Teaching - Week 8, Finale - Thursday 4/24/2008

The view from inside the classroom.


Everyone's working on their final project.



It's pretty great when they're concentrating!

The last class went well. We had a good project to work on. The teacher who works with them during the day had them take photographs of each of these concepts before I arrived, and then we wrote about them.

How do you see yourself?
How do your parents see you?
How do others see you?
How do you look when no one can see you?
How do you see yourself in ten years?

I also wanted pix for “How do you want people to see you?” but she’d run out of time.

We did extra writing about how they see their parents, and what they find most interesting about their parents (M came up with that question and “Do you trust your parents?") and more questions about how they see themselves in 10 years.

I’d taken a group photo on the first day and then again last week, and they had copies of both of those to finish up writing with what Taking the Reins had meant to them, their favorite and least favorite parts of it (no one said the writing class for either, which was a good break even, as far as I’m concerned). The last question was “What would you tell someone who is considering coming to Taking the Reins.”

Most of them said things like “you will love it” or that you have to watch your feet so you don’t get stepped on!

One of them said, as we were leaving, “We won’t ever see you again!” She says she wants to be a teacher when she grows up.

It was a good experience. I will probably teach again in some context. I did offer to help them with fund raising events and to substitute if they need someone down the road here and there.

Thanks so much to Mags for getting me involved with this wonderful organization!

Teaching - Week 6 - Thursday 4/10/2008

Iron cowboy silhouettes. We see these up our way every so often. This one's at the entrance to the stable.



Kind of impressive huh?


My kind of traffic jam!

My little class pretty much finished up rewriting Cinderella and making little books out of the rewrite. Half of them didn’t have time to read theirs yet.

Because most of the girls have a heck of a time writing sentences, I made up a story with lots of spaces for filling in names and details and sometimes full sentences. Two of the Cinderellas that we heard yesterday went clubbing, one went to a carnival (her details were great!)

The only big problem with the fill-in-in the blanks story was that it was a little long for reading aloud, especially since the basic story is exactly the same. So… I don’t know. (If anyone wants to see it/use it, email me and I’ll send you a copy.)

The little breakthrough was very cool. A—who typically just says “no” when she is asked to do just about anything, actually wanted to read second! Her hand went right up.

Last time, she said no she wasn’t going to read and was acting all embarrassed, and I pointed out in a friendly way that she was really just drawing more attention to herself by taking up time pretending she wasn’t going to read. “I want to hear what you wrote and I know you’re going to, so why not just go ahead?”

Hmmm. Maybe that made sense to her! (Or maybe it was just a fluke!)

The Morning and the Evening - Thursday 4/3/2008

I was running late getting out of the house when Hydra called and warned me to stay off the freeway. He could see the 14 was backed up where he crossed over it on Escondido.

Good thing, too! It was moving briskly at my entrande, but it turns out there was a SIG alert down around Agua Dulce. (A SIG alert means that it will take you at least 20 minutes longer than normal to get through a place.)

There were two big trucks with these generators or whatever on Sierra Highway. They'd apparently gotten off at Crown Valley to have some breakfast at Mickey D's rather than waste fuel in line.

I took off down dark Sierra Highway where everyone was uncommonly sensible driving through the dark and rainy morning.



When I arrived home, I was talking to Mom on the cell and she asked what it was like. I took this while talking to her and describing how the light was beginning to slant across the neighborhood. See how the gazanias to the left are starting to close up for the night, while a couple on the right are still basking in the sun?

I had a really good time teaching today. I think this is how it's meant to be, and that I'm getting my footing at last. I realized that both times when I talked more, the class actually went better. Huh!

We talked about how there are basic stories that are told over and over again with variations, and that the details are different. I asked how their parents met and told them how mine met. We're gearing up to rewrite the Cinderella story.

I've Got Class - Thursday 3/20/2008

I had a great time with my girls! We went to the park. M, above, is holding a puppy that was there with it's little girl master.)

It’s really great to have some space to stretch out in. The guided mental walk went really well. Afterward, I let them play on the playground equipment while I made sure I could make out their writing and then read it aloud to them. They could opt whether to claim their writing or not, and all of them ended up being proud of it. I think they liked hearing me read it. (This was from my sister’s notes about the guided walk.)

We decided that next time we’ll write about Easter a little and that we’ll write love stories. They were all really excited about that. I told them to bring a picture from a magazine or whatever of a boy, if they want to. What kind? Something that will inspire you to write a love story. General excitement.



S hanging upside down. What a great smile.

At the end they hung around with me instead of scattering and M, who I thought would be trouble, but who really brings a lot of creativity and energy along with her slight mouthiness, asked me what inspires me. I thought about it and said that finding beauty in places that don’t seem very beautiful inspires me, and pointed out a stack of scuffed buckets. They pointed out flowers, and the wood of the table, and we enjoyed the way the sunlight shone through the drips of sap on the canvas over the outside table, and the pine needles poking through the netting.

“What inspires you about this place? Other than Me?” (M again, too funny.)

“Honestly, you girls.”

I told them I want to come back because I love what they’re writing and I’m interested in hearing more and getting to know them better. They really heard me, which was a neat moment. They all were saying “Bye, Miss!” at the end instead of just running from me. Yay.

