An alien with a skin suit that needs dry cleaning, an electric teacher who hides her secret and an old woman who knits clouds. These are only three of the hundreds of collaborative stories I've written with children during sixteen years of working in schools. Like most teaching artists, I have a unique vantage point. Visiting many schools creates a montage of education in practice, rather than theory. In over a decade and a half, I've seen joy fade and stress flourish until it is almost too painful to bear. Until a recent trip to Wales, I thought I could no longer work in the schools.
It was a different story when I started in 1990. I savored students' spirit and imagination. I relished showing them how to make sense of stories, how to create stories that made sense, and have fun doing both. It didn't take long to discover many students did not like writing, many teachers were intimidated by it, and some teachers weren't teaching the subject at all. But in a week-long residency, I could change a lot of minds as I shared the magic I'd discovered in twelve years of imagining characters and uncovering their stories and two decades of reviewing children's books. I felt successful as a goodwill ambassador of literacy.
Play was the best way to combat two problems I saw reoccurring in every classroom I visited where children couldn't think, nor could they wonder. Children's urge to play is as innate as their vivid sense of wonder. But somehow by early elementary school, the stories of preschool sandboxes and dress-up corners fade. I wanted to use the fun of fiction as a bridge to reclaim their imaginative talents. It engaged and inspired children more than any other genre, and it was missing in classrooms I visited.
Most curricular language arts programs devoted themselves to "real" writing about personal experiences, often in a prompt posted for journal writing. If creative fiction is covered at all in classrooms, it's generally a controlled prompt-driven writing exercise where the goal is to teach a skill set and learn to survive a test while producing a story with some kind of sense.
Personal writing is great practice for focusing and observation. "Write what you know" is for good reason, the #1 adage for all writers. But why was my favorite brand of expression so underrepresented when developing a character and a world is so much more engaging? My guess is that creative process and its lack of known rules, directions, and outcomes is scary for most educators as well as for teachers of educators. Like any creative process, writing is messy. It doesn't have tidy directions like science experiments. There are no clear-cut rules like those you follow in math applications. Most artists would be hard-pressed to detail the procedures they follow. You have to take risks. If teachers allow children to leave the path of what they can directly observe, they fear the story will make little sense. Their fears are well-founded because without direction, the fantastical can quickly become absurd. But there's that sparkling promise in each story, each is a rich journey into the unknown where anything is possible and learning flourishes naturally.
Before children even know it, before they have time to be intimidated by the task, they are immersed in questions and wondering that miraculously yields a character. Captured by character, they build a believable world based on knowing the true thoughts and feelings of this made-up person. They are free to escape the mundane, sometimes worrying, world that surrounds them as they dream and invent. As they mold chaos to make meaning, they build important thinking and decision-making skills that will endure long after their testing career is over. Add the collaborative spirit and lurking writers emerge and develop the confidence and courage for any writing mission. After a consuming story-writing process, test prompts are a breeze!
My own passion for invention clouded my understanding of teachers' concerns and fears until I took an art class and had to create a piece of visual art. I trembled with confusion looking at all materials I could choose. It was almost impossible to get started; I wracked my brains for an idea. Then I'd went crazy trying to figure out how to make my art object match the picture I had in my mind. Once I got past the thinking part, I was continually frustrated by technical difficulties. I was rarely pleased with my results. It was hard, scary work.
There was only one major difference in my feelings and those that many teachers have about writing. I didn't have to instruct children in something that unnerved me! I began to think more about how I could help teachers when I worked in their classrooms. How I could help them ignite writing for their students. I worked to harness the unmanageable beast of fiction into some kind of organizational order that would make sense to elementary students and their teachers. I turned my inventive spirit to this task and pummeled and poked at creative process, breaking down writing into manageable playful steps that built to a complete story.
After five years of finding joy in this process and convincing teachers to do likewise, I began to see a change in students. Mysteriously children became harder to engage and intrinsic motivation was all but gone. It seemed as if it had happened overnight and I queried every teacher I could find. Most suspected limited literary and life experiences at home were taking their toll. Many felt they had to compete with the glamour of television entertainment. And all felt the pressure of making up for huge voids.
In my quest to understand, I was forever changed by a conversation I had with Nancy Margolin, a thoughtful librarian friend. She asked me how many books I'd read to my children every day when they were young.
