Diary of Writing for Social Change Research Project

June 26, 2007

In November 2006 at the National Writing Project Annual Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, I started on a great adventure. I have always been interested in teachers as researchers. I went to several seminars on conducting research in classrooms and forming inquiry groups in local projects. Armed with enthusiasm and just enough information to be dangerous, I wrote a grant to support a study group of teachers who would conduct action research projects in their classrooms dealing particularly with writing for social change. Our local site applied for three mini-grants, and our director said our chances were slim if we received all three grants. On good days, I hoped we would receive the grant I wrote and then on those dark days littered with self doubt, I prayed that we would not receive it. I had a vague plan that I wrote in the grant but no real direction. Once we received the news that we received all three grants, I felt satisfaction that my vague plan had turned into a concrete reality, yet my self-doubt clouded my vision.

In June 2007, I took the first initial step in the grant. I had planned to do this during our spring conference, but I had not laid the ground work for this step, so I waited until the beginning of our Upstate Writing Project Summer Institute. Since the groups would be based on the National Writing Project book, Writing for Social Change, and we were also looking for a text to raise the social consciousness of our project, I decided to suggest this as one of our texts. The other staff readily agreed. Our summer scholars conducted small group discussions on the book, and then we had each group report back. The teachers had deep insight into the text and made meaningful comments during our discussion. After the discussion ended, I explained the grant I had written and asked them to consider conducting this research project of writing for social change in their classrooms. I resisted my strong urge to walk around and try to pin down the commitment of the participants.

The last week of our institute, I handed out a checklist of future opportunities for our summer scholars. On that list, I included the participation in the research grant. Out of fifteen participants, five signed up that they would be interested. We had a good representation of elementary and middle school teachers. I teach in high school, so now we have each level represented. In the next few weeks, I will send out a flyer to all teacher consultants explaining this project. I hope to have a meeting with all interested after our Back to School Special conference on August 25, 2007. Our 2007 summer scholars are hosting this conference, so they will all be there. Many of our participants have quite a drive, so I would like to meet at a convenient time. Since everyone will already be at the Unversity Center, this seems to be a perfect time. Hopefully other teacher consultants from earlier years will want to be involved in this study group; and if we meet during the Back to School Special, this will also bring consultants from earlier years to the conference.

Despair

Despair polluting our lives
Daunting tasks burden our shoulders
Carving lines deeply into facial crevices
Furrowing our brows
We squint at the world in hopelessness
As our children hide their faces in shame
Too shy to face the world
The corners of our mouths
Turned down so deeply
Molded firmly in a frown
Dirty hands clutch our stained bundles
Of possessions sitting heavily on our laps
We lean towards the camera
We are the poster children of society’s failures

Reflection

Part I

Why I chose these particular pieces for my BLOG

When looking at all the pieces I chose for my BLOG, two out of four of the pieces are inspired from demonstrations. Both of those are inspired by images. It shows me what an image driven person I am, and images inspire me to write more detailed pieces of writing. "Baby Teeth" came from a picture of a snaggled tooth little girl. In my mind, I named her Claire because she reminded me of our neighbor in Asheville. I remembered my son was so upset that he had not lost a tooth in kindergarten when all his classmates had. To make matters even worse, he was one of the oldest in his class. I imagined how he must have reaacted if he had heard the next to the last student who hadn't lost a tooth, lost that first tooth before him. I named the little boy in the piece Mack because I love that name. Only the last part of the vignette is true. The craft lesson I tried to employ was putting myself in this little boy's shoes and writing from his perspective. I also conscientiously tried to think about how five year olds talk in order to capture that voice.

"Despair" came from the picture of the woman during the depression with two small daughters. In Discover the Writer Within, Barry Lane asked us to pick one emotion that matched the picture. I picked despair and wanted to make sure I matched every description and image of my poem with that emotion. I started thinking that this picture was taken during the depression. The reason this woman was in despair was a societal problem. I started writing in first person plural. I really liked the sound of the poem then because it became personal and fit in our time also not just appropriate for the 1930s. In this poem, I wanted to take the abstract concept of despair and make it more concrete. I tried to think about where is despair located in this picture, how is it clothed, and what is it doing?

