Bessie Smith and the Night Riders by Sue Stauffacher, illustrated by John Holyfield

Emmarene idolizes the great jazz singer Bessie Smith. But when she can't afford a ticket to Bessie's show in her hometown, she decides to go anyway and listen outside the tent. On the night of the show, Emmarene pokes her head through the tent so she can not only hear, but see the glamorous singer strut around in her feather boa. Soon, however, Emmarene notices some nefarious figures on horses, dressed in white sheets, carrying torches. The Night Riders, otherwise known as the Ku Klux Klan, have come to sabotage Bessie's show!

No longer worried someone might catch her without a ticket, Emmarene bursts into the show to warn everyone of the Night Riders outside. While others cower in fear, bold and brazen Bessie marches right outside and confronts the men on horseback, not only scaring them off with her words, but with her powerful singing voice.

"Find the story in history."

This is a quote attributed to both authors Matt Phelan and Audrey Vernick when I asked them -- on separate occasions -- how teachers can help make research more appealing to students. So often we ask students to research for facts, figures, and statistics, but the truth of the matter is, there is more to research than facts. History is full of stories just waiting to be told, and how we research in school just doesn't seem to jive with how people research in real life. Real research compels a person to learn more. Not so much in school. Again, I'll use Audrey Vernick as an example. She writes both fiction and nonfiction picture books, and one of her most recent picture books, Brothers at Bat, was a story she found in her neighborhood that was just waiting to be told.

You get the sense that a story like Bessie Smith and the Night Riders was something that Sue Stauffacher happened upon while reading a Bessie Smith biography, perhaps that dedicated only a few paragraphs to the incident, but Stuaffacher decided that Smith's run-in with the Ku Klux Klan WAS the story and knew it deserved greater elaboration.

What if we asked our students to research this way? To treat it as if they are searching for treasure? Find a topic you are interested in, "find the story" and then write it.  I wonder what gems they might dig up.

I'm already planning this as a research/writing assignment for my next classroom right now as we speak -- and I don't even have one yet. 


Bessie Smith and the Night Riders by Sue Stauffacher, illustrated by John Holyfield
Published: January 6, 2006
Publisher: Putnam
Pages: 32
Genre: Picture book
Disclosure: Library copy

Carrie Harris classroom visit take 2

Last year Carrie Harris, author of the epically funny Bad Taste in Boys and the soon-to-be released Bad Hair Day, came to visit my 6th graders at the end of the year to give an author talk. But I recently had a conversation with Carrie and told her I thought it would be awesome if she could come in October this year and do her Monster Prom writing workshop with my class before NaNoWriMo. Not only would it be awesome to have a published author come and do a writing lesson with them, but it would also help to give them ideas and motivation to do the Young Writer's Program of NaNoWriMo. And being the awesome person Carrie is, she agreed. So that is what happened in my classroom today.  And it was amazing. The kids were engaged and enthusiastic, and they came up with some brilliant ideas.

Carrie started the workshop by having students brainstorm types of monsters in groups. They were asked to defy convention and create new and unusual types or combinations of monster. Students wrote down their own ideas as well as the ideas from the people in their group. My favorite monster of the day was Santa Claws.

Next, they were to pick one of the monsters on their list and write interesting and unusual traits about their character: like maybe their vampire-like creature doesn't like blood and only eats organic produce.

I don't want to give it all away because, well, you just have to experience a Carrie Harris writing workshop to truly appreciate how much fun it is, but I am certain that based on their experience today, many more students than usual will be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. And given the fun, crazy ideas they came up with, I can't wait to read their stories!

My students hard at work making a welcome poster for Carrie

The epic zombie/monkey/ice cream post my students made

Cleveland Rocks!

So I finally bit the bullet this summer and started writing a novel. I have no idea where this is going to take me, or whether I'll even finish, but I like the idea that I finally have a story living inside my head that is ready to be written down.

In one particular scene that I have envisioned, the main character visits the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Since I live less than three hours from Cleveland, I decided that in order for my story to be authentic, a day trip to Cleveland was in order.

So last Saturday that's what I did. My husband and I jumped in the car and drove to Cleveland.

