Tuesdays are for slicing about life. Join us at Two Writing Teachers!
"So what's the name of your character?" I asked D., a fourth-grade student. His class was in the second week of their realistic fiction unit, and I was in the room for the first time, trying to orient myself and learn names. That being said, I expected everyone to have at least a character. D. was not one of the students his teacher had expressed concerns about.
"Sirius Black," he answered after a few seconds of hesitation.
Uh oh, I was thinking. "Let's hear about him," I said.
"He's a wizard," D. said. "He does all kinds of magic things."
In my head, I was thinking about how I was going to get D. back on the track of realistic fiction. Out of my mouth came the words that we'd talk in a few minutes-- I was going to hear from some other students about their characters.
When I circled back to D., I had another couple of students in tow with different but related issues. Characters who were in college or high school, one girl with a character whose name was another child in class.
"Here's the deal," I said, proud that I had a quick lesson to show to a new teacher. "We need to have a few constraints about characters in our realistic fiction lesson." I explained the importance and meaning of the word realistic, the need for characters to be within a couple of years of our own ages, and the potential for hurt when there' s character whose name is that of a classmate's.
The students were compliant, and yes, they did move on.
But I wish I'd handled that situation differently.
What if, instead of telling D. he couldn't have Sirius Black be his character, I'd talked to him about how much he loves magic and the Harry Potter books. What if the conversation had spun into his reading life and some shared interested we had? What if I'd even let him contemplate some fan-fiction oriented stories that revolved around D's own version of Sirius? What if...
D. is NOT a student who writes a lot-- I got that quickly. This morning I'm beating myself up for stomping on his potential engagement. Later, when I'm in his class again, I'll make sure I honor him and that my interest in and respect for students comes before my obsession with getting them to write. Relationships matter. I can teach them a lot of things when they know I care about them and respect them.
Happy Slicing,
I am a character
ReplyDeleteout of compliance
... once again ...
sneaking my shadows
into the lines of notebooks
and minds of writers;
I'm elusive, my fingers
folding walls until you hear
the call of story,
and begin ...
-- a poem inspired by your post, and my reaction was, I've done that -- pushed a young writer in a direction that I realized later would have been better left unpushed, and regretted it. The reflection will help the next time.
Kevin
I love Kevin's poem, and I am struggling with the feedback on my students' writing too, so your post is timely. They wrote personal essays and I want to honour them while helping them write - it is always a balance but I think I will err on the side of relationships first.
ReplyDeleteThanks you for a thoughtful post.
We've all been there ... but we may not own and reflect as beautifully as you! I think if you tell D what you have been thinking you will teach him many life lessons! Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI love this last line: I can teach them a lot of things when they know I care about them and respect them.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to talk to D will help build that relationship for sure!
Sometimes we go back and admit that we wish we could’ve handled things differently. For many kids, it’s one of the few times they’ll hear this from an adult. And that is sure to build a strong relationship!
ReplyDelete