Exploring Nonconformity as a Writing Theme

Nonconformity as a theme appears throughout literature for young people. To encourage innovative thoughts, deep analysis, and creative joy, novelists and poets and biographers who write for kids often present nonconformist characters as role models. I remember learning the word "nonconformist" from one of my favorite children's novels, A Girl Called Al, by Constance C. Greene. I rediscovered my joy in that book when I lent it to one of my elementary school students and we then ended up discussing the novel like two excited girls in a book club! As I pointed out to my student the line in that novel in which I first discovered one of my favorite words,"nonconformist" (a word she promptly added to her vocabulary list), I realized that my older students who were coming for lessons after hers, were both working on the same theme, via poetry prompts.

One of my middle-school-age students studied and wrote about a poem I gave her, by Shara McCallum, "The Perfect Heart," which introduces a little girl desperately hoping to please her teacher by cutting out a perfect heart using red construction paper. The girl displeases her teacher, however, because she somehow missed the directions and cut out hearts a different way, yielding what she considered imperfect hearts, which she ended up crumpling into a large pile of wasted paper. The teacher berates the poor girl as "wasteful" and "rude," rather than encouraging her nonconformity and praising her different-looking hearts. Readers naturally root for the sad girl who has been sent outside of the classroom as a punishment, and in rooting for her, root for nonconformity, too. My student's prompt was to write her own poetic memoir of a time when she differed from others in her approach to a task. She wrote about the day she solved a math problem, on the board, in front of the class, using a "more efficient," advanced method from a section of her textbook that she had not been assigned to read yet, although she had done so on her own. Her teacher examined her work, smiled as he realized that she had obviously read ahead in her book, and then proceeded to teach her method since most of the class seemed capable of understanding it as she had. This student's nonconformity affected not only her own progress, but the progress of her fellow students. She took McCallum's sad tale of repressed nonconformity and responded with her own tale of celebrated nonconformity.

My other older student that day had studied and written about a poem from TeenInk, by Farah Momen, a teenage poet. The poem, "Against the Grain," recounts Farah's experience as a little girl wiping off the classroom tables with her classmates after school. Farah's teacher instructs the kids to wipe carefully, with the grain, but Farah, noticing that the "grain" is only an image on plastic, sees no point in treating the table as though it is wood. She wipes against the grain because she can finish more quickly and proceed with more important tasks. She refuses to conform because the directions seem illogical to her. My student wrote an essay in response, using a list of quotations about nonconformity to add support for her thesis: "Society will always try to conform people into sameness because they will be easier to control; however, there will always be people who resist this pressure because they see another way to achieve success."

After meeting with both of these students, I came up with a nonconformist's dream assignment: Write a story in which Shara and Farah, the two poets, meet up as teenagers and discuss their shared experiences in a fictional scene that enables both of them to come to a shared realization about nonconformity. I gave this assignment to a third middle-school student, who immediately began writing after reading both poems, clearly inspired by each girl and wanting to connect them in a world of her own creation. She turned them into randomly assigned writing partners in an English class, and led them into a discussion that would surely have sparked a friendship if the two poets actually had met as teens.

Isn't it amazing how one word, one concept, can have such a pervasive influence on writers, readers, and even teachers!

Student Work To Share with You!

The following short story opening by an 11-year-old student/author, and the story-in-progress that resulted (28 pages at my last count!), evolved from a writing prompt that required Ronin and the other boys in his small group class to alter the first line of a popular YA book and launch their own story. I gave them the choice of a story by Robert Cormier, featuring a retrospective, first-person narrative style, and a story by Michael Grant, featuring a cinematic, first-person narrative style. Ronin chose to alter the first line of Michael Grant's GONE (a captivating first book in an equally exciting series, by the way). If you like what you've read by Ronin, let me know in the comments and I'll ask Ronin whether he'd like to share more of this compelling tale.

OPERATION SANTA CATALINA
By R.B., age 11

One minute my Maverick SmartJET was flying on a windy day, and the next minute it was dropping. Dropping like a stone. The change was so sudden and silent that I did not have the slightest clue about what happened. My engines just stopped. I had stalled.

There was only one thing to do. I quickly radioed the airfield and Coast Guard, due to the fact I was flying over the ocean. I was close to the beach, yet not close enough to swim there once I crashed into the ocean, assuming I wasn’t crushed to death when I hit the water. I had to keep calm.

I had equipped my plane with a button to switch from landing gear made for runways to pontoons made for landing on water. I made sure that the pontoons had deployed, but as soon as I put my head out of the cabin, the air rushing by pulled my skin taut against my skull. I instantly withdrew my head, taking deep breaths. This would be one heck of a crash. I scrambled into the cabin, taking the controls. All I could think of doing was correcting the rudder to prevent an unstable crash. I had only 100 feet to go… 90…80…70…60…50…40…30…20…10…5…and just like that, water engulfed the private plane, sending chills through my skin… and everything went black.