 

As we walked through the museum, part of me wondered what took us so long to visit this place. My husband and I are both big music-lovers, and with it being so close to where we live, there really was no excuse. We need to give ourselves permission to take day trips more often. We did it all the time when we lived in Germany. Why did we stop doing it when we moved back home? The sense of urgency to see and do everything before we leave was no longer compelling us to see and do new things.

What struck me most about visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was how much it brought back some of the pride I had lost at being an American. In today's climate of 24 hour news networks always feeding us a heavy dose political propaganda and where Americans are starting to get the sense that we are the most hated nation on earth, it's easy to become disillusioned with our country and want to be one of those people who puts a Canadian flag on the back of their backpack while visiting another country just so people will treat you more kindly.

But visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame did something to me. It reminded me of the fact that despite all our flaws, and there are many, we are a nation capable of great things. We created the greatest, most influential music on earth.

I loved seeing all of the memorabilia that is part of rock and roll history. I was especially struck by things like the ratty old family couch Jimi Hendrix used to practice his guitar on, all of the song lyrics by so many artists that were written on scraggly sheets of notebook paper (what a great lesson for teachers about the importance of rough drafts!), John Lennon's upright Yamaha piano that had candlewax spilled on it. I also loved seeing all the glamorous show outfits for artists like Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and the Rolling Stones.

The problem with visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? The intense desire to rack up a huge iTunes bill with all the music you realize you love but don't already have on your iPod. Like, how could I go this long without having any Rolling Stones or Jimi Hendrix anywhere on my iTunes account? Or Al Green, Ottis Redding, Run DMC? I must remedy this and soon!

Have you visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? If so, what are your thoughts?

You just wish your critique group could be as awesome (and productive) as ours

On Tuesday, we participated in a writing marathon in our "Teacher as Writer" class, which was basically explained to us as driving around with our response groups to find different places to write for a change of scenery. If people asked us what we were doing, our instructions were to simply say, "We're writers."

In theory, this seemed like a really great idea and while our group had fun, I think we would have been much more productive if we had just stayed in our assigned classroom. Since our group of four ladies gelled from the very beginning, when we get together to talk about our writing, we also talk like old girlfriends. So when not shackled down to the confines of a classroom, we found ourselves with even greater distractions, especially since we decided to drive to Ann Arbor and attempted to look like we fit in as students at the University of Michigan when we're really just lowly Eastern Michigan University graduate students.

And while we did get some writing done, it wasn't nearly as much as it would have been had we just stayed in the classroom.

So what did we do?

Well, we walked around U of M's campus for a while

Then we went to the Hatcher Graduate Library and walked around to find a spot to write.

In the meantime, we marveled at all the books in other languages:

Then we found a spot in the grandiose reference room that made us feel very ivy league and decided that this, indeed, would be a great place to be writers.

We totally look like U of M students, right?

It's impossible not to feel smart in a library like this

Though with the number of smart people per capita occupying this building, curiosity was more than likely not going to get the better of people so we could tell them, "Oh, we're writers". If anything, our tendency to chit chat when in each other's presence would get us asked to leave by some austere librarian with a bun piled on top of her head while sporting reading glasses around her neck dangling by a bedazzled chain. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

After a couple hours of writing in the library, we decided to grab lunch at Amer's Deli across the street from campus, which my classmate Mitra described as "the poor man's Zingerman's". This was supposed to be a working lunch, but this is where the "old girlfriends" problem came into play: we spent the whole lunch talking instead of writing.

And me being the foodie that I am, became smitten with all the sandwich selections, eventually deciding on a simple pastrami with Dijon. Isn't that a thing of beauty?

But then I actually I took a bite of it and the Dijon mustard LITERALLY - and I'm not being hyperbolic here - cleared out my sinuses. It was a good sandwich, but I had to wipe off some of the excess mustard or else my sinuses would've ceased to exist.

After lunch, we wandered aimlessly around downtown Ann Arbor, got some ice cream, and then decided perhaps our best course of action would be to just go back to our own campus, sit in our assigned classroom, and get some writing done for the last hour of class.

