We are made of stories

I love when reading my students' writing helps me learn new and wonderful things about them. Today as I was reading their passion project proposals, I learned that my student Hannah volunteers at a local animal shelter. For her passion project she wants to become a certified animal rescuer. As I was reading her proposal, I was struck by the story she told about the moment she knew she wanted to help rescue animals*:

There was this one dog that I was assigned to give a bath to. His name was Cocoa and he was a black lab. He was shaking when he was handed to me and his eyes were shining with fear. But once he was in my arms he stopped shaking and just sat there staring at me with curiosity . That's when I knew I wanted to help rescue animals.

David Coleman (the architect of the Common Core State Standards) and his ilk dismiss narrative in favor of argumentative writing in schools, but the longer I'm a teacher and a writer, the more I realize that arguments mean nothing without story.

Just look at the recent story of the walking man in Detroit. Issues don't become important or real to people without the benefit of story. Now one person's plight is bringing national attention to the lack of public transportation in the city of Detroit. We as a species don't pay attention to issues until we make a personal connection to them, and how can we do that without telling stories?

So I will continue to celebrate, embrace, and encourage my students to write stories. No matter what the architects of the Common Core think I should be doing in their stead. 


*For the sake of clarity and flow, I corrected a few spelling errors in the above passage.

Slice of Life is brought to you by Two Writing Teachers

The day the music died

I started out my college career as a music education major. My second semester I encountered a professor who broke me. He told me I had no talent and that I'd never make a career in music.

So one day I left a note on his studio door telling him I hope he is more gentle with students like me in the future, quietly dropped his class, and left the music program.

Before I turned my back on music for good, I decided for my own pride that I was going to prove him wrong. The semester I dropped out of his class, he assigned me Franz Schubert's Moment Musicaux No. 1 in C Major and proceeded to do nothing but tell me what I terrible job I was doing and how I'd never learn the piece. So I decided when I dropped out of the music program that I was going to take that piece to my longtime piano teacher -- who always nurtured my love and passion for the piano rather than tore me down -- and ask her to help me learn it for the upcoming American Guild of Music competition.

Even though I hated the piece (and I was never one who was motivated to learn pieces I hated), I was determined to learn it and prove that professor wrong. Well I did more than learn it. I won 3rd place at the competition that year.

Despite my success at the competition, the damage had already been done. That professor had sullied the one thing in my life that gave me solace and comfort.

Fifteen years later and the scars are still there. They will never fade. They will always be a part of me.

I still own a piano, but I very rarely sit down to play anymore. Every so often I'll hear a piece I used to play, like Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata or Chopin's Waltz in C# Minor, and that is a small impetus to make me want to sit down and play for a half hour at a time, but the passion and the drive I once had is completely gone.

So why share this story on my blog? I'll let you make those connections. I'm pretty sure it's fairly obvious. But just in case it isn't, I will leave you with one final question: are we building our students up or tearing them down?