster. Swim in the ocean naked. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never even heard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make pictures with colorful chalk. Close your eyes and try to see the world with you nose–allow smells to be your vision. Catch up on your sleep. Call an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Roll up your pant legs and walk into the sea. See a foreign film. Feed squirrels. Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take. Just don’t go back to that miserable place you go every day. Show me it’s possible to be an adult and also be happy. Please. This is a free country. You don’t have to keep doing this if you don’t want to. You can do anything you want. Be anyone you want. That’s what they tell us at school, but if you keep getting on that train and going to the place you hate I’m going to start thinking the people at school are liars like the Nazis who told the Jews they were just being relocated to work factories. Don’t do that to us. Tell us the truth. If adulthood is working some death-camp job you hate for the rest of your life, divorcing your secretly criminal husband, being disappointed in your son, being stressed and miserable, and dating a poser and pretending he’s a hero when he’s really a lousy person and anyone can tell that just by shaking his slimy hand–if it doesn’t get any better, I need to know right now. Just tell me. Spare me from some awful f******fate. Please.”

 

Note:  There are two footnotes in this passage. I left them off quite simply because I do not know how to format them in WordPress. Sorry, Mr. Quick.

A Feedback Protocol for Revision Workshop

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop, Strategies to Add Some Zip, Writers Workshop September 17, 2014 Comments: 5

I didn’t mean to make them cry, but that’s what soul writing can do to a person. (Soul writing is what my students and I coined as the type of writing that rips at our guts, makes pools fall from our eyes, and leaves us lurching toward the door to “take a little break.”) We are only into the third week of school, and I tried a new protocol for feedback; something I learned at The Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching, directed by Dawn Potter.

Giving honest and critical feedback to one another is difficult for many of my students. So afraid of offering offense, they either do not say anything, or they do the proverbial pat-on-the-back and mutter “good job.” I tell  them that when they refuse to be honest in their feedback, it’s cheating. They cheat their friends out of ideas that can help them grow. And that is what we want in a community of writers — we want everyone to experience opportunities to grow.

The tears today watered some tender little seeds. All afternoon I gushed about it to anyone who who listen.

We sat in a circle around the large table in the center of my classroom. Many students came to class without their drafts*, so I sentenced them to the outer edges and advised them to get their brains and their pens working. I told them to write silently, but they might want to keep an ear tuned to the conversations happening in the middle. If they did, they learned more than they could have from any one-on-one conference with me.

First, I explained that giving feedback can be a bit tricky. We want to be honest, but if we do not deliver that honesty well, we can cripple our writer. (I use the word cripple because that was my own experience. I’d spent months drafting a chapter for my book. I’d finally finished what I thought proved to be a powerful piece of writing. Then I asked a friend, someone I trust, for feedback. She gave it to me: honesty cloaked in sweet little daggers. When I read her comments, all my ideas crumpled, and my focus limped right out the door. I didn’t write another word for six months.)

The “I wonder ____” protocol is really very simple:

Those who offer feedback:

  • Listen carefully as a classmate reads her piece.
  • Think about ideas that might help her improve it.
  • Offer feedback that allows for the writer to “play with the possibilities” (Dawn Potter) by putting the ideas you have that might help the writer revise the piece into statements that begin with “I wonder ___”.

Those who receive feedback:

  • Read the piece loudly and with clarity. (Repeat if necessary.)
  • Listen to the “I wonder” statements made by peers and write yourself notes.
  • Try to just listen (This is hard because we tend to want to justify why we wrote certain things).
  • Play with these various possibilities while revising.

 

I asked for a volunteer to read her writing. Eyes darted all around the table until Jessica read her draft.

Jessica went first:

Jessica GoWorld story

Wow, right? She punched us right in the stomach, and we sat in silence. Finally, I said, “Okay, we’ve got some amazingly powerful stuff right here. How can we improve it?” and they looked at me like I had hornets on my head. I knew I better go first, or this feedback thing wasn’t going to work.

“I wonder if you need to tell us that Lori’s a woman,” I said.

