I did it. I am a writer.

Hey. So, I have written a lot in my life. It has always been assigned to me. I have never written poetry on my own. I have never written a short story on my own. I have never done a journal entry on my own. (That is stupid.) I tried a few times, really I did. I liked the idea of being a writer. I liked the idea of creating poems and having people read them. I liked the idea of writing about something that hadn't happened and making it seem like it had...and that it was significant. I tried to start stuff a few times...but then I always ended up thinking...well, this is stupid and going to do vodka shots and play drinking games with my friends. #morefun

I am so thankful to the NVWP. Without the trip to WInchester where I was forced to be by myself for 25 minutes alone in front of the Civil War museum...after having journaled and journaled for what felt like forever for the last 3 weeks...I wouldn't have been able to actually write something for me. (That is what I feel all that transactional writing I have done through out the years has been...It is someone else's idea/assignment, so it isn't me. It is fake. Even the journaling seemed fake because I was just writing down the random thoughts in my head. It wasn't organized; it didn't mean anything to me.)

Because of the NVWP...I finally wrote something that meant something to me on a personal level. WOW! The silly little idea of "Wertle the Worm Wanted More" became so much to me. It means so much to me. I don't have to wait until the anthology comes out; I am a writer! I feel it now. I just finished putting the finishing touches on the story. It is a relief it is done. It is scary, too. I care what people think of it. I guess that is part of being a writer. Crap!

Reading to Write

“What have you read that is like what you’re trying to write?” is a central question in Katie Wood Ray’s Study Driven: A Framework for Planning Units of Study in the Writing Workshop. Her question struck me on a personal level. A few years ago, I decided to write a personal essay about my mom’s passing. I made some progress: I brainstormed some ideas and purchased The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present from Amazon. The book is daunting, 770 pages of personal essays. The book sat on my bookshelf for a year, and writing a personal essay didn’t cross my mind again until the ISI.

I just pulled the anthology off the shelf as I did with Penny Kittle’s book Write Beside Them (see my previous post). I truly believe that writing everyday and seeing myself as “a person who writes” has reignited my desire to work on my personal essay.

I am approaching the essays in the anthology with Wood’s question at the forefront of my mind. The anthologist Phillip Lopate has divided the book into themes and forms, such as solitude, reading and writing, analytic meditation, memoir, etc. I do not have time to read all of the essays, but here are a few titles that I intend to read as I prepare to write my own essay:

This Too Is Life, by Lu Hsun

Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin

The Knife, by Richard Selzer

How I Started to Write, by Carlos Fuentes

Amber's Statement of Inquiry: Everything in my Brain

Statement of Inquiry

Amber Jensen

21 July 2015

Where Have I Been?

So for nine years, I have been an English teacher at a public high school in Fairfax County, Virginia. Even though I’ve carried one title on my contract during that time, in reality, I have played a lot of different roles (no surprise to any teacher out there): I have been a teacher of 9th grade, 10th grade, IB English 1, and Advanced Composition. I have been a curriculum developer for Advanced Composition, a founder and director of a high school writing center, and a mentor-trainer for other teachers who have started high school writing centers. Now I am also a PhD student and a co-director of the NVWP Invitational Summer Institute.

I never imagined myself teaching high school for so long. I would have been gone long ago if it hadn’t been for the autonomy and leadership I was able to assume as I envisioned, designed, and implemented the writing center at my school. For me, it was all about an issue that gave me a chance to network with other teachers and find a voice that seemed to matter to my colleagues. It was about helping my students find that voice within themselves, too: as rewarding as it has been for me to publish an article and present at national conferences and be elected to the boards of some national organizations, it has all come together for me as my students have mirrored those same experiences in their professional development as students, writers, and tutors. Traveling to Chicago and Orlando with some of my writing center tutors to watch them present to audiences of both high school and postsecondary peer tutors is possibly the most rewarding thing I have experienced as a teacher. To have them start a blog and manage the regular publication of blog posts (read it here!), to run for and be elected to positions of leadership in peer tutoring organizations beyond their school, to have the space and autonomy to propose and implement ideas in our school: this is what teaching and professional growth is all about for me.

Where Am I Going?

