The Flower, the Ring, and the Wheel: New Visions of a Heartwarming Photo, By Three Young Poets

I found this photo on someone's Facebook page, uncredited, so if anyone knows its origin, please let me know so that I can post it here. That said, isn't this a moving photo representing a community of children? It's a moving writing prompt, as well, as you're about to see from the three metaphorical poems inspired by this picture, by two 12-year-old girls and one 11-year-old boy….

Wheel of Community

by P.M., age 12

The spokes all work together,

to keep the wheel moving

they use their heads,

to hold up their community.

Their feet nailed to the center

without any gaps,

the spokes are all important.

With gaps and spaces,

the community won't

turn, move, or progress properly

on the grassy road of life.

*          *          *          *

A Ring Forever

by A.C., age 12

Heads of honeycomb stud the ring

Curving around elegant forms in warm hues of brown

That come together like rays of the sun.

In the middle of a leafy, green forest

Lies the ring,

A ring crafted not of cold diamond and gaudy gold,

But of life, of beating hearts, and hands and feet 

   wreathed together;

Of peace, unity, happiness, and freedom

On the longest day, and longest night,

When shadows stretch, and the sun and moon

   are at their fullest.

It is then, that the forgotten people

Of a faraway place gather in an unknown 

   corner of a nameless jungle,

As these people, so long ago discarded by others

Come together, time stops.

And there is only music,

The soft whistling of the wind and hum of the crickets,

   of voices, young and deep, and 

   old and cracked, strung together by the rhythm 

   of the ground.

It is not perfect, but it is together.

It is a ring forever,

A promise to the earth.

     *     *     *     *     *     *

Flower

by D.S., age 11

An open flower

Awaits

With welcoming arms

For bees to come

and bring it pollen

And to take its nectar

To share with 

the world.

Most of us

See only

Bees coming in

And giving

And flowers

Simply receiving

But

It gives 

Us 

Things we 

Would never imagine

So when we go to 

Pollinate the flowers

With seeds of knowledge

We return with sweet nectar knowledge and memories

Of their cultures

Of their Ubuntu*

Of the things that they

Offer to us.

Accept their gifts 

With open arms

For though it seems that

We may not,

We need each other,

We do.

For we need

To share

Our ingenuity

Our culture

Our own special talents.

In Africa,

A flower waits with open arms

for you.

Go to it.

*"Ubuntu" is a Nguni Bantu term roughly translating to "human kindness." It is an idea from the Southern African region which means literally "human-ness." We discussed this briefly in class as we looked at the picture.

What, When, Where? That, Then, There?

Did you know if you replace the "w's" in what, when, and where with Ts, you get the answer to all three questions?

This fascinating tidbit came from my daughter's friend Sean, a lover of intelligent wordplay, like me.

And so I decided to turn this fun fact into a short piece of writing--something you, too, could do! Here's mine, below. Feel free to leave yours in the comments section!

     "What?" she asked, following his eyes to their target, a bat-like creature hanging from the curtains.
     "That," he answered, shuddering. "I didn't know it had reappeared."
     "When?" she asked. "During the night?"
     "Then. Yes." He nodded. "We have to shoo it out of here."
     "Where?" she asked.
     "There!" he answered, pointing to the chimney and handing her a broom.

     

Grammar Lessons for Today's Screen-Watching Students!

          I don't teach formal grammar lessons regularly; I prefer to pull my grammar lessons out of recurrent errors in my students' writings, and to do so on an "as-needed" basis. But when I do teach grammar, I love the support of my favorite grammarians, E. B. White and William Strunk, who wrote the classic book The Elements of Style (click on the title for a free PDF download), full of helpful lists (and even humor), and replete with specific examples to bolster the lists. I sometimes create quizzes based on Strunk & White's lists of grammar issues, or simply refer to the book to help my students understand a certain grammar rule.

          But recently, I discovered that a more modern grammarian, Jane Straus, posted on her website one-minute videos about grammar that will certainly appeal to today's multimedia learning style more than a book of lists would. Straus's videos are posted on www.grammarbook.com (click here to see the list,  watch some videos, and learn some new rules of grammar and punctuation).

I think that you will find the grammar segments easy to digest and apply. And it doesn't take but a minute to review and polish some element of your word usage in each sitting. I plan to use these videos as often as I need to with my writing students. Maybe I'll even develop some of my own videos--ON STYLE! Hmm.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT IDEA?

Prompts that Inspire More than Require

          I believe that teachers enrich lives by offering students choices, not immutable guidelines, and by celebrating innovative approaches, not hunting for mistakes. 