"Fractured Hearts" is my third piece. My first year with the writing project, I wrote a short story that I felt represented the best writing I have ever done. The next five years I have been working on a story about a student teacher in a high school and a life defining moment that occurred in this student teacher's life. Well it is still not finished, and I have abandoned it completely. This year I started a new story about a group of five people who meet in high school. Some tragedy will occur that will affect their adult lives. They are brought back together as adults and get closure for this event. I want to show that decisions we make as high school students impact our whole lives. Also high school students are so driven by impulse, passion, etc., and the most normal teen-agers potentially can do the craziest things at even given moment.

My fourth piece was my demonstration turned into a professional article. I used the journal article Rebecca shared as a model for my article. It helped me to examine my poetry demonstration. I realized that writing poems in the content areas drives my students back to the original texts, and they ask really good questions when forced to write their notes in a different form. I need to examine their tests and also take down detailed notes on class discussions. I feel like it impacted these areas, but I didn't gather any specifics to prove this. If this article has a chance of being published, I need to take my research a step further and examine how using poetry impacted them at the end of the unit. When I decided I needed to research further to support my demonstration, I decided to abandon this as my professional piece. The night before my BLOG was due, I decided to write about my journey of writing a research grant, and a step by step diary of this journey. I have not shared it with anyone, therefore I have no comments on it yet. I plan to keep it up all year and possibly turn this into an article for NWP.

Part II

Revision (Note: Changes made in pieces occur in blue font.)

In my first draft of "Baby Teeth," I started with an image of Claire. Two people on NWP, Wendy and Brian, commented that they felt this was about Claire not Mack. I changed this in my vignette by starting with my first image to be of Mack. Also other commentators, Laurie and Brian, wanted to see if his tooth came out, so I added this to the piece. This is actually the true part of the piece. I had Mack finally losing his tooth the very last day of kindergarten. I need to add more details about how this happened. One person on NWP who commented on the piece did not understand how my husband had two rows of front teeth. I will have the mom in this piece, explain further about the two rows of front teeth.

In my second poem, "Despair," Mike and Claudia from the NWP E-Anthology gave me some suggestions. I decided to take the advice of Mike but not Claudia. Mike suggested that in the last line I say, "We are the poster children for depression." I liked making that line more personal. Claudia wanted me to rename it and put in some more specific details. I considered this seriously but decided against this because I was trying to capture the feeling of despair and wanted all my images to focus on the woman in the picture. To me, specific details weren't important. We have all worn looks of despair on our faces at one time or another.

In the beginning of writing the story I made many changes in the "Untitled Short Story." Now, I'm taking Ron Rash's advice and trying just to get it on paper. It's about twelve pages at this point, so it may be a novel instead of a short story. I agree with Ron that I just need to get it on paper, and I really feel like this is what happened to my other short story. I became so deeply involved in crafting that I lost the vision for the whole piece. But before Ron spoke to us, I posted this on the E-Anthology. NWP's Brian told me to start with another image and take out the specific name of the song. I took out the song and started with them pulling over at a scenic overlook. Natalie gave me a great suggestion for weaving together the past and the present. As adult Tina went to teach at her old high school, she would have flashbacks at different points of her senior year. This suggestion helped me to smoothly introduce the characters from Tina's high school year.

My fourth piece needs much work. I really need to do some more observations with my students this fall in order to complete it. As you read in part I, I actually abandoned this article until I can research my findings this fall with my English III students. My new article will be a diary of my Writing for Social Change action research project. I have not posted this diary, so I have not had any comments on my new article yet. I plan on writing it all year and possibly next year posting it on the E-Anthology and start my revisions next summer.

Part III

What I have learned from my classmates

I have so enjoyed the pieces of my classmates this summer. I love the voice of Laurie's writing. In this piece about her sons, she starts off with such strong verbs like trudged that represents the mood of the piece. I also like the dialogue between the boys and herself. It add authenticity to her piece. I loved Nicole's piece about the couple who met while the guy was playing the guitar for money. There is so much voice in this piece like "termite-infested guitar." The plot is so clever. I love how they pass by so many Starbucks because they are deep in conversation. When they finally stop, she has to pay for the coffee because he does not have enough money. I also love the surprise ending in Robbin's piece based on the same picture.

