Stafford's Poem From time to time I find a poem that would be a perfect college essay, as is. Read it, and weep. William Stafford's "A Ritual to Read to Each Other," guts me word by word. I want to help my students make their college essays this pointed and distilled. So let's study this guy, a master of his form; he knows word economy. His poem unsettles. Good-- who wants to settle? That's for pre-Trump era folks. "If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star." Read the rest here. Stafford's poem helps us figure out how to be with one another as people (because generally speaking, we're pretty piss at winning peace prizes, folks). He is a badass** writer, somehow direct but also circumspect: "Lest our mutual life get lost in the dark." How is that for Twitter-able accuracy? As a side note, I would also feel really cool if one of my students wrote something this devastating and accurate. (Which, by the way, they sometimes do, just that most of them aren't famous for it yet.) These lines have haunted me for years. They could not be more relevant. Be Woke As a buzzkill and injunction to BE WOKE, I'll post Stafford's last lines. But you're best served by reading the whole poem aloud, again and again. Better if you can read it to somebody. Maybe somebody who, like the rest of us, needs to WAKE UP ALREADY. "For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep." Again, you can visit the whole poem here. Light up your essay I often misremember the poem's last lines as "the answers we give should be clear..." But you could easily substitute, "the college essays we write...should be clear!" --because the Continue Reading …
Teachers
Try to Understand
If you don't try, you may never understand. My new student, J, was in his bright red basketball jersey and shorts, and he was doing his best not to shiver. Starbucks was as cold as a meat freezer. But what he was saying warmed my mind. In the course of a short conversation, he'd already told me that as a kid he'd been pegged as "troublemaker." Or, even worse, proving the little words matter: "THE Troublemaker." You wouldn't know it now, from his composure even under the offensively strong air conditioning. But according to his teachers, he had "too much energy" and bounced around the room and, worst of all, Socrates be damned, he had too many questions. I'm like: "Hold the sauce. How is it possible to have too many questions IN A CLASSROOM?" Continue Reading …
Feeling Stuck? Move!
Stuck really sucks Do you ever just feel stuck? Literally? On the page, in your head, with that stupid crank in your neck? Twinge in your tight back? If you said no, never been stuck, you're amazing, and also the exception. You should come over and tell me all your secrets, which I can afterward try to pass off in a blog post as my own. (Just kidding, but you will obviously be on Oprah before then!) Thing is: Most of us, most of the time, feel more stuck than not. And the way to deal with that is so simple it's like asking how you should end your sentences (with a period!): MOVE. That's right, move. My friend and colleague Ruthie Fraser wrote this gorgeous little book about that: Stack Your Bones: 100 simple lessons for realigning your body and moving with ease. Here's more on that. Each exercise has broad applicability; each encourages movement to be natural, but with clear energetic goals and room for improvisation. So "Vary Your Route" begins, "Come to your hands and knees. Lengthen your spine. Extend your elbows." These cues might be familiar if you've ever done yoga. However, she encourages us to start with the familiar, and shift to novel shapes. "Habitual movements create habitual thinking. Feel your mind open as your body travels new routes." She offers simple exercises-- but profound, like a period is profound! One little dot indicating both an end and a beginning!-- that can be utilized at any time, as a foundation for however you prefer to move or exercise. They can also be used in stillness, as a computer break when working on, say, your college essay, or some other writing project that begs for nourishing interruption. She hopes we can all feel firsthand in our bodies what unstuck could be like. And perhaps it will help you align your ideas a little more clearly with your intentions. Or introduce some wildness into bland sentences. Speaking of wildness...speaking of moving... I recently listened to an amazing Continue Reading …
Have Essay, Will Travel