          When I offer writing prompts--usually multiple options based on a single topic--I relish the student who says, "Can I do the second one, but change it so that…?" The students who see their own alternative within the alternatives provided are showing me that they are taking a vested interest in the assignment. Sometimes, I like their prompts better than the options I've offered!  For example, one student took a prompt about exploring a moment in which a character realizes that his win is simultaneously his competitor's loss and she turned it into personal narrative about a tennis match that she won, but felt almost guilty for winning. After she read her story aloud, and listened to feedback from me and her two classmates, she suddenly raised her eyebrows. "Wait, now that I think about it, I didn't really feel GUILTY about winning," she commented. "I mean, I LIKE winning, and someone has to win, right? Actually, I felt SORRY for my opponent because she was crying after she lost, and then her mom lost her temper and actually said 'shut up' when the little brother asked out loud why she was crying. I couldn't believe her mom did that. And the whole thing was really…embarrassing." As I began suggesting ways that the student could show those feelings of shock and embarrassment via mood-setting actions and more descriptive details, she quickly nodded, picked up her pen, and declared preemptively, "Okay, I think I know how to change it." The final draft of her story ended up sparking a discussion about good sportsmanship, parenting, and showing mood in writing with vivid verbs and descriptive details. All in all, her alternative approach to the prompt turned a writing lesson into an introspective exercise for all of us.

          Students grow as learners by considering various approaches to developing their understanding of a topic, and by exploring the approach that most challenges their creativity and interest. They learn more from asking questions than from reciting answers, and retain more from listening and discussing than from writing rote responses or taking notes from a lecture to memorize for a test. The most memorable learning is, at least in part, self-directed, I have found. 

          If you're still pondering that last statement, think about some of the most enriching school work you've done--the assignments you remember best. Did you follow steps exactly or make that assignment unique to you in some way? And did you surprise yourself with your own creative flow?

Modernizing Myths for Writing Practice

The Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea is one of my favorite myths to have students modernize and continue. In the story, Pygmalion, a king and a sculptor, can find no woman he loves as much as the beautiful statue he carved and named "Galatea." He prays to the goddess of love, Aphrodite, for a miracle: the animation of his statue into a real woman to love. His love, of course, is based entirely on external beauty, a point not lost on even my youngest students when I ask, "Can he really be in love with a statue?" to which some have replied, "Not really. He doesn't even know if she's a good person, only that she LOOKS good." At that point, I ask what might have happened after the story, the part not mentioned in the "they lived happily ever after" conclusion. And students from age nine to fifteen have written a variety of fascinating creative endings to show his disillusionment upon discovering that his "love" is either 1) mean and cold inside; 2) dumb as the stone from which she was carved; 3) jealous of his other sculptures and anyone else he might look at with admiration; 4) bent on destroying him and all other men who worship beauty without knowing a person's inner self; 5) stuck in infancy because she never matured normally, just came to life as an adult; or 5) completely uninterested in him.

Nine-year-old A.C. wrote the following new ending that I've decided to feature here. I hope you find it as charming and impressive as I do. I asked her to include a simile that fit thematically into the story, and to include description, action, and dialogue (as I always request). I also asked that she write in the myth-telling style of the original story, which I'd read with her.

What Happened to Galatea After Coming to Life?

by A.C., age 9 (UNEDITED)

          They had been living happily together for the last hour, when he noticed her smile fade away and a face of evilness appeared.

          

          "I have come in my true form," she said in a musical voice, "and now you shall be king no longer!" She cackled, rubbing her hands together simultaneously. Pygmalion stepped back with fright. Now in his eyes her beauty faded away and she was nothing but an ugly old witch. He ran as fast as a horse pulling a chariot in order to escape. Then he stopped at a dead end. He closed his eyes and prayed to Goddess Aphrodite, wishing Galatea would return to her stone form.

          Immediately, a light came from Galatea's eyes and then there was silence and everything went still. There, standing in front of him was a stone figure of Galatea. He rushed to the temple and thanked Aphrodite (afro-die-tee) for showing him that outer beauty doesn't matter. The next day he met a woman who had ragged clothes and seemed too thin, but as she spoke, she showed she was worth loving and she had inner beauty. After years of true love, they got married and had a beautiful daughter named Galatea.

