The Last Start the Year Off Write
Activity #10 of Ten Write Days
Today is my last offering for Ten Write Days! I hope you’ve enjoyed these and have found something useful for the coming school year.
In all the activities I’ve outlined the last ten days, my goal has been to invite students to write about their lives in order for me to hear and see who they are, not as a body in a seat or a dot on a data point, but as a living, thinking, remembering, loving, hurting, laughing soul.
Writing a story is claiming a life. It is a testament to having lived up against something. Tangling with real people, solving real problems, in a real, specific world. The essential mission of the writing teacher is to create a place where kids can write about all these things.
Yes, our job is to illuminate craft and share techniques, but when I die, I want my students to stand around my casket and not say, “she taught me everything I know about subordinate clauses,” but instead say, “she asked me a lot of questions and she listened to me; she thought I was a better person than I probably am.”
One of my favorite poems about teaching and learning is Brad Aaron Modlin’s “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade.” largely because I have, for years, used lines from this poem to answer students.
“Did I miss anything during class yesterday?”
“Yes,” I reply. “We learned how not to feel lost in the dark.”
Blank stare.
“Just kidding. We wrote a sonnet.”
But I also use this poem as a writing invitation to think about how there are some things students cannot be taught. These lessons require students to wise up solo.
Assignment:
Read “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade” by Brad Aaron Modlin.
Discuss how the juxtaposition of what you actually learn in school and what Modlin’s speaker claims Mrs. Nelson taught them shows how the most important lessons are never taught in school, but must be learned by experience and living.
What is the wisdom you gain from enduring a dark night of the soul? What are the lessons you can only learn through experience and life?
Brainstorm a list of ten adages that people often laud as life mottos: live and let live; practice makes perfect; patience is a virtue; life’s not fair, and so on.
Then brainstorm ten different annual events that you love, like homecoming dance, the state fair, a Fourth of July BBQ, the annual neighborhood yard sale, and so on.
Pair one adage with one of the events where you might have learned the value of this truism.
Write a poem that explores this connection using a title that mimics Modlin’s. (For example, “What I Missed When I Didn’t Go to Aunt Hazel’s For Thanksgiving.” ) You could use characters or a narrative persona to give this poem more active voice.
In the poem, explore the intangible nature of wisdom as it is bound in place, events, people, and experiences in our lives.
Thank you so much.