Exploration and Discovery

Exploration and Discovery
The Outdoor Classroom

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Day One and we are off!

Day One TCRWP

Seeing Lucy Calkins for the first time in the doorway was definitely a "Rock Star" moment. Being jet-lagged and overwhelmed by the number of teachers who already had their canvas bags in hand did not take away from the moment. After wending my way to the beautiful Riverside Church, sitting in pews that have witnessed many historic events, listening to her keynote speech I was even more impressed by the depth of this woman's knowledge and the generosity with which she shares it. 

My first session was Whole Group 3-5 and also led by Lucy- YAHOO- how did I get so lucky? We wrote, learned and laughed for nearly two hours. I won't try to summarize all that I heard and learned here, but I will link my notes after I have transcribed them. One image that stands out was her description of something that Katherine Patterson refers to as "pearling"> "cupping your hands around a moment and building a story around it" or "growing meaning around the grit", that it is this building significance from moments, lives, and texts that makes a writer. Lucy impressed upon us the importance of getting kids to write a volume of work, to have them writing fast and furious in order to for them to learn how to write with fluency, to write with an oral quality. Not only do I feel confident that I will leave this week a better teacher, I am sure of becoming a better writer. 

One key take-away for me yesterday was the importance of "staying inside a point of view" when writing narrative. Lucy told two versions of the same story of a young boy riding his bike down a huge hill, hitting a gravel patch and crashing: in the first telling the writer stayed inside the point of view and the other, after crashing the writer describes what other people, not the injured boy, are seeing. It was the first time I had so clearly understood why some student's story felt like they went off the road. As I continued to write for "homework", I was very conscious of each time I slipped out of my own point of view, and as a result the piece is more powerful and more personal. Thank you Lucy!

SO much more to share about the day- the small group session with Gerrit Jones-Rooy and the closing workshop, "Eight Books that can become CO-Teachers..." with Grace Chough, but it is Day Two and there is more to come.

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