When I woke up, I was in what seemed to be the back seat of a helicopter belonging to the coast guard. My head ached, and my teeth were chattering.

“You did a good job,” the pilot said when he saw I was awake. “Thanks to the pontoons, the plane bobbed to the surface. It’s currently being brought to the shore by boat. Right now, we’re flying to the airfield. How are you feeling?”

“I’m all right, I guess,” I replied uncertainly.

As if on cue, the airfield came into sight. I was perfectly safe, but one question bothered me: why had my engine stopped?


To be continued...

I will also be posting work by some of my other students in the coming weeks. Please know that I will happily share your kind words with them if you post them here!

Writing Instruction Resources for Sale Online...

You can find some ready-to-use, skills-focused writing exercises, whether you're a teacher or a student, on my new online "storefront," sponsored by TeachersPayTeachers.com. Go to: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Susan-Lipson

And please let me know if you or your students use my handouts to write something worth sharing here, on my blog! I'll be happy to consider posting your work if I inspired and guided it with one of my online resources.

RECIPE FOR WELL-BAKED WRITING!

Ingredients:

5 cups of fully visualized CHARACTERS--avoid the pre-packaged “Trite” types

1 generous pinch of CONFLICT baking powder, to enable ingredients to blend and stick together

2 cups of PLOT broth, the more fluid, the better, for the smoothest batter (add ¾ cup of SUBPLOT broth to enrich flavor)

4 cups of SETTING, or settings, depending on quantity of Good Writing desired--use the “Multi-sensory” brand

1 cup of sifted THEME yeast, to make story rise to a higher level--mix in gradually

8 heaping Tablespoons of VIVID VERBS--the “Active” brand (Avoid using fatty “Passive” products of the “to be” variety,including: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been, has, have, do, does, did, go, goes, went

8 heaping Tablespoons of COLORFUL ADJECTIVES--the “Showing” brand--never use adjectives manufactured by “Opinions, Inc.” or
the “Vague Co.”

10 Tablespoons of DIALOGUE--fresh, not frozen or stale--and you may substitute for nonfiction recipes 6 teaspoons of QUOTATIONS, depending on taste

10 teaspoons of SMOOTH TRANSITIONS (connective words and phrases--without any lumps or excessive and’s or then’s

20 teaspoons of PROPER PUNCTUATION--to improve flow and texture

3 cups of mixed FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE spices, according to taste, of the following varieties: similes, metaphors, irony,
hyperbole, personification

2 cups of “Proofreader’s” icing
_____________________________________________


Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix first 5 ingredients ahead of time--the order of mixing is your preference--and allow to marinate before adding other ingredients.

Add to the pre-mixed batter the remaining ingredients, sifting out any of the non-recommended brands before blending. The batter may be difficult to stir at first, even after removal of undesirable ingredients, but earnest strokes, additions and deletions, will achieve the best consistency. Taste the batter, and ask a person with good taste buds to taste the batter, before you bake. Stir further, as needed or recommended by respectable taster.

Bake fully (no half-baked literary loafs, please!) until golden, at 375 degrees. Once cooled, spread onto loaf the “Proofreader’s” brand of icing, then have an assistant spread a second coat of “Proofreader’s” to achieve maximum glossiness.

SHARE AND ENJOY!

Recorded Raindrops Drumming in a Gutter: A Poetry Prompt that My Students Loved

After a downpour of rain during a group lesson, I walked my students out the door and noticed sounds emanating from our rain gutter--the sounds of a raindrop percussion section. I'm not exaggerating; the beats sounded like a jazz drummer playing in a nearby studio. I ran and got my phone so that I could record the rain's "gutteral" music. The recording awed my musician son who thought I must have doctored the recording to make it sound so much like a drummer. I decided that the recording would make a great writing prompt for my students (ages 10-13), who would listen to the music and write metaphorical poems about it.

Once they had listened twice to the recording, I provided metaphorical models to help them get started. I read them my own poem about fluffy clouds as "mashed potatoes on blue gravy,/ stirred by wind"("Cumulus Potatoes"), as well as a poem by Frederick Morgan, "The Busses," in which yellow school buses stopping from house to house on a rainy street become "a stream/ dark and serene in China,/ down which sleek goldfish dart and gleam." Then I told them to start writing. Here are some of the amazing results I got today (so proud of my students!):

The Gods' Party
by A.Y., age 11

The gods must have had a party with tap-dancers that whirled about in the heavens,
A drummer stood nearby pounding out a fierce beat,
The sweat of the dancers and the drummer poured down onto the Earth,
Tapping out a beat just like the beat of the dancers and drummers,
As night fell, the gods partied harder and harder and harder,
The dancers danced faster and faster and faster as the gods partied,
The sweat of the dancers poured down faster and faster,
The sweat pounded harder and faster,
Creating a fantastic beat on the metal tube.