That didn't work too well either. Our drive back to EMU had us laughing and joking too much to be able to come back and take any sort of writing seriously. We did, however, decide in what may seem to be complete and total irony, that we need to continue to get together after the class ends on Friday to help each other with our writing. Oh who are we kidding? We'll probably just do it so we can get together and gossip. I feel like we need to get a t-shirt in the same vein as the ones that say, "I'm on a drinking team with a bowling problem" but instead of that, ours should say, "I'm in a gossip group with a writing problem."

So writers and authors out there, tell me what makes your critique group so awesome?

Guest Post: Why I Won't Write by Zahra Seyam

For those of you who don't already know, authors Kate Messner and Gae Polisner along with Jen Vincent from the blog Teach Mentor Texts are hosting a virtual writing workshop called "Teachers Write!" I love the concept of this workshop because it reminds us of the need to model a writing life for our students, not just teach it. 

I have always wanted to write a novel so I had planned to participate in this workshop, but last week I started a two-week graduate course called "Teacher as Writer" that, given the title, basically utilizes the same concept as "Teachers Write!" And let me just tell you, this is the most liberating class I've ever taken in my life. I will be sad when it's over on Friday. We basically get credit for showing up and writing, every day, 9-3. And we get to choose our own writing projects. At first this was a bit unsettling because as the ever dutiful student, I wanted a syllabus, a calendar of due dates, and a rubric detailing how we would be graded... all the things students expect in college.


Instead, we come to class, start with a writing prompt that everyone signs up for one day to lead, and then spend the rest of the day writing and meeting with critique groups.


One of my classmates in my critique group, Zahra, wrote this piece that I'm posting here called "Why I Won't Write" and in addition to being absolutely brilliant, it will also induce tear-stained laughter. As she shared this piece with our critique group, we were roaring with laughter the entire time. She explained that her inspiration for the piece was because about 20 minutes into the first day of class, writing for such a sustained period of time became a kind of slow and unending torture. I figured most of us could relate and would appreciate the sentiment.

Why I Won't Write by Zahra Seyam

I must be the biggest fraud. An English “teacher” and lover of books, has trouble writing for a sustained period of time. I am a smiling Judas to my writing. I confess that at times, I wonder if I am committing the ultimate betrayal. I just never have the patience to sit and write. Procrastination becomes the drug of choice - “Surely, now is the time to check Wikipedia about the French revolution, or I wonder how I could create the largest vegan tarts? Hmm I’ll need to learn the chemistry RIGHT NOW.”

It’s not until the last minute that I scourge for moment to find a computer and frantically write. I’ve come to regard writing as a chore most like exercise: sporadically accomplished, problematically regulated.

Writing is like a muscle. It is the tendon that connects to nerves and pain through thought and expression. It has places of particular soreness whether insecurities of my sentence structures or word snafus.

Its proximity to pain and empathy renders it like the nerves and tissues that rupture and tear. And because I don’t practice it regularly or in moderation, easing into it is taxing and daunting. Monday’s class proved one thing - this writing muscle is a sloppy, cottage cheese ridden hot mess. Yes, I know the benefits of this exercise, and I’ve hypocritically shelled out all the advice to everyone, “Walter Mosby says he needs to write every day to stay sharp.” “Writing and reading go hand in hand.”

So what is the problem? Why won’t I write? Freud wrote that the subconscious minds reveals the trauma and desires that won’t be expressed. His seminal work recognized that the psyche itself was a text that manifested itself through our phobias, repetitions, fetishes, and bizarre behaviors. So why am I self-sabotaging? Am I scared of what I can become? Perhaps worries that I do not have the witty repertoires and anything worthy to say. There must be a fear of failure or worse, what if I work so hard and still fall short into mediocrity. The old adages of “there are no losers because at least you tried” are apparently too trite for my ego. Instead I succumb to the debilitating comfort of laziness.

            “I would go to Pilates but I’m just so busy” (As I post this on tumbr).

            “I should totally get around to writing that novel - and I totally could if I wanted - but I’m ever so busy experimenting with pastry dough and re-watching Game of Thrones.”  