The only thing I regret is that some of them weren’t there…only six today. But they want to be sure to go back to the park with the others.

Amazing. Before the class I was SO TIRED from staying up late working on the class prep, from working 3 9 hour days in a row, coming in at 5:30 this morning so I could finish work before the class. I think that being worn out made me less inclined to make them toe the line (though I don’t think I’ve been brutal), and we had a better time.

Pre-Apology Bagels - Thursday 3/13/2008

In an effort to pre-reward the generosity of my coworkers who are about to cover my researcher-eating shows for a day, I brought in gigantic fresh bagels and cream cheese.



From inside "my" classroom at Taking the Reins.

Believe me, if you had told me when I was twelve years old that I would one day teach creative writing in a converted stall, it would have made complete sense to me. More sense than my living in California.

I made sure I had enough material to get through the whole two hours. One girl didn't come back, but there were two new girls in her place. I think I worked them a little hard, and they might have felt a bit like this gecko.

Big Day! - Thursday 3/6/2008

Started out the day with a little excitement. One of the other patrons of Sitton's Diner was outside having a smoke when he saw a trash truck come around the corner, smoking. The driver (wisely) dumped the whole smoldering load onto Tujunga Boulevard where it quickly achieved true flamedom!

A little passel of us left our coffee to ooh and ah. One of the servers called 911 on her cell phone. There seems to have been a lot of fire in my life in the past year. I'm more of an earth-type.



Some of you are aware that I started at Taking the Reins today with my own class, once a week for the next eight weeks. Another challenging experience.

Of course it's challenging, I don't know anything about 13 year old girls and I don't know anything about teaching!

The first half of the class went very well. We talked about them and their experiences of the day, etc. The best part was when one of the girls said she'd written a haiku, and we made one up on the spur of the moment. First line was about horses, second was about the weather, and the third was about horses and the weather...we actually wrote about 4 good last lines because they were all calling out ideas and counting syllables.

I sort of crashed in the last half of the class, having run out of stuff for them to do. The main skill I need to work on is getting them to talk more about the questions I bring up. Also need to figure out how to build from simple to something more complex that feels like a satisfying little project for the class period. I have great notes from Mags, but I need to relax a little, too, I think.

An unexpected challenge is that 3 of the 8 girls have done the program before. So their answers to questions like "What did you expect today?" and "How was the experience different than you expected?" were "I expected what happened and it happened."

I think they have a dampening effect on the other girls talking about their fears about dealing with these huge horses, because they're very comfortable. Also very energetic. Did have to separate two of them at one point.

The class was bored toward the end and could probably sense I didn't know what to do with them. I had them draw pictures of what they did. Didn't realize till I was telling about this later, but many of them drew the river, the ducks and the mountains. But they all left out the 20 feet of concrete on either side of the L.A. River (the bed is at least natural at this point with rocks and algae clumps and reeds) and the busy 5 freeway between the river and the mountains.

As my sister pointed out, they've already begun using their imaginations to change the way they represent the world and this is part of what we do in writing. I'll be sure and bring this up next week.

They were all disappointed that they only led horses and didn't get to ride. Hmm, see, there's an opportunity missed. I could have asked them to write about that and about something else they were disappointed about in their lives.

Skills I need to build:

-listening and being more spontaneous within the general framework

-creating my own class plan (even if it riffs heavily off of Mags's plan) so that I don't feel I have to refer to notes etc.

My mom, sister, Mags and other friends have been so helpful in listening and providing ideas for future exercises!!

In all honesty, I did go home and have myself a little cry because it was stressful and I want to do this well, and I am SO uncomfortable not knowing what I'm doing. But I'm glad I had myself a cathartic little private boo-hoo because I woke up feeling more clear-headed this morning for it. (Big Baby!!)

Parking and Teaching - Thursday 2/21/2008

The door leading from the parking lot into India Spice's deli. If I had noticed that I was walking through a parking lot, I might have moved my car off the street.

By the time I came out a parking officer was giving me a ticket. $40. Kind of offset the delicious $3.99 lunch, pricewise.

Poor parking officer. I wasn't nasty in the least. I hadn't even thought about putting money in the meter, I was so full of positive fog when I arrived. He couldn't appreciate my being friendly at all.

I will never become a parking officer. How awful to have to shut yourself down like that.



I was on my way to substitute teach another writing class at a nearby equestrian center. It went really well. I hadn't met the girls before. They were amazing.

I actually had fun this time. Karin, who teaches them riding, etc., had them take a bunch of photos last week to illustrate various things regarding how people see them and how they see themselves, and then this week I had them make little books out of the photos and they did little captions for them.

Wow, was it interesting! They’re so clever, these 12 year olds. One of the questions was “How do you look when you no one can see you?” They work in pairs, so they can take photos of each other. One girl said she was sleeping when she was alone, so her photo was of her with her head down on the table on her crossed arms with her hoodie pulled up over her head. Another said no one could see her when she was in the bathroom, and her photo was of the LADIES restroom sign. Made me laugh. One said no one could see her when she was nude, and she had a photo of herself wrapping her zippered sweatshirt tightly around her body and peeking out. :)

I'm looking forward to having my own class for 8 weeks, starting in a couple of weeks.