It is exciting when I get to travel with my students for the long haul. Francesca, an irreverent and deeply talented student I first taught when she was in 8th grade, is now a writing colleague and itinerant scholar. She's left school, again (yes, you can leave school for good reasons)...to travel and write and to write about travel as a state of mind. Here's just a fraction of her story, and how her college essay became an important touch-stone on a journey of inner and outer travel that is not yet done. Francesca obligingly wrote this for you, as a case in point that your college essay can be so much more than a thing you write to get into college. (It also makes me pleasantly squirmy to be a protagonist/antagonist in such a fine story). Francesca's College Essay Story Travel Back When I walked into Sara’s house in the summer before my senior year of high school, late for our meeting and out of breath, I had no idea what I wanted to write my college essay about. Sara offered me a plate of avocado toast, and as I ate, she had me free write on a couple on prompts. I had seen Sara infrequently over the past few years, but in 2009, when I was in eighth grade, Sara and I had travelled around Europe and Northern Africa together. For a school year, she had homeschooled my sister and me, teaching me English, writing, history, Latin, and anatomy. We had spent many hours together most days of the week. Our year of traveling felt simultaneously central to my identity and far removed from my real life. It was like a dream that I couldn’t fully remember, but that continued to affect me in my waking hours. That is, it was like a dream I couldn’t fully remember until I sat down at Sara’s kitchen table with a slice of avocado toast and realized that, of course, my personal statement would have to be about our trip. Revision and Remembering I was very proud of the essay I wrote with Sara. I had never worked on a piece of writing so intensely, though I loved to Continue Reading …
Do something amazing, make amazing things
Here are some people who are actively doing creative things that are elevating and amazing. Because sometimes we need to focus on what's life-affirming (and not this crappy political morass). The force of the imagination can open a tightened chest. Check out three these mighty real folks: Three Amazing Artists with a message My former student, Jordan Hiraldo, who made it out of a tough childhood on the streets of New York City. He realized by keeping his ear to the local scene, he could do something amazing with his lens and capture artists in their everyday hustle. Because, let's face it, we have to hustle. Check him out here. My colleague, teacher, friend, Holly Wren Spaudling, whose off-grid childhood primed her for a life of inquiry and poetry as inoculation against cultural madness. Check her out here. My guide Maya Angelou, whose childhood trauma left her elective mute at 7 years-old. She found her voice again only after a savvy poetry teacher refused to listen to her work if she wouldn't read it aloud. Here is Maya's insistent message to young people: "You are all we have." Listen to the whole journey here. (Get your tissues/snot sleeve ready!). Prompt Yourself Up How about you, amazing person? What creative impulse runs through you, and how can you let it all hang out-- like, now? (Because I can't keep listening to these confirmation hearings, it's killing me, I'd rather look at anything even remotely amazing that you make-- yes, you, really). How has your childhood shaped you? How have your unique conditions given you a unique eye-- and what does that eye see? What have you made lately? Can you reach for some materials now and release your imagination, just because? How will you be part of setting us all free? These are the questions that art can often answer better than fact alone. Do something amazing, and show it to us. The world needs this everyday. Continue Reading …
Read this, then write yours: Letter to Change Lives
A Letter to Guide Us Essay intensive didn't really know what to say after the election results came in. We couldn't even write you a letter defending you, whoever you are, or properly post our views. We had whiplash and tried to cure it by staring straight into the maelstrom of social media. Then, we went right to the feet of the most articulate person we know: Martin Luther King Jr. (He's a close friend). Just so happened we teach his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" every year, and on Nov 8th we were right in the middle of its protest and panacea. From WTF to Why This Fortunate? King's"Letter from Birmingham Jail" should be read in every school, jail, and waiting room. He used ignorant criticism of his work against racism, materialism, and cancerous bigotry as a chance for extreme creativity. His opponents (in the CHURCH, mind you) handed it to him. They asked that King-- who they labeled an "outsider" and "agitator" who should mind his own business-- to puh-lease let racism proceed at its merry awful pace in Birmingham. King could not concede. Well let me just write this one letter first... In pristine, respectful response, in a public letter, King laid out his entire non-violent resistance platform and its historical necessity. Opportunity is wherever you decide to find it King took opposition as opportunity. The result, started on bits of toilet paper from his jail cell where he was serving time for the truly demonic offense of "parading without a permit" (sound familiar?), is one of the most important documents of our time. If and only if you'd like to know how to write well, mastering what grammar, syntax and allusion can accomplish, elevate discourse with your oppressors to hold them to their highest selves (which may not exist-- this is where the imagination is handy), logically lay out an exhaustive plan for achieving common humanity. If you don't, look elsewhere. Maybe at cat videos. What King's Letter Made Continue Reading …