"A minimum of two or three," I guessed,
"So, if you read two or three a day, you probably read five thousand books to your children before they went to kindergarten. Does that sound right?" she asked.
"Probably," I agreed, remembering the fifty-some read-alouds I did of Goodnight Moon alone.
"Then think about children who have never been read to before they enter school. They come to kindergarten five thousand books behind. How can we make up for that gap?"
And it wasn't just literary limitations. Many children lacked language skills because the mainstream of chatter at home came from the television. I felt a growing need in children, desperation that each one be seen and heard, as if they felt invisible in life, as if they had missed the 5,000 hugs they needed to feel secure enough to enter school ready to learn.
A kindergarten teacher told me that four and five year olds came to her searching her face for the right answer. They entered school missing a willingness to take risks. During another residency I talked to a distressed fifth grad teacher who had caught a student copying the paper of another word for word, and the student denied cheating. It was as if they no longer understood the difference between right and wrong. Students were only reflecting the overbusy world that told them to take care of themselves first; a world in which celebrities and leaders showed them that they should do whatever it took to gain money and power. We were most definitely working with difficult audiences!As if things weren't bad enough the societal trend for accountability hit the schools and testing spread like a plague all over the U.S. Everyone got very serious about writing. My heart went out to teachers. I could hardly imagine teaching art with fear in my heart. I couldn't conceive of being held responsible for a certain level of student proficiency on top of that!
These writing tests went against every practice writers follow. Writers start a project because something interests them. They think a long time before they ever put words on paper. Their first drafts are usually pretty terrible and they work through lots of those before the project is finished, letting each draft "cool" between creating and rewriting. Writing tests asked students to respond to a prompt that might, or might not, interest them. They had to come up with ideas, organize them into an intelligible story, write everything down, and review their work. All within seventy-five minutes. This whole procedure happens on one day. You can imagine how well one little girl performed when she had to take the test on the day social services removed her from her home!
Tests were more about technical skills than invention, more perspiration than inspiration. To do as well as you could in the limited time you had to avoid all risk-taking and wondering.
"I had fun on the writing test, I wrote about going to school on Saturday and I made up a bunch of really cool stuff," a fourth grader told me excitedly on the day after the writing test. I admired her spirit of adventure, knowing she would not be judged well on the prompt,"My Greatest Day at School".
It was all so serious. Everyone seemed to be looking for answers and secrets. School districts recommended writing formulas. Children were asked to write to prompts again and again. Testing made writing-dread skyrocket for teachers, children and parents. Teachers and administrators asked me to come in, work with students for a week, and imagining I could work miracles and make their test scores soar.
All this intensified with George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" when the fears running society came to school and threatened state budgets, teacher incomes and even school closings. Testing became more frequent and reached lower grades. One year, I entered a third grade classroom in August to find children quietly bent over test papers. "They're learning how to bubble," the teacher whispered.
"That's a fine way to bond and begin the school year," I muttered and she nodded sadly.
"Teaching to the test" was a strategy that teachers both adopted and hated. It didn't sit well with them and yet they knew the specifics of the situation required very specialized instruction. I visited lots of schools and saw the results of testing. Teachers struggled with the overwhelm of national, state, and district expectations. Seasoned professionals changed their practices to meet these demands, leaving behind the lessons they most enjoyed teaching. Sadly, most of those abandoned lessons were the ones that had the greatest chance of changing, benefiting and delighting their students. One teacher told me she had a cabinet full of fun activities she loved to share with children. Because of all the mandated requirements, she had not opened that cupboard all year. Younger enthusiastic new teachers left after a year, confused at the paltry sum they were paid for suffering so much stress and unable to bridge the gap between theoretical education and the classroom realities.
Children became test-victims instead of young learners. They cared less and feared more, some even became physically ill when test dates approached. There was so little play and students hated work. Skill and drill had no meaning for students who had to be seduced by learning. The most difficult audience had been paired with the most meaningless course of study. I knew what it took to inspire students. They needed personal and learning connections, an experience that made sense to them, and some kind of fun. Testing didn't satisfy any of their requirements.
I proctored an exam in a high school where a student helped skew the results by spending most of the allotted time listening to music on his head phones, then making patterns in the last several minutes of the test. "If it wasn't the fifth test I'd taken this year," he told me afterwards, "Maybe I would have taken it seriously!"
