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Yearly Archives: 2012
Middle School
Day three of the residency: Twelve- and thirteen-year-olds tell their life story in six words. A few of my personal favorites:
“In my second life, I fly.”
“Maybe there’s treasure in my backyard.”
“My family is a big pain.”
“I don’t know my own life.”
“Perfect is not perfect. Go unique.”
“Never good enough. Weird. Just stop.”
“No one ever told me that.”
“I was born an awesome unicorn!”
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Teaching
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Story
It’s always thrilling to prepare for a teaching residency with young people. This time, middle schoolers. It brings you back to the beginning, when we first told ourselves stories. First, by what we saw, then by what we could speak and draw. How does “my first field trip to the farm” become “blue reminds me of California”? We get caught in the current, the fact becomes the sense. Yet I’ve worked with ten-year-olds and 91-year-olds, and I’m amazed at how often each group goes back to being six.
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Teaching
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Caine’s Arcade
So beautiful. A film by Nirvan Mullick. Caine’s Arcade.
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Artists
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Faded Things
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Writers
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Questions
Some of the most compelling personal narratives don’t answer all our questions. Patricia Brieschke’s “Cracking Open” is a fine example of this. And today, my senior-citizen student Fanny wrote about a “life lesson” she could identify with: “marry someone like you.” Yet she explored it from the flip side; what happens when you say no to one potential life partner (that “someone like you”) and yes to another? Her final sentences: “My marriage ended after 63 years when he became ill and died. Did I marry someone like me? Absolutely not. Had I married M—-, it would have been someone just like me.” The other seniors pondered this for a bit, and then Bea said, “Fanny, I think I’d like to go for a long walk with you now and talk about this.” Indeed.
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Catalog, Teaching
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