Man of Raindrops
By D.S., age 10

Walking home,
a rainy night,
running from awning to awning
Then
I hear distant drums,
somebody
out here
tapping out a rhythm
No one is here,
but still
somewhere
a drum beats on
I run
to another dry spot
here
the sound is louder,
beckoning,
beckoning for me to come closer
metallic ringing notes
I turn
and see
in the sheets of rain
a shimmering drummer
He walks to me,
then disappears into
the gutter.
I realize that
he, a raindrop, is the one
speaking to me
through his music.




Dancing in the Gutter
By K.G., age 11
(This poem is supposed to be indented to form a raindrop, but Blogger wouldn't allow me to paste it that way!)

My
tap dance shoes
On the cold, metal tube
Tappity-tap-tap, tappity-tap
Tap tap tappity-tap, my watery feet
Coming down to the ground, to create
A beautiful rhythm, tappity-tap-tap
Tappity-tap, the last beat comes out
loud and quick, as I strike my
finishing pose, TAP



Nature’s Drummer
by B.C., age 13

Nature’s drummer
Plays with a steady beat
Ts
ts tss
ts tss
His drumsticks rain down
On his hi-hats
With perfect rhythm
And they start to get faster
Ts ts ts
Ts ts ts
Ts ts ts
But suddenly
The sound starts to mumble
Plob plob plob
The gutter is now full.

Former mountains

Sand as crumbled mountains...a cyclical perspective...
See the blog post below, titled "Aim To Change the Way Your Reader Sees the World."

Aim To Change the Way Your Reader Sees the World

Do you want a goal for laboring over word choices, to justify the time it takes to come up with that perfect description? How about aiming to change the way your reader sees the world in some small way? Now that may sound like a lofty goal, maybe even overdramatic to you; however, I achieved that goal during a private lesson the other day, according to my 8th-grade student, B.

I opened my lesson by explaining to B that "literal language says just what it means, nothing more; whereas figurative language means more than what it says." She smiled and replied, "Huh...I never thought of it that way, but you're right."

Then I presented some examples of figurative imagery. First I asked her to read this sentence aloud:


The sand is like crumbled mountains, dissolved by lapping waves.


I asked, "If you read that sentence without the simile, you have a literal description of sand being lapped by waves, right?" She read it softly to herself and nodded. "And if you substitute the simile 'like coarse brown sugar' for the crumbled mountains simile, how would the sentence change?"

She wrinkled her brow. "Hmm. Well, it would describe what the sand looked like. But it's not as good as the first simile."

"Why not? It's a sweeter image, right?"

She chuckled. "Yes. But it's not as descriptive as 'crumbled mountains.' It only says what the sand looks like, but not what it's...what it's LIKE."

I prompted her further: "Okay, elaborate on that. What else, besides how the sand looks, does the image of crumbled mountains suggest to you?"

Her eyes lit up. "Time passing! It takes a long time for mountains to crumble." I was still nodding happily as she added, "Erosion!"

"Yes, yes! So it makes you think of sand a-a-as..." I led her with my rising tone.

"As pieces of mountains, not just...sand."

"Yes!" I then gave her a short metaphorical poem I wrote as an expansion of the same image. "Here. Now read this poem, please. 'The Sands of Time.'"

She read it aloud:


SANDS OF TIME

Former mountain fortresses,
eroded by the sea:
the children now rebuild your grains
into tiny castles,
still threatened by the tides of change.


"Ooh, I like that," she murmured.

"From fortresses to tiny castles, eh?" I asked, smiling.

"Yeah. I never would have thought of that. That's really cool."

I was beaming, I'm sure. "Thank you. I'm glad you like it. Okay, so how does figurative language affect a reader's perception of a scene?"

She explained, "It makes me see a new perspective, something I might not see it on my own." She paused. "Like, I'll never look at the sand at the beach the same way after reading your poem."

"You've just summed up the very reason I write, B! So that I can change the way people see the world, even in a small way!"

Now she was beaming, too.

Handing her a selection of gorgeous landscape photos torn out of an old calendar, I asked her to write her own unique perspective on one of the scenes, focusing not on how it looks, but on what it looks LIKE. "Write your own metaphorical poem." She selected a photo of rolling green hills and wrote a first draft about Mother Nature covered by her thick green blanket, slowly shifting under the grassy fabric over time--a peaceful napping earth. I will remember her metaphor when I go hiking over the green hills near my home tomorrow morning!