Teaching artists are nothing if they aren't adaptable. I spent the past several years helping teachers meet their difficult goals. I stopped teaching the imaginary fiction I loved and worked to put a playful spin on writing tests, compare-contrast papers, and creating paragraphs.
Last year, the best writing I did with students came from a bizarre coincidence. I lost a crown in the front of my mouth and couldn't get it fixed before I had to return to teach a fifth grade class. To quell my own insecurities, I did some quick thinking.
"Notice anything new?" I asked them, tight-lipped as I entered their classroom.
They guessed clothes and shoes. I broke out in a huge grin that exposed my gaping hole. "Notice anything new now?" I asked again.
I told them I was in a quandary and asked for their help. "Would you please take five minutes to come up with an answer I can tell people who asked, "What happened to your tooth?"
There was inventiveness in "I'm really a 7 year old pretending to be a grown up." There was voice in "Let's just say that bungee jumping off the Empire State Building when a taxi is passing below is never fun". One group crossed curriculum writing, "I am really a shark and shed my teeth." And there was reality in "I tried to eat my husband's cooking." These were the best bits of writing I got from children all year!
Despite this one bright moment, I was despairing about my teaching future when I spoke with Suzanne Greenslade, a college friend who had lived in Wales for almost thirty years. It turned out she worked for the Washington Gallery in Penarth, South Wales and part of her job was to send artists into the community and honor the work participants did with an exhibition. I imagined again immersing myself in my true teaching joy-- guiding children as they developed imaginary characters and stories they cared about and told her that I'd already planned a trip to Europe and it wasn't difficult add on a teaching adventure in Wales.
There followed a string of serendipities. Suzanne contacted Cardiff's Creative Artist Support Team (CAST) for a school suggestion. They told her that schools "in the middle" were underserved-most funded residencies went to low-income schools and high-income schools could afford arts experiences. They recommended Radnor Primary, a school her own children had once attended, a twenty-minute walk from her home in which I'd be staying. The Head of this school loved my home state of North Carolina and was supportive. She said there would be no problem in allowing two upper level classrooms devote two weeks to creating writing and art. That was one of my first shocks. I am used to teachers in the U.S. so desperate to cram in their curriculum that I have become cautious about running even five minutes too long. Their curriculum wasn't crowded with testing for Wales was fighting Great Britain's insistence on standardized national testing. Radnor gave tests only once a year and those results were used to help the teachers aid their students.
I met with CAST before the residency and they loved everything I had to offer. They praised plunging children into an imaginary realm and were supportive of my collaborative approach. They showed a power point of a city wide workshop they'd run where students of all ages collaborated with classroom and creative teachers to invent art, music, dance and fiction for an imaginary island.
The plan evolved. I would work with two Year 5/6 classes (equivalent to 4/5th grade) and we'd have a week to create stories to serve as illustrative prompts for Welsh artist, Heloise Godfrey. I spent an evening planning with Heloise before the residency. A gifted storyteller and visual artist, her experience was broad. The year before she'd helped children design and paint murals in tsunami-torn towns in India. She was young, vibrant, accomplished and was excited about collaborating with another artist and using student writings as a departure point for art.
The night before the residency started my friend advised me about language differences. "Say 'trousers' because 'pants' means underwear. And say 'bum' not 'fanny.' In Wales 'fanny' refers to the front part of a woman's lower parts."
"Thank goodness you told me, 'fanny' is part of the "Silly Willy" song I sing with children," I said.
"Don't say, Willy!" she screamed. I could figure out what that meant. But I wondered what other surprises waited for me in the classroom.
During my brisk walk to the school each morning, I admired the beauty of stone row houses, mingled with children and parents of all ages en route to their schools, received a daily greeting from the lollipop lady (the crossing guard) and dodged cars that always seemed to come from unexpected directions. People nodded and smiled and seemed cheerful. I hoped I'd see the same in classrooms.
At Radnor, uniformed children scattered pell-mell over their concrete playground much as they would in the U.S. The school's security system, incongruous with the mood of city and school, gave me an opportunity to meet staff members who greeted me warmly and didn't seem to mind leaving their work to buzz me in.
I realized my foreignness garnered me some of this attention, but I relished the difference entering a U.S. school and am left to fend for myself and might nearly starve before I find the cafeteria. For a week these willing Welsh teachers unlocked doors, told me about their American experiences and turned me on to the tastiest Welsh biscuits. But what would the students be like?