Long pause.

“I wonder who ‘assigned’ her to you,” Mikaila spoke up.

“I wonder what she did that was so helpful,” Mariam said.

“I wonder how you survived,” said Daissy.

Jessica listened, answering a few questions, and taking a few notes on the comments her friends gave her.

 

And we were off . .

 

Daissy read next:

Daissy GoWorld story

 

“I wonder who ‘those’ are.”

“I wonder what the problem was.”

“I wonder what happens next.”

“I wonder what happened that made you change.”

And then Daissy could not remain silent any longer. She had to explain her stuttering, and how she’s worked so hard to overcome it, and how now wants to major in broadcast journalism and speak on live TV.

We forgot to preface our comments with “I wonder” when we all told her THAT is the story she needs to write.

revision corrections 2-7-12Feedback Magic happened with this “I wonder” protocol. And it happened in every class period, and so did the tears.

Students shared the honest writing from their hearts, and students gave honest feedback with tender and caring insight. Writing improved.

Even better? Imagine being in this kind of classroom with this kind of community of writers.

Heaven.

 

 

*Our mentor texts were VISA Go World commercials. I got this idea from an assignment I did at a class taught by Penny Kittle at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institute. We watched several of the videos in class and discussed and analyzed the various structures of these very short, yet poignant, stories. Students were to watch and analyze a few more examples, transcribing the words to use as models for their own writing. Then they were to write their own, playing with word choice and syntax.

Sentence Imitation with We Were Liars

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 15, 2014 1 Comment

I listened to the audiobook, and liked the novel so much I had to go and buy it in hardback for my classroom library. The story still haunts me. (I read it soon after I read Jellicoe Road, and that story haunts me, too. These two books make an interesting pairing.)

The following is the beginning of chapter two in We Were Liars. It’s an compelling list of sentences that create the the basics of what we need to know about our protagonist. It will be an interesting passage to use for sentence imitation.

I wonder what my students will say about themselves.

 

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart P4

My full name is Cadence Sinclair Eastman

I live in Burlington, Vermont, with Mummy and three dogs.

I am nearly eighteen.

I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects.

I used to be blond, but now my hair is black.

I used to be strong, but now I am weak.

I used to be pretty, but now I look sick.

It is true I suffer migraines since my accident.

It is true I do not suffer fools.

I like a twist of meaning. You see? Suffer migraines. Do not suffer fools. The word means almost the same as it did in the previous sentence, but not quite.

You could say it means endure, but that’s not exactly right.

 

 

 

Chaos

Erika Bogdany, Pedagogy, Readers Writers Workshop September 10, 2014 Comments: 2

The beginning of each school year is always chaotic.  Sometimes it’s the overwhelming chaos that can feel debilitating.  Other times it’s that quiet chaos that only you know ensues.  At times it creeps up on us in silence, yet we know it’s found its way into our spiraling minds.  But always, it lives within our being because, quite simply, we are so wildly passionate about upping the ante with each and every group of students that crosses our threshold.  This year, I welcome the chaos.

I have complete and utter belief that the Reading Writing Workshop (RWW) is exactly what my students need.  Better yet, I know in my soul, that it’s exactly what they deserve for their lives; both inside and outside of room 382.

Both inside and outside room 382 students are starting their journeys through the RWW.

Students are starting to journey through the RWW: Inside and outside of room 382.

We have a promising year ahead full with mentor texts, writer’s craft, brilliant student generated ideas, ‘aha’ moments, and all of the unknown that we are willingly going to dive into – together.  But, I would be remiss if I pretended that chaos and uncertainty were not eagerly awaiting our arrival.

Between rolling out the RWW in its entirety last year, more summer classes at the lovely campus of UNH’s Literacy Institute, and a month in the Bronx writing with the NYC National Writing Project; I have been planning.  Incessantly.  Yet, I very quickly realized that all of my planning may be better utilized at some other time, in some far off distance, or at the very least, later in the year.

My plans are fantastic.  I feel it in my gut.

