Life is the dull bits--savor them.

As my school gets ready to celebrate and say good-bye to another senior class (seven of them this year), I found myself looking at old commencement speeches that I've given to honor my former advisees.  Having spent four years as their humanities teacher and advisor, it's always a challenge to summon both advice and final words that express how much they mean to me.  I decided to share this one that I wrote a couple years ago.  I like the message about writing and about life.  Here it is, almost as I read it on a hot day in June of 2013:

There’s a part of me that couldn’t wait to get up here and tell this group how much I love them and how I miss them already.  And yet part of me dreaded this; standing in a sweltering room, in front of hundreds of people, trying to say something meaningful—while trying not to cry--is a profound challenge.  

But now that I’m here, there’s no where else I’d rather be (kind of like when I leaped off that waterfall in the Dominican Republic with you all—I felt dread mingled with elation).

I admit to struggling with how to start this speech.  So I took some advice I give my students, which I shamelessly stole from composer John Cage.  He (and now, I) say:  “Begin Anywhere.” 

So, I’m going to begin by describing my writing process for this speech.  I started it many months ago during my daughter’s college orientation.  I scribbled a thought inspired by an effective speaker who welcomed us, the nervous parents. That scribble was the kernel. Then months later, I looked at what I had written, but it didn’t really inspire a speech.

I tried again: Memorial Day weekend, I sat at a friend’s kitchen counter as he prepared an omelette and I sipped coffee.  I scribbled down a few bits and pieces.  Then I went outside and scrubbed every inch of my car—inside and out. Still waiting for it to to come to me.

A few days later, listening to the same Tom Petty song over and over, I wrote a few bits in my head, hoping that it would be as brilliant as it seemed to be before it was on paper (it wasn’t really).  Eventually, I put all those bits and pieces together  (and deleted quite a few more), and it seemed that I had some semblance of a speech. 

That was when I realized that the writing process is a lot like life: We write –and live—in bits and pieces.  Layered together, sometimes with grace, sometimes with purpose and preparation, and sometimes not so much.  Each process also gets a little messy at times.  Anne Lamott wisely said, “we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.”  So make a mess.  But that’s also when you have to have a little faith that you will get it where you want it to be.  Just keep going.  Begin again.  Anywhere.

Those bits and pieces you’re putting together are your beautiful life.

I’ve told you several times in class, as I encouraged you to write stories and screenplays, that Alfred Hitchcock once said that: “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”   His (and my) point was that you need to take out the character brushing her teeth--and "skip the door" (from Alexie Sherman's story).        

 And that’s right—at least when it comes to creating films and plays.  But when it comes to life—I give you the opposite message:  Life is the dull bits.  I’m not saying that life is dull.  But rather, it’s really the sum of all those moments.   Life isn’t really made up of the rites of passage like this one.  These events are the ones we think or imagine make up our life—the transitions, the major events like earning your drivers’ license, passing your roundtable, falling in love for the first time--and certainly those are important and memorable, but they aren’t ultimately what life is composed of.

Life is simply a delightful collection of those moments—those bits and pieces--that you don’t even necessarily remember for the rest of your life: like the orange peel fight in high school advisory, when you were supposed to be working on your portfolio but were overwhelmed by stinky feet smell and silliness . . .

Or the moment that you got your teacher to sit on a chair and you then lifted it up into the air and gave her an exhilarating ride until she was laughing so hard, tears fell from her face.

Or those moments in math class when you just couldn’t stand it anymore, and walked down the hall to say hi to your advisor.

Or the time you put candles on a mango and sang happy birthday to a wonderful friend, accompanied by a Dominican waiter--an opera singer wannabe. 

It’s even the moment you both loved and felt frustrated by your peers as you successfully re-built a picnic table, or sat at home, recovering from pneumonia.