If You're Blessed Enough To Move, You're Blessed Enough To Move Others

Writer's block does not exist as long as our bodies, eyes, and minds have the energy to move, to observe, and to ponder. Discovering the world is how we help others to discover what we see, what we imagine, and how we feel. We can then share our discoveries by building them from word pictures into mental movies. But first we must move in order to move others. Look at what I found while taking a walk in an old LA neighborhood--a writing prompt hiding in a rectangle of the world that I was blessed enough to capture with my camera:

Rather than sharing my answer to the "what if" questions prompted by this picture, I am asking you--readers of any age--to describe what you see/imagine in this rectangle of the world, and what would happen next if this picture had a Play button.

Will you write a poem, or a story? Will it be a fantasy, a horror story, a sci-fi tale? What do you see: a magical, arboreal eruption; a giant's foot or a monster's hoof; an extraterrestrial invader or protector? Who will see this image, and how will he/she/they react? What if you awoke to see this outside your window, from the house across the street?

If you share with me and my readers your opening lines or paragraphs in the comments section below, I promise to share my positive feedback. You're blessed enough to read, so you're blessed enough to have your words read by others!

Making Humorous Use of the Carpe Diem Theme

       
Having discussed the theme of carpe diem ("seize the day") in literature with my middle school and high school students, they recognized this concept immediately in this poem I found posted on Facebook, "Dust If You Must," by Rose Milligan. The full poem appears  below.

          So after reading and discussing the poem--and giggling with morbid enthusiasm over the final stanza, which some didn't fully understand at first--I asked them to use the poem as the basis for a story with the "seize the day" theme. (In case you can't read the last stanza clearly, it reads: "Dust if you must,  but bear in mind,/ Old age will come and it's not kind,/ And when you go--and go you must,/ You, yourself, will make more dust.") I created teams to collaborate and suggested that they write about an obsessively clean or orderly person who learns what really matters in life from another person, who quotes this poem to her/him. To my surprise, a couple of them nodded, saying, "Oh, you mean an OCD person, right?" Either these preteens are psychologists-in-training or authors-in-the-making. I vote for the latter, especially after reading this story that evolved from a collaboration by K.E. and S.V., two middle-school girls.

     "Wanna go to the movie, Anna?" Roxy asked, though she already knew the answer.

     "What? Oh, no. I'm starting on the social studies project," Anna answered, barely looking up from the piles of papers put in neat stacks on her desk.

     "Um…you mean the one that's going to be assigned in a week?" Roxy raised her eyebrow.

     "I know, I know. I should have started it LAST week," Anna muttered, ashamed.

     "We didn't even know it existed until today!" Roxy grumbled. "Cut loose would you? Carpe diem!"

     Anna sighed, not wanting to step on Roxy's leather-booted toes. Anna had adjusted to Roxy's obnoxious, oh-god-let's-do-this attitude, but it still interfered with her "snobby, perfectionist life." As Anna contemplated the similarities between Japan and China, Roxy rolled her eyes. "Come on, Anna! You don't have to start right now!"

     "Yes I do! Do you know how embarrassing it would be if I got a 100%?" Anna shuddered, just thinking about it. Roxy sighed. She had heard enough about Anna's "above hundred percentage." 

     "Fine, Anna. Call me when you decide to stop throwing away your life. I have one word for you. YOLO!" Roxy muttered. As she was walking away, Anna stopped her. 

     "Stop! You're about to step on the place I'm about to put my backpack on. You don't want me having a dirty backpack?"

     "Oh my god, you're so pretentious!" Roxy stormed out. Anna didn't know where she was going, though, since class was just about to start.

     Roxy saw the teacher walk in and she stormed back towards Anna and sat down next to her. Roxy slumped down in her seat.

     A few moments later while the teacher was giving a lesson about geometric shapes, a note landed on Anna's desk from the direction of Roxy.

     "Dust if you must, but bear in mind,

      Old age will come and it's not kind. --Rose Milligan"

     "What's that supposed to mean? I'm not even dusting right now! Dusting's from 2:00 to 3:00. She should know this! And I'm not that old! I'm only 13. Hmph. I'm not wasting my life. Just because I never do extracurricular activities, or have fun, or…"

The End

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS FOR THE TWO YOUNG AUTHORS (OR ME) IN THE SECTION BELOW. AND FEEL FREE TO SHARE THIS POST! THANKS.

Revealing a Character's Depth Through an Intentionally Phony Tone: Kirsten Smith's Poetry as a Prompt

          People don't always mean what they say--or how they say it. Sometimes, to understand each other, we have to interpret the meaning behind the other's words, to understand that one's tone may not reflect the true feelings behind the words. How often do we hear people say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way!" And how often do we forgive those people, understanding that their intentions were good, even if their tone seemed harsh? We may even soften toward someone whom we know is trying to sound tougher or colder than he feels, because we know enough about that person to detect and sympathize with his need to cover up painful emotions.