Yet I know they will be utilized and enjoyed when the time is…right.

You see, the beauty within the RWW is that the authentic and natural flow is magical.  Straight up, hands down – magic.  The luxurious task of choosing which piece of literature to start with when oh-so-many are enticing.  The creation of one’s Writer’s Notebook.  The roller coaster writing that sheds light on our own movement and development as writers.  The organic inquiry that surfaces.  All of it.  Every piece is essential.

So you can imagine that after rounding day three of educating, fully engulfed by a feeling of unease, I knew that all of my planning was by no means an effort to be mourned but most definitely an effort that needed reshaping.  As to not let the chaos (starting its crawl toward my vulnerability) completely immobilize me, I made a decision right then and there.  I was by no means going to shift my expectations.  Instead, I had decided to rework all ideas I had about what my students would find engaging.  Because the reality is, my new students are not the same students as last year.

Students creating their Writer's Notebooks in ways that feel most authentic.

Students creating their Writer’s Notebooks in ways that feel most authentic.

Mystery books have flown off the shelves – for the first time ever!  Color is most often preferred when expressing themselves vs. the written word.  There is an untapped intellectual power among every young adult occupying each individual seat that is awaiting its own explosion.  Their passions have yet to be discovered within the context of our learning community.  And, not unlike years worth of previous students, they are incredibly focused and hardworking.

When students are not meshing with the material; when the sparkle does not twinkle in the corner of their eyes as they try to explore new found interests; or they have absolutely no questions…something’s wrong.  Very, very wrong.

I am responsible for guiding students through the beauty of the RWW to foster their own strength, perseverance, and dedication toward the development and growth that is inevitable to happen.  I feel the promise and hope.  I am no longer vulnerable nor am I even remotely entertaining the potentially consuming chaos.  Instead I am enjoying the exploration of new mentor texts while listening intently to the views and beliefs of my wildly intelligent learners.

Here’s to an invigorating year full of unforeseeable experiences, ideas reworked, and chaos debunked.

 

What is the “soundtrack of your rebellion?”

Amy Rasmussen, Books, Readers Writers Workshop September 1, 2014 Leave a comment

I liked this book in a lot of ways, and I hated it in others. Maybe because my heart is too soft for all the heartache and suffering of these children. The mother in me couldn’t stand it. Maybe because my Christian heart couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of so many people calling themselves Christian, the parents included. My friend raved about how her students devour this book. It has left me unsettled, but I do think many students will like the emotion this book evokes. It’s just not my kind of emotion.

This is a passage that I think my students will be able to make a connection:

Jesusland by Julia Scheers P159

That day I realized I wasn’t immune to my father’s violence. For years, while my brothers were whipped and I was spared, I thought I had some kind of biological privilege — that my father wouldn’t harm his own genetic material. But in their absence, my father didn’t have anywhere to train the spotlight of his rage on but me.

So when my parents left for another missionary meeting in California and the nurse from my dad’s clinic who was staying with me caught Scott climbing out of my bedroom window one morning, I left home. If my father wanted to choke me over a forgotten milkshake, what would he do to me for losing my virginity?

I moved in with my brother Dan and his three roommates at Purdue and found a part-time job as a busgirl at the Howard Johnson’s Hotel on Highway 52. I biked to work, and to Harrison –an hour’s ride away–if I couldn’t find someone to drive me. I didn’t go to school if I wasn’t in the mood for it, and a couple of teachers threatened to flunk me before passing me with D’s.

Although I was dirt poor–I paid half of Dan’s rent, and frequently resorted to eating off the room service trays I was sent to collect from the hotel hallways–I was happy. I didn’t have to go to church, spent hours watching MTV, and didn’t need permission to do anything. I was free.

I listened to Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil” on my Walkman as I rode through the streets of Lafayette on my bike, rewinding the cassette tape again and again.

It was the soundtrack of my rebellion. That was me, running with the devil. Doing bad things and liking it.

 

I wonder how students would respond to this question:  What is “the soundtrack of [your] rebellion”?