Anthology Submissions!

Tonight, the students’ Anthology pieces were due, but by the beginning of class, only three of the students had emailed me their work (I felt a bit like Elmaz waiting for our blog posts in Theories of Creativity ;)

So I improvised and scraped the formal lesson I had planned in order to give the kids nearly two hours in the computer lab to type up their pieces and review them with me before turning in final versions. The fact alone that they showed up on their spring breaks to participate tonight was enough to make me proud of them, but the work they turned in was wonderful and all work they could be proud of—I was surprised at how much it was universally about love and pain. The eternal subjects, no? But also sad to realize these kids have already undergone such hurt. I’m grateful they could express it and thanked them for being brave and honest on the page.

I decided pretty early on that I wasn’t going to be giving much beyond positive reinforcement to these kids. They are so young (14 and 15) that I don’t want to squash any enthusiasm before it has time to really bud and grow. Whenever students read aloud, I comment on what stood out or ask the class to do the same. But I keep things positive.

Tonight, since I was looking at work on paper, I had the chance to ask more specific questions, such as what a student might have meant by a certain line. I also showed them how to make the writing itself clean and grammatically correct for the Anthology and helped them brainstorm titles for their pieces. However, I knew we were out of time in terms of letting the kids work on these any more at home or make any massive revisions. While three students were able to do so successfully, the rest clearly could only work on these productively during class. Hence, the last-minute shake up!

It was well worth it. By the end, all eight students had submitted one or more pieces (I told them to submit up to five. Why not?!). One girl, Keneisha, is already going places. I noticed that she’s already been posting/organizing her work on writers-network.com, and she just writes with a sophistication and maturity beyond her years. She’s also the only Junior in the class, and I’m thinking that might be an age-group I’d like to work with in the future.

As for my computer lab discoveries, Facebook will be our undoing! Most of the kids were on it whenever they thought I wasn’t looking. And cell phones were buzzing constantly. I don’t know how teachers tolerate those distractions these days.

Bottom line though: they did it! They attended a six-week course and submitted to the Anthology. I’m still waiting on one kid who couldn’t make it tonight because he’s on a college tour (can hardly fault him that), but otherwise we’ll be at 100 percent participation!

I’ll return for a seventh wrap-up class next month, whenever the Anthologies are ready to distribute. I can’t wait to show the kids their work! Their names! In print!