Walk in the Forest

My Go To Creative Writing Lesson

Summer is here, and I’ve been on the road working with teachers. The summertime teacher vibe is a beautiful thing. We have time to decompress, do some writing, and remember why we went into this crazy profession in the first place. And writing with writing teachers is a joy. They want it. They do it. They get it.

Recently I was in Ohio with teachers in the Ohio Writing Project Summer Institute, and a teacher asked how do I start my classes to build community. As I have said before in this newsletter, building community is the single biggest goal I have in my classroom. The dividends it pays finance all other activities: inquiry, skill acquisition, agency, risk-taking, and so on. 

So here’s my tried-and-true, ride-or-die, day one school year starter. I discovered this funky personality quiz in 1987 in a psychology classroom at the University of Kentucky, and in 1990 when I taught my first year, I retrofitted it into a writing activity. I discovered these quizzes are popular on Buzzfeed and I’ve found dozens of them in a book on Kokology, a collection of games of self-discovery. I use them as a way for students to bypass the literal part of their brain and access the figurative. 

Here’s the lesson plan:

Objective:

To encourage students to think abstractly using figurative language and images to describe concrete relationships with people and parts of their life.

Materials:

Students should have a pencil or pen and paper. You should have a stopwatch to time one minute for each response.

Procedure:

Teacher says:  We are going on a journey, and on this journey, we will encounter six items. Describe each item exactly as it appears in your mind.

There are two rules to this activity:

• You have one minute each to describe the items as we come to them. As soon as I mention the item, begin writing and do not stop until I tell you to do so.  Be sure to describe the first thing that pops into your head no matter how outrageous it might be.

• Do not blurt out what you see in your mind because it will disrupt the vision of another writer. For example, if I ask you to describe an “apple,” one writer might see a juicy Pink Lady while another writer might see a Granny Smith with a worm in a top hat hanging on the stem.  If the Pink Lady writer says “Yum, I love Pink Ladies” then poof! Granny Smith suddenly turns into a Pink Lady and that writer’s vision has been corrupted by another.

SCRIPT

Okay, here we go. You are walking through the forest. Describe the trees.

(One minute writing)

You continue in the forest and on the path, you notice some keys. Describe the keys.

(One minute writing)

You continue in the forest and on the path, you notice a cup. Describe the cup.

(One minute writing)

You continue in the forest and you come to a wall. Not only describe the wall, but tell me what you do when you come to the wall.

(One minute writing)

You go pass the wall and continue in the forest. You notice a bear in the path. Describe the bear.

(One minute writing)

You have finally come to the end of our journey. You have made it through the forest and come to a beautiful sunny meadow. Before you enter the meadow, you come to a stream. Describe the stream and what you do when you come to the stream.

(One minute writing)

Tell students each of these items represents a relationship with something in their life. The goal is to figure that relationship out using the image you’ve written down. As I give students the key to the items, I reveal my answers and model interpreting the images/items and

making connections for them. 

For example, when I first did this activity (in psychology class in college), I saw tall, thin birch trees with no leaves and white spots on the bark.  The trees were crowded together and the forest felt claustrophobic.  I explain to students that the trees represents “parents” and I could see many similarities with my picture and my parents – my parents were tall and thin, both were much older when I was born, and they were very strict and narrow in their understanding of the world.

Have one or two students share their images, and you make the connections for them to show them how easy it is – generally students see leafy, abundant trees over their heads – and I might intrepret that as their parents are protective of them, covering them with their love, etc. You make this up as you go along – the key is to get them to start thinking abstractly instead of literally about one of these subjects.

The Key:

Trees = Parents

Keys = Money

Cup = Love

Wall = Problems and what you do to the wall represents how you solve your problems

Bear = Death

Stream = Afterlife and what you do represents if you embrace/reject your ideal eternity

Using the information retrieved from your psyche, write a ten-line poem that is an extended metaphor starting with the line that identifies the item and its abstract counterpart.

Example of first verse:

Love is a Dunkin Donuts cup/Dirty leaves dot the bottom/lipstick stains ruin the rim.