Art that pulls a “Wow” from your body dresses the walls of a building.
Student work patterns bulletin boards. Its aesthetics, beautiful. Colors, bright. Variance, individualized. My eyes nod approvingly, and my wonder nags, “What is our role? To create art, or inspire artists? Can we do both?”
What applies to the students who made that art also applies to my seventh-grade students. Am I, as their Humanities teacher, promoting prescriptive writing for the sake of passing standardized tests, or am I actually educating my students for their future?
Am I implementing and enforcing the lessons from an imperfect system, or actually building basic skills that are transferable to whatever writing forms their lives require?
Am I teaching them to write, or am I inspiring writers?
Curious about John Warner’s exhortation to “Kill the 5 Paragraph Essay,” my students and I break off from our emotionally unsupportive partner, the Structured Analytical Essay, and journey forward, seeking the ever evasive beginning of the writing process.
Inspiration.
We start with word play and experimentation. We wonder why we can make sense of Yoda and Dr. Seuss, but cannot comprehend a sentence read backwards.
Where is that line between chaos and clarity?
We seek inspiration from experiences, venturing off the beaten path into menacing mud and measuring the stability of ice by the size of the tossed rock it withstands. We journey to our local mall, and drool over the latest and greatest sports equipment. We meander into Starbucks where fresh brews fill our nostrils, and the smell alone seems to caffeinate our brains.
We learn from experts, analyzing the word choice and word sequencing of our favorite authors. We attempt to imitate their styles. We notice their “big kid words,” and giggle when we find run-on sentences. We ponder their rationale for varying amounts of description, and question why a professional so often uses the word “had.”
Is there any power in repetition?
We look to history. We laugh at how language changes over time. For example, “getting dressed” would previously have been “making the toilet.” Nothing brings about attentive appreciation to a concept like its story of change. We explore the oppressive life of a young adolescent in 1930s Alabama. We identify stories of others that may help us define our own.
We seek inspiration from ourselves through our own prompts, our own spontaneous game to feature a character they invented called “Deadly Duolingo” in each journal entry, and our own vision of a land called Taylor Swift.
In the beginning of my career, I had the privilege of participating in a writing class by Rob Riordan. In this adult learning space, he described a classroom of his students writing and sharing, writing and sharing. This month’s explorations of finding writing inspiration like an author, that is to say in living, supported my attempt at replicating what I remembered of Riordan’s process. His process quickly unveils a known secret of adolescence.
Peers inspire most.
Thus, together, we seek.
Some of us find; find praise from classmates for a skill previously left unacknowledged. Find ideas from colleagues to add details that “bring us into the story,” or more simply “it’s good… write more.”
Some of us find support.
Find authenticity.
Find acceptance.
Find confidence.
Some of us pursue; we pursue the mythical perfect word. Pursue the plot twist that differentiates; the humor that renders smirks contagious.
We all struggle.
Frustration is shared; some shouldering a heavier load of it and for longer.
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes master,” said Ernest Hemingway.
Struggle supports learning, I remind. Don’t be intimidated by the fierce emotion. Befriend it. It’s a close companion of success.
Some inspiration is left unfound.
But, we all experience it. We experience life together.
I’ve heard life can inspire writing.
And may even create a writer.
You can read a selection of writing by Kaila’s seventh-grade students here
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