Why push yourself? Why can’t I just bloody do it?! The fear of putting ideas into writing is too official, too real, too naked, and too much work. I can distinctly recall a once frequently visited Jillian Michael’s DVD where she ominously barked at me,

            “ 30 minute workout means no rest. Take a second if you need - but ONLY a second. No breaks, we want to put pressure on your body to force it to change. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to suck, but it takes 30 days to build a habit and by then it’s won’t be so bad.”

Yes, all right I understand the truth. One cannot help but notice the parallels of truth spouting from a TV trainer in spandex. Trying to control the monkey mind and harbor him on paper can become mind numbingly painful. The agony of control takes over. Suddenly, the wrist becomes unbearably sore. The keyboard is a bed of daggers. The chair sits ready to hold you down for shock treatment. And my eyes become soooo heavy. SO. DRY. They burn like Odysseus after gouging his own eyes after recognizing the product of his truth. The fear of failure rings menacingly like an unsuspecting threat sitting and waiting to pull you back. Where is the runner’s high for writers? No, we only have revisions, editing, and consumption. We only have an emblem of a moment or thought that can look repulsive tomorrow. I am too scared to become as Dr. Frankenstein-tied to a horrific vision of myself-signified by my monster and haunted by my creation. So what can be done?

This muscle is lazy. This muscle needs to sweat. This muscle writes like it is chubby and easily out of breath. It needs no fad diet, no shake weight or Ab flex machine.

Vladimir Nabokov placed note cards near his pillow at night where he took down notes whenever inspiration hit. His nightmares, visions, his fantasies could not wait for the right time or place. They couldn’t wait for the right excuse. No waiting for a laptop, a better pen, or the morning light. He is my daily affirmation; he is my writing fitspiration.

You call it Labor Day? I call it "Last Day of Summer Freedom"

As I mentioned before, pretty much all of Michigan goes back to school on the day after Labor Day. Needless to say, today I am mourning the loss of summer and I'm also brimming with excitement for the start of the school year.

While I finished setting up my classroom on Thursday, I am still working on some last minute details from home. I am sitting here right now doing seating charts for all my classes, I'm writing out my lesson plans for this week, and the least mundane of my preparations, I finished decorating my writer's notebook for the school year.

This is one of my favorite activities I do with the kids during the school year. I get to see their personalities on the cover of a notebook and it always speaks to who they are when you look at their writer's notebook. Just look at the cover of my writer's notebook. What do you suppose it says about me?

Front cover

Back cover

Front inside cover

Back inside cover

I'm hoping that giving the students the opportunity to show their personalities on the covers of their notebooks that it will help inspire them to write more and it will give them more ownership over their writing because they feel like the notebook is theirs rather than just something I hand out to them at the beginning of the school year. 

So what would you put on the cover of your writer's notebook?

Sowing Seeds

I read a journal entry to my class in English today that was inspired by another student's journal entry. When I told the class about being inspired by someone else's writing, one of my students said, "The seed just keeps growing."

I love it when they apply the metaphors I teach them about writing. Makes me glad to know I don't sound like Charlie Brown's teacher everyday - only just some days.

No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty

Chris Baty is the founder of the literary world's infamous National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) every November. Every year I have my 6th graders participate in the Young Writers version of the program, but have never actually participated in it myself.

The adult version of NaNoWriMo proposes that you write a 50,000 word novel in one month's time. (The Young Writer's version allows the kids to choose their own word count.)
I always enjoy reading "how to write" books because it helps me hone my craft as a writer and a teacher. But this book stands out among the others because of its humor and its ability to make you want to get up and write a really crappy novel RIGHT NOW. The case that Baty makes for writing a novel in thirty days is simply this: so many of us (myself included) say, "Someday I'm going to write a book - when I have the time, and when I'm older and wiser." Baty is telling us t...more
I always enjoy reading "how to write" books because it helps me hone my craft as a writer and a teacher. But No Plot? No Problem! stands out among the others because of its humor and its ability to make you want to get up and write a really crappy novel RIGHT NOW. The case that Baty makes for writing a novel in thirty days is simply this: so many of us (myself included) say, "Someday I'm going to write a book - when I have the time, and when I'm older and wiser." Baty is telling us to STOP WAITING! The novel you could write today is just as valid and plausible as the one you could write thirty years from now.