Baby Tooth

Mack sat on the front row staring at her with malice in his blue eyes. Claire had been the only other student who had not lost a tooth in Mrs. Hoard’s kindergarten class. Now he was the only one. Why wouldn’t his baby teeth come out? Every night he pushed and pulled on them soaking his Snoopy pillow with drool. His mother told him a story about her brother Jimmy putting a string around her tooth and the door knob. He then would slam the door repeatedly eventually pulling out her tooth. Mack put the string around one of his teeth, but his three-year old sister did not understand she should close the door.
Claire with her blond hair escaping from its scrunchy gave the class a gapped- tooth smile. Mack focused back on Claire’s words, “My tooth felt wiggly, and I kept pushing it with my tongue. I tasted something funny, and when I looked in the mirror, all I could see was blood. I started screaming, and my mommy came running. My mommy stuck her fingers in my mouth, and I screamed louder! Then, my mommy snatched my tooth out of my mouth. It didn’t even hurt. The tooth fairy brought me a whole dollar.”
Mack pinched the bridge of his nose, and squinted his eyes together as hard as he could to push his tears back down his throat. He felt the eyes of his classmates all over him because they knew he was now the only one who had not lost a tooth. If he cried, he could just hear Tommy Riley shrieking, "Mack is a cry baby, and he hasn't lost a tooth!" Mack shrunk into his desk becoming as small as he could, hoping no one would notice him.
As soon as the yellow school bus stopped as his house, he raced up the grassy hill, pounded up the wooden steps, and flew into his mom’s arms. His tears erupted, and he sobbed uncontrollably. Mom patted his back calmly and asked, “Mack tell me what happened in school today.”
“Nothinnnnnng.” Mom pushed Mack back to arm’s length, and lifted his chin gently, so he had to look her in the eye.
“Tell Mommy what happened at school today.”
“I’m the only baby in my class.”
Mom’s eyes widened, and her voice volume rose one notch, “What? Did someone call you a baby?”
“No,” Mack said as he twisted the toe of his sneakers into the muddy brown carpet.
“What happened?”
The sobs began to heave inside of Mack and welled up once again as he thought of how unfair that he was the only kid in kindergarten who had not lost one baby tooth. “Dumb Claire lost a baby tooth.”
“Oh, I see. You are the only one who hasn’t lost a tooth.”
“Yeah. Why not mom? How come you made me this way?”
“It’s probably your dad’s fault. Did you know that he had two sets of front teeth, and the dentist had to pull out one set?”
“Gross! Poor dad.”
“I could take you to the dentist, and he could pull out your tooth.”
“NOOOOOO!” Mack began a campaign to make sure he lost a tooth before kindergarten
was over. He pushed and pulled on his teeth every night. Then one week before kindergarten ended, he noticed one of his front teeth wiggled a little bit. Instead of pushing and pulling on all his teeth, he now concentrated all his effort on this one tooth. Mack's mom and teacher nagged, "Get your hands out of your mouth." He ignored them. This desire to lose a tooth became his focus!
Friday, June 1, 1985, D-Day. Mack's tooth had to come out today. The students trooped outside for the last day of kickball. Mack was chosen as pitcher. The very first pitch, Casey walloped the ball, and it soared straight at Mack's face. Before he could put his hands up to protect his face the ball smashed into his mouth with a force so strong that Mack careened backwards and ended up on his rump. Mack touched his numb lip, and it felt bigger and funny. As he brought his fingers down, he saw the blood, red and gooey, covering his fingers. He opened his mouth to let out a howl, and felt something hard plunk onto his tongue. Could it be? Had he lost a tooth? He snatched the little tooth from his tongue and his howl turned to victory yell, and Mack jumped to his feet waving his little prize in the faces of his stunned classmates. Mack could now go to first grade with the same gapped-tooth smile of all his peers