Those moments are what make up your life.  So keep living--and the bits and pieces will create themselves—like little stories.   The moments will layer themselves like some rich dessert in an Italian pastry shop and they might seem like nothing, but they aren’t.  I encourage you to notice them. The poet Mary Oliver said that these are the “Instructions for living a life": 

Pay attention.   
Be astonished. 
Tell about it.” 
― Mary Oliver  (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/23988.Mary_Oliver)

I agree with Mary; my final words of advice to you are to take note of life’s moments,  and more than that--be astonished—even thunderstruck--by them.  And if you’re so inclined, share them.  Tell your stories . . . in a journal, in a photograph, in a TV script, in a drawing, in a film, or in a story you tell your boy or girlfriend as you eat ice cream on a hot day. . .

 I have been honored to witness some of the bits and pieces of your lives, and I feel enriched as a result.  Thank you for being the wonderfully funny, inquisitive, creative, respectful, hard-working, loving people that you are.  You have nourished me with your laughter, your stories, and your love.  You know how much I will miss you.  Thank you.

("skip the door" is a reference from Sherman Alexie's short story, Breaking and Entering, from the collection entitled, War Dances.)

How to grow a student writer, in ten easy steps

How to grow a writer: A simple, but crucial step-by-step approach:

1. Start early.

Surround your sapling-writer with books--and read often.  Tell them stories about themselves.
The goals:
They delight in the sound of words.
They observe the world around them.
They want to tell stories.

 2. Once settled into school, encourage dabbling in all genres. Provide a sampling of writing assignments, encouraging her to find her writing voice.  Does she do humor?  Memoir?  Poetry? Historical fiction?  Newspaper articles or book reviews?  Whenever you can, allow her to choose topics for writing--perhaps within a theme.

Have you tried 2nd person?  Read Lorrie Moore's satirical essay,  How to become a Writer

3. Be an enthusiastic reader.  Criticize lightly.  Read her work in a comfortable chair, with a cup of something yummy next to you (rather than with a red pen and a tired frown).
Respond as a reader might: I loved this because I could imagine being in this spot you describe or, This is funny! or,  Huh--I was confused here. What's missing? Or, if you're really at a loss, I sense that your heart wasn't in this--  want to start again?

Don't edit for spelling until you have to.

4. Cultivate people to share her writing pieces with, but only when she's comfortable doing so, and maybe even let her choose her partner.  Provide the peer-reader with specific things to respond to (for instance, what is the main point the writer seems to want to make?)

5. If you have the right conditions, two writers can write something together  (Examples:  a scene of dialogue, perhaps a whole play--perhaps an abridged re-make of Macbeth, that is then performed).

6. Provide models!  How can he know how to write without seeing how others do it?  Read lots and ask him to "point" to specifically what he likes (or doesn't like).
Sample recommendation:  short memoir piece, My Name, by Sandra Cisneros.

Please note: Novels by John Green have been know to cultivate massive reading habits, and this can't hurt the writing habit.  

7. Demystify the writer's process: Share your own possibly painful, evolved writing process; invite writers into the classroom, and have them share their process. Invite peers to talk about how they write. (great essay, A. Lamott's Shitty First Drafts)

8. Seek authentic readers for your growing writer (and keep those diverse assignments coming):

Hold a poetry/fiction reading with low stakes and chocolate-covered strawberries.  Instead of forcing shy ones to read out loud, place stories at tables with comfy chairs for others to read and respond to.
Have her start a blog.
Have him send his essay to your parents or to your smart, kind friends for feedback.
Tell her to send a funny letter to your friend, telling her (creative) lies about what you do in the classroom.
Put on a performance of their ten-minute plays at an evening event.  Send invitations to parents, local writers and alumni.

9. Be patient with your writer.  She will grow!

10. Water regularly . . . with specific feedback and encouragement (and the rule for semicolons).

                       Celebrate--you've put another writer in the world!

My Top Five Texts to Teach

I love lists.  The clean lines, the simplicity, the order.
When I'm overwhelmed by work, a to-do list is my best strategy.
When students don't know how to start a writing assignment, I suggest a list.
I create daily or weekly lists of to-do's, but I also hold happy lists: places to go, things that make me happy, and things/people to feel grateful for.