As I transition out of full-time public school teaching and enter the full-time world of academia, I am headed on a path that I will have to navigate, once again, without a lot of direction or precedent. In the PhD program here at Mason, I am the only one who is still a high school teacher (in my experience, many of my K-12 teacher colleagues who start doctoral programs end up leaving the classroom altogether, which is totally understandable). In my role with NVWP and with my paired interests in Education and English, I am uniquely positioned to try to find a bridge between the two. I know what you’re thinking, and I agree: these are two worlds that should be interlaced, but unfortunately, often aren’t. My challenges include:

• finding a research interest that asks a specific enough question and ties the two fields together in a meaningful way and may provide a lens or a perspective that hasn’t already been explored in depth
• legitimizing my academic study in two different worlds that value different approaches to research, different ways of knowing, and different audiences
• sorting through all of the theories and research that already exists to find my own place
• making sense of, and hopefully making use of, my own experiences in a way that will inform and inspire the work I continue to do

Ultimately, I hope to tie together my interests in composition pedagogy and teacher voice and professional growth as a full-time, tenure-track professor in either an English or Education department that values preparing teachers as professionals. I am excited about continuing to work with my students - this time pre-service teachers - to find their own voices and the help them learn how to navigate their careers and feel empowered as change-makers.

What Do I Know?

Most of what I know is from my own experiences. I know that becoming part of a network that exists beyond my school has been sustaining and inspiring for my continued work and professional growth. I know that mandated collaboration feels like a really big pain - as does mandated professional development. I know that not all teachers are super motivated or confident to engage in the kind of work that really excites me. I know that there are bureaucratic challenges to teachers being change-makers and having a voice in decision making. I know that teaching is really, really hard work and the profession isn’t really set up to give teachers time to do the kind of reading, reflection, and research that is necessary for them to engage in this work; teaching is exhausting!

I have learned a lot from my PhD course in Public Sphere Theory, and I am excited about how some of that relates to teachers’ voices. I know that there are organizations out there that value and draw upon teacher voices, and that there are many, many great models of teachers who find value and are empowered in the work they do.

What Do I Still Need to Know?

I am curious about the ways in which certain professional organizations and career opportunities impact teachers’ professional growth. I want to know more about if and how programs like the Northern Virginia Invitational Summer Institute and its ongoing community enriches teachers’ conception of self, their involvement in wider discussions around teaching practices and policies, and their future involvement in leadership and decision making at their schools. I want to know if there is a link between teachers who feel empowered and their classroom pedagogies and professional practices - do their students benefit? In what ways? How and does a teacher who feels autonomy in his/her practice create a classroom environment that does that same for students? What are some of the barriers teachers feel when it comes to engaging with colleagues, administrators, and the wider public? What are some of the barriers students feel? Are there ways to change the cultures of the teaching profession and the classroom to bring about more buy-in, investment, leadership, and autonomy in both teachers and students?

Wendel the Worm Wants More

We get 4 pages to publish anything we want at the end of this project. What am I gonna do? Poems about love, despair, hate? (boring...) A thought-provoking reflection piece on how the program has changed me as a writer and a teacher? (everyone else is probably gonna do that...#copycat) ARGH! What am I gonna do?

THEN WE WENT ON A FIELD TRIP TO WINCHESTER...

I was trapped with 25 minutes on my hands and nothing to do...I had journaled and journaled and journaled. (Is that a word Sarah? #madeitup) Blank pages of reflective boredom looked at me. I sighed and thought I hope this goes fast...sigh...kid screaming....sigh...weird music playing from a restaurant...sigh...that kid is fricking screaming! Can I just take a nap? No...I am in Amber's group...She will notice me sleeping...I guess I will have to write SOMETHING creative. I don't wanna work on that piece from writing group...it is too deep for 25 minutes.

Then, a thought popped in my head. I have ALWAYS wanted to write a kid's book. Just a tiny, little one that takes 20 -40 seconds to read out loud to a kid. A little bit of fluff...OK! But what about? Is that a WORM in the flower box? Cool! Oh no...it is just a twisted, brown stick...
unless...

WENDEL THE WORM WANTS MORE popped into my head...and the rest went super fast...I looked up worm facts. Wrote and rewrote and rewrote.

I received valuable feedback from my writing group on Thursday. I talked to my friend's kid and he is gonna draw Wendel this week. I have 6 of 8 pages done. (It will be 1/2 pages to fit in the 4 available pages.) I feel like I have the potential to be a writer. I am not a writer, yet. I am excited that I will feel like a "real" writer within the next 2 weeks...when this is completed.

Shout-Out to my Writing Group!

A huge THANK YOU! to my writing group: Amber, Kate, John, Maggie, and Amy C.

They spent Thursday afternoon helping my get my latest Blog Post for WIDA ready for publication.

It can be viewed at:
http://widaatwcer.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-did-i-get-national-board.html