          In writing fiction and poetry, we can manipulate tone to direct how our readers feel and respond to our characters. Sometimes, we might imbue a character's voice with a tone that intentionally belies his/her words so that readers can relish figuring out some truth about the character, without our merely telling them. This technique engages readers more fully and enables them to experience those "aha" moments when they notice clues that subtly reveal depth of character via description, action, and dialogue ("D.A.D."--my mnemonic device for painting vivid word pictures).

          Kirsten Smith, author of the poignant YA novel-in-verse The Geography of Girlhood, illustrates this technique of using tone to belie sentiments and simultaneously reveal character in the poem, "For the Ice-Skater He Loves." Writing in first person, as a girl whose younger stepbrother has revealed his first love to her, she says, "It's not like I care about him,/ in fact, he drives me crazy/ with his stories about you…." She then berates him in the poem--"He's not much to look at"--while sneaking in some of his endearing qualities in a curmudgeonly way: "but he's got shiny hair and/ sometimes he smells like cinnamon,/ and yesterday, he…bought me a pair of really ugly earrings/ that are kind of cute." The poem concludes with a tough-girl tone, threatening that "if you hurt him," she will fill the girl's locker with hate notes, snag her tutu, tamper with her blades, or poison her cocoa. The poet has masterfully manipulated the narrator's tone in a way that reveals it as the girl's cover for her fondness toward this stepbrother, a fondness which she seems to have realized in the midst of her critique of the girl of his dreams. As a reader, I found this revelation of her character endearing.

          I presented Smith's poem to a ninth-grade boy student, and then posed it as a prompt for his own poem to illustrate a tone that belies loosely hidden feelings, subtly revealed. Here is what B.C. came up with, and I found his emulation and understanding spot on! By the way, he does not have a brother, and is an only child, which makes this even more touching.
       

My Useless Brother
By B. C. (9th grade)

So you’re the bully.
The one who’s been
terrorizing my stupid little brother.

I mean, I get why you would.
He’s cocky, annoying and useless,
bad at sports,
and even laughs at his own jokes

I mean, he’s also nice,
cares about people,
and can make a killer sandwich.

But if you hurt him anymore,
I’ll rip your precious football jersey,
I’ll break your football catching hands,
I’ll make you give yourself a wedgie.

These aren’t just threats.
They’re promises.


IF YOU ENJOYED B.C.'s poem, please leave a comment! 

Creativity Defies Expectations

     

    Creativity flourishes in the absence of expectations. Teachers who offer broad writing prompts to students should be seeking to inspire a broad range of creative responses--not preconceived "right" answers. Grading of such responses has to focus on the depth of thoughts behind the words, as well as on their strength, in terms of structure and word choices.

     I recall being assigned an essay in college with an open-ended prompt to "compare three works by Samuel Beckett to explore recurrent themes and write about a unifying thread in the body of work." I asked my professor, “Is there a particular aspect of the works that you want us to focus on?” 

     The professor replied condescendingly, “This is an upper level English course. You should be able to find your own thesis by discovering a common thread between the works. It’s an open-ended prompt. It’s up to you to THINK.”

     A few days later, after hours of poring over books in the library, I found what I considered an intriguing connection between the works—a connection that inspired a strong thesis. I then composed with passion an essay that I turned in with pride. I expected awe from my professor.

     What I received instead of awe was a B-minus. Me? A B-minus?! Never! I thought, stomping down the long hallway to his office after class. I asked why he graded me so harshly, and he replied, “You must not have covered what I was looking for.”

     “What you were hoping for? I thought you said it was an open-ended prompt. Did you not like my writing style or something?”

     “No, your writing was probably fine, but like many of your classmates’ essays, it just didn’t cover what I was looking for.”

     “Meaning what? That you actually did have a prompt in mind, and wanted us to somehow figure out what you were looking for, rather than what we were looking for? Why didn’t you just assign the prompt you expected us to answer? This is totally unfair!”

     He raised one eyebrow at me, over the top of his brown plastic glasses. “I’m sorry you feel that way. You’ll still have a B in the class, though, and you should be happy, since this is an advanced class and you’re, what, only a sophomore, right? You did better than some of the seniors, you’ll be glad to know.”

