Revision

Tonight was exciting to watch. I dedicated this class to revision, as our Anthology deadline is next week, and I wanted to make sure the kids had time to revise and ask me questions. Even before class, one student brought me his poem to review for him. He had already had the Program Director look it over as well, which showed such dedication. The poem was impressive and conveyed deep, often sad emotion (Yes, Elmaz, he used the word “abyss,” but he’s only 14!) Coming from the “class clown,” this was amazing to witness. This student, Xavier, shared in the last class that his best friend had been killed recently—so tragic and terrible and no wonder his poem conveyed such bleak sadness. I’m glad he could release some of his grief down onto the page.

To teach revision techniques, I led class with an exercise where I had them read a page of draft of a story of my own, but didn’t tell them I had written it. I asked them how the piece might be improved (via dialogue, stronger images, etc.) and they chimed right in! I was impressed that they could transition so quickly to wearing their editor hats. It was also a great way to incorporate the craft terms we’ve been learning: dialogue, point of view, setting, etc.

And they were playfully shocked when I told them I had written it! I know I wouldn’t have gotten such great honesty out of them had I told them so originally. I also did it this way to show them that I, too, was willing to share rough work with them, as they have been willing to share their first drafts with me and the rest of the class. And on cue, one girl, asked, “Can we start writing?” I loved that! She wanted to get down to business.

While there were some hyperactivity issues tonight, I think I did a better job at getting the kids to listen to one another than I have in the past and to be a little relaxed about it. When Xavier took out his wallet to show another kid something, and I said: “Xavier, is your story in there?” implying that was the only reason he should have for going into his wallet, and it totally worked! I didn’t have to be super strict; I just acknowledged that I knew what he was up to and that it wasn’t in line with the quiet I had asked for during revision time. It felt great to kind of have the hang of a disciplinary moment, however briefly.

And the revision period went great. Students had lots of questions, some conferenced with me individually, and most everyone wrote studiously for the rest of class. One student, Yazmine, wanted to do new work, so I had her peruse my list of additional in-class writing exercises. She liked a rather sophisticated one about writing a story in a non-linear way, perhaps from multiple points of view (how great--I already have an experimental writer on our hands!) and she was just so visibly jazzed, asking, “Can I do this or this or that?” And it felt so great to say yes to all of her questions, to tell her to run with it, experiment, etc. She wanted to write about a school fight from the point of the view of the kids in the fight, the ones watching, the Principal, etc. (Violence is not far from these kids’ daily lives.) But when Yazmine showed me her first paragraph at the end of class, she had written all about love, presumably for one of the boys in the fight. It was a stunning point of view, and one I knew would contrast with others in the piece. And this was another reminder of the depth and the challenges these kids are navigating in life and in prose.