So, time for a list.

I've been teaching literature and humanities courses for about twenty years.  In all of that time, I've taught many texts--novels, stories, films, cartoons, ads, and maybe even cereal boxes (though I could be making that last one up).

But here are the ones that have consistently triggered substantial reactions and discussions from high school-aged students, and I never seem to get tired of exploring these with students.

Never-fail-me texts:
1. Macbeth  (Lady Macbeth--cool badass or evil? What's/who's to blame for Macbeth's fall from grace? Why do good people do bad things?)
2. The Yellow Wallpaper, by Gilman  (students are both puzzled and fascinated by what's going on--and they have to look closer)
3. Thelma and Louise  (ok, women w/ guns and booze--maybe not a great one for HS, but for discussing defiance, gender roles, and power, it's great)
4.  Mushrooms, poem by Sylvia Plath  (so simple and accessible.  Use it to introduce metaphor and/or literary theory.  Read it first without the title; ask them, what's being described? So many interpretations.)
5. The Zebra Storyteller, by Holst (so surprising and so short.  Good one for reluctant and as well as strong readers. The question it raises--what is the purpose of stories, is a rich one.)
http://www.archipelago.org/vol3-1/holst.htm

Teachers--I would love to hear about your no-fail texts . . .

Teaching Shakespeare: Let Them Find It

Teaching Shakespeare to high school students can be both exhilarating and frustrating.  I love it every time. The key for me is to not force the play down their throats right away, but to slowly give them a taste.

I am trying Macbeth with mixed ability/multi- grade 9/10^th graders this semester for the first time.  I have always taught Shakespeare to 11/12th graders, so I’m a little nervous about how it will go.  After a few days of our new unit, I’m enthusiastic. 

My clever, though sometimes obscure student explained to us in class today that the difference between hip hop and Shakespeare is that although both are like being given 500 bucks, hip hop is when you find it on the street, and Shakespeare is when someone shoves it in your face.  Huh?

What he was trying to say (I think) was that you gain a lot with both hip hop and Shakespeare, but it’s the manner of access that matters.  He’d rather find the money than have someone “shove it in his face”—even if he wants that money.

Even if that's not quite what he meant, I got the message—don’t force Shakespeare on them.  Let them “find it”.

Not an easy task.

I am grateful for the zillion (give or take) resources out there in Google-land to help me.  For instance, I was happy with a resource I found on Youtube that I used the first week as an introduction to the language.  It’s a Ted Talk with Akala:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSbtkLA3GrY

In this 20-minute video, Akala impressively performs sonnets, but also shares an apt comparison between hip hop artists and Shakespeare, not only for the obvious use of rhyme and meter, but also because these artists took it upon themselves to be the “custodians of knowledge.”

His talk led nicely into a brief discussion in my class about what he meant by “a custodian of knowledge.” What is that exactly?  What does he mean by “knowledge,”  and who is the keeper of it today?  I asked my students to come up with a two-sentence summary of his main points.  From their summaries, we collaborated on figuring out what Akala meant. We decided that “knowledge” in this case isn’t necessarily about school learning or facts, but rather, people’s stories, struggles, and thoughts.  Why is this idea important as we move into Shakespeare?  I think it helped students to think of Shakespeare as just another guy trying to tell the stories of his time and people. Our discussion also touched on people’s --perhaps their parents’--perceptions of hip hop, and then I could (gently) point out how their own perceptions of Shakespeare could be skewed as well.  It’s all about allaying their fears, even if not all of them have trepidation.

Next time—some line "tossing,"  dialogue writing/performing with thou and thee, and maybe Elizabethan insults before we launch into Macbeth.  The time I spend warming them to the language will mean a smoother ride down the road, and more of a likelihood that they will find that 500 bucks.

Great resource: Folger Library's Shakespeare Set Free series (this is where "line tossing" comes from).