And, yet, this morning, I can’t seem to follow my own advice.

Each Thursday, I participate in what Elizabeth calls “An Art Experience.” She offers a small group of us the chance to explore various media in whatever way we choose. She challenges us to let go and urges us to take risks. This is what I tell teachers I work with all the time. This should come easily, I think.

But it doesn’t.

As I mix my watercolor paints, trying to get the perfect ocean blue or pastel green, I feel my anxiety and frustration. “It’s not working,” I think, as I struggle to find the comfortable space between the sky and sea or tree and leaf. My house looks like a tent, and my chicken looks frozen in time, ready to be covered with yellow sugar and placed in an Easter basket. Not what I’d envisioned.

Elizabeth smiles. She knows that continued playing and putting brush to paper (or charcoal to canvas) will eventually allow me to find myself in my art, to create whatever it is I am striving for. She applauds when I pull out my colored pencils and draw on a background of watercolor and grins when I decide to dribble water on the charcoal “just to see what happens.”

Vygotsky says “children tend to create only for themselves, whereas adults create both for themselves and for the world in which they live.” I wonder if this is the block, the filter through which adults try to create. We fear judgment.

Elizabeth reassures me today, and I try again. I think she would agree with this quote from a Scottish education site:

Creativity is not just about special people doing special things. We all have the potential to be creative….a skill that needs to be developed.

 

The next death, though, was not his but the third brother’s wife, who died a few days before Christmas. Her funeral was a couple of weeks ago, and we gathered in Cleveland from across the country to say goodbye.

Our parents, all in their 80′s now, are leaving us one by one. And I think my cousins and I are struggling not only with overwhelming sadness but grief for a way of life that will be ending.

Our recent family history took hold at the turn of the century, when my great-grandmother built a summer house in a artist’s community near a beach in Rhode Island. Soon another family settled in, our grandmothers became friends, and the child of one married the child of another. Over the years, brothers and sisters, and cousins of all kinds grew up together, sharing a few weeks each July or August in or near the Carter and Wood compounds, which had grown to several houses and a cabin situated near a path leading to Quonochontaug Pond.

The gardens and fruit trees lay between the houses and the backyard wood shop, where our dads built boats under the direction of my stern but loving grandfather. As we grew up, we were also allowed in to use the potter’s wheel or build a bird house. Smells of turpentine and wood shavings are forever embedded in my brain.

Rhode Island became home for me, the child of an Army officer who moved his family around the world every year. Freedom, not easily accorded to children these days, meant taking the boat out at a young age, learning to navigate the pond rocks. We often ran (freely and without parents) between houses in the dark or even down to the dock to watch the lobsters crawling in the shallows.

Our grandmothers arranged summer activities, which often included putting on plays and fundraising for The Fresh Air fund. Fathers built stages, grandmothers and mothers sewed costumes, and cousins performed Peter Pan and Mutiny on the Bounty for the neighborhood. As we turned into teenagers, the activities changed to walks on the beach, games in the living room, or sneaking out at night! Time often stood still. Coffee on the porch, blueberry picking, or a sail on a windy day–these moments experienced year after year gave me a sense of place that I needed so much.

As we cousins married and had children, we brought them along from California, New York, Maryland/DC, and Virginia. For them, too, Rhode Island continues to hold great meaning as they hear the stories about their great-grandparents who painted in the art room, wrote books and articles for the local newspaper, built wooden furniture for the yard, and grew beautiful flowers in the garden.

The houses are now aging along with the rest of us. And it’s getting harder and harder to justify expenses since soon no one will be there to live year-round and watch over things. We know decisions will need to be made, and they won’t be easy.

But at the funeral, as we celebrated the long life of one, we remembered once more the gift our great grandmothers had provided for us– a way to stay connected and a treasure to call home.

 

Just do it.

Ok.  But I get it. I am a great reader of “how to’s.” How to clear your mind in three easy steps. How to eat to avoid skin cancer. Overcoming fear. Ways to motivate yourself.

This morning, after three nights of not sleeping well (and that’s another blog post), I faced a decision about whether to run. Usually I mentally struggle, looking for a sign. Do I have enough energy? Will I be able to make it? Should I sleep for another hour? Instead, I got up, put on my shoes, and headed out the door.

Done.

 

I am not implying that learning how to organize an analytical, focused essay is unnecessary. My concern is that we tend to ask students to do this before they have acquired writing habits, before they have developed an awareness of the importance of writing to communicate, reflect, and learn. And before they have recognized that good writing is a kind of storytelling.

So when I read Troy Hicks’ post on digital writing today, I found myself nodding in agreement:

Buffy raises the key issue here about digital writing that could be said for much of the history of writing instruction; this is the tension we feel between allowing students the freedom to choose topics, genres, and assessments that they find personally meaningful and will help them grow as writers in contrast and/or competition to what we feel we should or must do as teachers of writing.

These are not just problems with writing, or with digital writing; these are problems with what my colleague Anne Whitney calls the “schooliness” of school. Writing is normally very “schooly” and, when it isn’t, it’s too “touchy/feely.” We are caught in a trap of either living up to a formulaic model or praising students for their efforts without any substantive feedback.

We want our kids to think of writing as a way to think, share, organize, and reflect–using whatever tool meets the need. Narrowing an assignment to an academic essay does our students a disservice. But more than that–they will have followed the rules to produce a product rather than creating a piece of writing out of a complex thought process.  In our quest to “prepare students for college,” we do the very thing that limits them–teach formulaic writing.