The school day started as the children offered up a cheery greeting in Welsh. Immediately I felt their respect for custom, teachers, peers and learning. So often I have to begin by mustering energy to convince American children with Attitude that they'll have fun learning with me and each other. But these students were immediately intrigued. Was it my celebrated American accent? And could my process hold their interest?
During that week I never saw a student withdraw into a sulk, or roll eyes at a teacher. Teachers command high respect and respond quickly to the least rebuke, but there weren't many of those. I saw the friendly accommodation I saw on Cardiff streets reflected in the classroom. When later I checked with a Welsh woman who lived in the U.S., she told me that while there is cultural competition, personal competition is frowned on. Perhaps that explains the genuine collaborative feeling I felt.
I began by reading aloud a picture book. Some of the children were doubtful that a book with pictures would speak to them, but they indulged me. As a children's book reviewer, I choose the best of some 3,000 picture book titles I see in a year to introduce writing concepts and show students the relationship of reading and writing. Months before I'd shipped over some of my favorite emotive picture books for older children, but would they work in Wales when sometimes U.S. students need explanation and context?
I read Deborah Wiles' "Freedom Summer", the story about a young white boy who comes to understand how much his black best friend longs for equality on the first day of desegregation in their small town. I was shocked to discover these well-informed classes knew about segregation in the American South. They listened attentively to them story and then, in a discussion, told me about their perceptions of inequality in Wales. I wondered if the extra time saved on testing let teachers give a more global picture of the world. The students were convinced by the end of this activity that they would enjoy picture books and begged for another.
But I moved us along to the next activity. They were just as involved as they analyzed the book, relying on the Story Skeleton model I've devised to describe structure elements like setting, character traits, motivation, conflict, climax, and resolution.
Literary foundation laid I asked, "How many of you love to write?" In American classrooms, often only two eager hands wave in response, but in these classes I had only two negatives. "How many of you like to play games?" As in America, all hands shot up. I promised that we'd play game after game and wind up with a story.
We launched into writing by inventing a list of wacky characters. Each class chose a character and we plunged in, playing a game I call, "Wondering Questions" asking a slew of questions to understand the character. We answered these questions and from all our gathered ideas composed our narrative structure with the help of the Story Skeleton.
Then we put "flesh" on our "story bones." In small groups, students focused on scenes, making friends with the chaos of invention. They thought up images to stimulate the senses and imagined vivid verbs to move their tales along. A ruddy-cheeked girl noticed, "You get really far when you work together." Another offered, "It's great to ask other people for ideas".
Last we used games to revise and edit a series of drafts, examining and changing words and ideas until they seemed just right. A boy with a huge smile admired, "the way the story all fitted together".
By week's end we finished two stories. One classroom wrote about Zacchaeus, an annoyed older sibling who has to find his own brand of magic to rescue his little sister from an enchanted globe. In the second class we composed the story of Storm, an innocent grape who sunbathes too long, becomes a raisin, and briefly turns to a life of violence as, "his sweet side withers with his skin."
The students' involvement led them to a deeper understanding than I see in American classrooms. The play was important-winning free books by defining writing terms and earning sweets by dreaming up dialogue-but ultimately it was the story that mattered. These children could see the bigger picture. "We used games to create work without realizing it," marveled one child. Another understood that, "stories are fun to write as well as to read." My favorite comment came from a ten- year-old who said he'd learned "working together has made us strong".
My experience gave me courage and I decided I would take my Welsh cheer with me when I signed on to work in an afterschool program sponsored by the Almanance County Arts Commission in North Carolina. I also made it clear before I started that this would be a program devoted to writing for arts's sake. My primary goal was for the children to enjoy the process and the word "testing" was taboo as we created a story that textile artist, Peg Gignoux, would later turn into a Story Quilt with college students at Elon University. That Story Quilt will be sent to a New Orleans school and hung to brighten their walls and hearts.
I don't hear many whines from these twenty third, fourth and fifth graders even though they'd been in school all day long. They run into the room at 3:30 every Tuesday and Thursday, immediately engaged and excited in sorting out the story of Lightning, the butterfly who wants to take revenge on the human that captured his family. Igniting these American students' imagination with writing has rekindled my belief that, given a supportive environment, children and stories will thrive.