     I sighed, exasperated. “That’s not the point! I don’t care about how some seniors did. I KNOW I wrote a solid essay. I know how it compares to my other essays—which were all A’s and A-minuses, if you don’t recall. I really believe I deserve a higher grade. Would you please reread this—“ I took out the essay from my backpack—“and reconsider? Please?”

     He sat back in his chair and tapped his pen on the edge of his desk, while staring at the essay in my hand. “I don’t have the time to reread essays for every student who complains. Course grades are due tomorrow, and I’m in the middle of submitting them. You’d have to take an Incomplete in this class, you realize. And then I’d get around to rereading your essay when I have time.”

     “Fine, then give me an Incomplete. All I’m asking is that you read my essay with the same open mind you asked us to use when searching for our theses.”

     He sniffed. “I already did. But since you’re so insistent, and so worried about getting a B, for some reason, I will take a second look—at my convenience. Just know that I rarely change a grade.”

     Two months later, at the end of the summer, I opened my mail and found a grade change notice, but no copy of my re-graded essay. He had given me an A-minus for my course grade. Too bad he didn’t have the guts to contact me personally and apologize for not reading my work as carefully as he should have, in the first place.

     A teacher who has preconceived expectations should not offer prompts designed to evoke original thoughts and inspire creative approaches to writing. That kind of teacher is not one who inspires, but just requires. At least my professor indirectly acknowledged that my interpretation of his prompt was acceptable after all. Maybe I even taught HIM something by standing up for my “wrong answer.”

     I hope that all of my writing students—and ALL students—are familiar enough with their own standards of “Best” to know when they can legitimately demand reconsideration of an unjust grade in their regular school classes. Creative writing has no right or wrong answers; only strong or weak ways of presenting one’s perspective. Strong words deserve respect for the effort taken to craft them. (This is why I never grade my private students' works, only critique and coach them to revise until they feel satisfied with their own new standard of "best." I let regular classroom teachers deal with predetermined standards in their graded assessments.)

     Often I am surprised, as my professor was, by the approaches students take to my prompts. Some kids want me to lay out a plan for them, because they want to make sure they "get it right," but the highly creative ones not only don’t want my input, but they inspire me to see their unique perspectives. Nothing beats the joy I have in saying, “Wow, you taught ME something today! I wish I had thought of that myself! Very cool! Thank you! Oh—and will you give me a copy to post on my blog?”

Nine-year-old Student Channeling Ray Bradbury?

          I gave one of my favorite photo prompts--a boy sitting in a wheelchair as he blows bubbles--to 9-year-old A.C. with these instructions: "Write a story about this boy, showing his point-of-view, as he blows bubbles and watches them fly away. Show how he feels, sitting in his wheelchair, as the bubbles freely float away." Here is the story. My comments will follow.

The Bubble Solution

By A. C., age 9

        

         A little boy sat hopelessly in his wheelchair and blew a bubble. As he dipped the wand into the solution and blew the bubbles, he wished he could fly away like the bubbles. He wished he could land on a grass field like he used to when he could walk. Then his eyes followed the bubble he blew. It glided across the streets. Finally it landed. It landed on a little boy in a wheelchair—just like him.

         “Jose!” the other little boy exclaimed jovially. Jose wondered how the boy knew his name. The boy rolled his wheels over to Jose and smiled.

         “I’m the future version of you,” he said, as he stood up.

         Jose widened his eyes like a tulip opening its petals. He blinked. He tried to speak, but no sound came out. At last he finally pulled himself together and asked, “You can walk?”

         The future version nodded his head and said, “All it took was some belief in myself and practice.”

         “Is that the key?”

         The future Jose nodded again. Then, suddenly he vanished. The present Jose thought about that for a moment and started getting up. He carefully balanced himself and started limping. He had done it! “Thank you, Jose,” he said to himself. “Maybe sometimes the solution is to just believe in yourself.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

         
          When A.C. showed me the finished story, I exclaimed, "Wow! How did you think of this?! It's like a sci-fi story. Like something a young Ray Bradbury would write!" To her puzzled look, I replied with an explanation about who Ray Bradbury was.
          She smiled at my comparison to a "brilliant author who used science fiction to teach big life lessons." Then she explained that "lately I've been into Star Trek a lot, so I guess I was thinking about the boy seeing another version of himself, and…well, I just thought it would be a good idea."
          "So you wrote a science fiction kind of story, like a parallel universe, right? And then it becomes his imagination…"
          Nodding vigorously, she added, "And, his imagination helps him walk again because he learns to believe in himself."
          The power of mind over body, she meant. Right? The power of the mind--yes, indeed!