Writing a novel in such a short time frame forces you to turn off your inner editor and just "git r done" which is what so many writers lay claim to when people ask them where they get their inspiration. Oftentimes, inspiration comes from just sitting down and writing a lot of crap, only later turning it into a literary masterpiece during the long and tedious revision process.

Not only is this book the motivational speech most of us need to sit down at the computer and start writing (and to keep writing when all hope seems lost) but it also has a lot of great writing exercises to get you through the difficult patches that are sure to come about during your 30 days chained to the computer. I highly recommend this book for anyone who's wanted to write a novel but procrastinated it into oblivion. Chris Baty will make you want to start writing before you even finish the first chapter.

Move over Ke$ha

Author Stephanie Perkins (who, by the way, really makes me want to add blue streaks to my hair) posted this video on her blog and now I'm smitten with Jackson Pearce. I've never read anything she's written, but after this clever music video, she's been added to the top of my "to-read" list!

Lessons You Will Never Find in a Textbook

I made myself vulnerable in front of my students this week. I shared with them a piece of writing that was in desperate need of revision, and I asked them to give me their critiques. It was a humbling experience. It helped me to remember the anxiety and heart-racing nerves I experienced whenever I used to get a paper back from a teacher or professor in school. But it also helped the kids to see that ALL writers, even their "all-knowing" teacher, are not perfect. I showed them my flaws, right there on the page for them to fix.

It was so tempting to edit out some of the more abominable sections of the piece, but I decided it was more important for them to make their own discoveries that all writers need to revise. It's not enough for me to just preach the virtues of revision. I needed to make it real to them. Given their willingness to tell me exactly what I needed to fix, I think they got it. With the school year ending next week, it's good to know they've been paying attention to me this whole time.

Revision: the hard sell

I just picked this book up from the library today and I absolutely love the cover.

Revision is such a hard concept to sell. Students often think that if they communicated their thoughts and vomited them all out on the page, then their job is done. It's difficult for them to understand why you need to find accurate, precise words and have sentences that flow like music.

This cover is so simple, yet immensely effective at getting the point across - especially if the students understand what the cover phrases are alluding to.

I hope the book is just as delightful as the cover.

*~*~*~*~*~*

For a change of pace, check out this fabulous Dystopian lit giveaway on Lenore's blog.

Young Writers, Follow Maureen Johnson's Advice: Dare to Suck

One thing that beginning writers often fail to understand is that good writing doesn't just happen. It takes practice. It takes loads of rewriting. I preach this over and over again in my classroom, but sometimes I think that they don't take me seriously because I'm their teacher and what do I know?

Maybe if they heard it from an ACTUAL writer they'd be less hesitant to believe that I'm just making them do more work that they don't want to do:

When Reading Student Writing Suddenly Becomes Less of a Chore...

I love when I come across a passage from my students' writing that just makes me proud to be their teacher. I'm reading writing assignments right now that were inspired by my Uncle Tom's essay "My Father's Voice" when I came across these lines from a boy in my 6th grade English class:

My Grandpa [is] sitting in his big red chair in front of the T.V. We listen quietly as he tells stories of the olden days, which I can only picture in my head in black and white. His eyes close behind his glasses on his wrinkled face. His laugh bellows across the room. "What if I don't hear him laugh again," I think to myself...

His laugh reminds me how sugar cookies are always ready when I get to his house. And they're always amazing. How the candy orange slices are always in a jar on the counter. I walk in and ask, "Where are the orange slices?" as if I didn't already know.

The entire piece was so touching, but those passages really just tugged at my heartstrings. I hope he doesn't mind that I quoted his writing here.

I do tend to exaggerate at times...

... especially with regards to the last sentence of my recent Facebook status update:

...hates that all my best writing ideas occur in the shower. They wash away down the drain rendering completely forgotten by the time I towel off, get dressed, and sit down at my laptop. My New York Times bestseller is being held hostage by my shower drain.