This essay, written several years ago, talks about the disconnect high school teachers and college teachers have about writing. I’ll copy one paragraph here, but the essay should be read in its entirety:

One study surveyed writing teachers at the University of California and local high schools about their priorities.¹ A number of the high school teachers preparing students for college emphasized reading and interpreting literature, considered writing as a way of expressing a pre-formed meaning, suggested formulas for structuring essays, and taught students that the use of the first-person I would not be acceptable in college (cited in Hjortshoj 28–29). High school teachers comment that their assumptions about how to prepare students for college are often based largely on their own undergraduate classroom experiences (Gardner 101). The authority a teacher gains from being able to say to a high school student “you will need to know this in college” is a powerful motivator (Stump, personal interview, 2005). In the University of California study cited above, however, a number of the college teachers reported different priorities: using a range of reading materials, emphasizing writing for discovering and exploring meaning, discouraging formulas for essay structures, and considering the use of I to be appropriate (qtd. in Hjortshoj 28–29).

To go back to Troy’s post:

In the simplest terms, it boils down to whether or not we prepare students to write five paragraph essays and to be able to respond to prompts on the test, or whether we want them to be real writers.

I’ll opt for real writing every time.  But clearly teachers from all levels must continue to talk about this.

 

• I haven’t tweeted since, oh let me see: December 10. I am thinking about closing my Twitter account all together, but I am still mulling that one over.
• I’m subscribing more and more to blogs like this. And I find myself clicking “unsubscribe” more and more to education blogs I used to read daily.
• Each morning I write–something. Not the full Pages suggestion set by Julia Cameron, but words on paper, or laptop, or an iPad. Something.

These days I want to talk less and “do” more. For a while at least, I plan to use a series of writing prompts, so the topics here will vary. I feel like playing with words, telling some stories.

And now, I am taking my notebook to bed. Because you never know when it might come in handy.

Yet not waiting for inspiration. Writing every day. Writing practices.

 

I also find downtown a perfect place for an introvert. Working from home most days means I can go hours without talking to anyone. Not that I mind. Actually, spending time with myself is pleasant.

Before you assume some mental disorder, let me assure you. I do love people. On my walks around town, I enjoy running into friends. Many weekends, we meet up with others for dinner. And we try to make monthly trips to the “big city” (either north or south) for concerts and plays.

But given a choice between spending time curled up on my sofa reading or attending a loud party, well, I usually lean toward the sofa. So during the week when I realize that I have spent four or five hours working on something, and I’ve yet to speak a word, I usually put on my coat and head out the door.

The other day, I walked down to Sammy T’s for lunch. I had picked up a few books at Riverby, so I had my head down in one of them. As I ate a lovely squash salad, I heard words from a conversation about a new store drift in and out. I took bites of lunch and gazed up to watch the waiter and then a mother entertaining a toddler in the booth next to me.

Alone but not alone.

Fredericksburg, small but not too small, is filled with places for people like me. I have wonderful extended conversations with Purna Shrestha from Here and Beyond while I pick up a take-out lunch. Checking in with the butcher, I order our Christmas turkey. Later, the experts at Kybecca fill me in on which wine tastes most like the Shiraz I had at a restaurant last week.

Walking home, I bump into Carl and his tiny terrier, out for their daily stroll. We chat for a few moments about house decorations and the traffic.

And then I’m home again, my anxious Golden Retriever waiting for me at the front door.

We settle in for an afternoon of reading and writing–and silence. Lovely.

Language… has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone.  And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.  ~Paul Johannes Tillich, The Eternal Now

 

If we want our students to grow, we must do that ourselves. This weekend we believe differently. All of us have a stake in the game. Solutions must include us (and our students). We cannot solve problems by doing things TO students.

This morning, as I bumped into the quote again, I was reminded of a teacher I met this past weekend. We were discussing change and what kind of “change agents” we want to be. He paused, turned his head slightly, eyes widening: “I just realized,” he said. “I ask my students to take risks all the time….and yet I don’t put myself out there at all.”

He was referring to sharing and working online, being willing to reach out to others to learn and grow. He’d been satisfied, thus far, to be the director who told his students what to do without doing the work himself. He looked as if he had walked into a strange, new place with no idea how he had arrived.

I smiled. I’ve seen that look before. And it can be both scary and exciting.

During our session, this teacher had shared some amazing insights, and I was eager to find his space place online to learn more.

“I don’t have a space online,” he’d said. “But I guess that needs to change.”

We must model the kind of learning we want from our students. And we must also be willing to learn from them as they explore their interests and passions.

First, we must believe in the change. And then we live the belief.

This seems pretty simple, doesn’t it?

 

A group of 30 independent school teachers from around the state gathered at Fredericksburg Academy for our first edcamp. And it was everything I’d hoped for–and more.

Following edcamp protocol, we gathered, figured out what we wanted to talk about, and started the day. I’d suggested this a few months ago after reading about the success of other edcamps, wanting to experience the kind of professional development that is driven by the interests and needs of a community.

I’m selfish. I love sharing and learning with like-minded folks (though push back is always welcome,too). In these intimate settings, conversations happen. Relationships form. Friendships develop.

Though I was a little worried about the details (what if we don’t have enough food? will people get what they need? do we have enough post-it notes?), I shouldn’t have been. For when passionate people come together and have the chance to share ideas, magic happens.

Thanks to a great team of organizers, we pulled this off. Giving up a Saturday for a chance to meet so many creative, interesting, caring teachers was SO worth it. I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.