Last Day!

Last day teaching at Oakland Asian Cultural Center. We workshopped two pieces. The workshop went well. I am glad that I have accomplished one of my goals: teaching helps me overcome my fear of public speaking. Yes! Practice makes perfect!

First Class

I taught my first class at Mercy Retirement Center last week. It was an amazing experience. I was warned that there might only be three or four people there, but there were about ten. Even people who could not physically write came.
They all want to tell some aspect of their history be it their own story or their families story. I love hearing these tales they can tell such wonderful stories about the bay area, like when Hayward was just farmland, or ferries went across the bay, but would regularly catch fire!
That said, it will be a challenge to get them to tell one story at a time. This last week I had them write about their names. I did not set strict standards for this assignment, but almost every person managed to outline their whole life history in the space of ten minutes, except for one woman who outlined her entire day. :>
This week I think I will work on having them tell one story. I met many of them previous to the first class and heard bits of their stories before. They all seem to come back to one event in there life that they want to write about. I am thinking about asking them specific questions about these events just to focus them on something. Later I think I might use Jin's lesson about sensory details.
Does any one have any suggestions about how to get the students to focus on one story?

Right now it is really fun getting them writing. Charlie, who is one of the activities directors there said he was impressed with how open people were and was very touched with the stories they told. One of the other program directors had said that they had tried doing a creative writing class before but people were very uncomfortable telling their stories. That does not look like it will be a problem with this class. It is quite a job to make sure there is time for everyone to talk.

My other challenge are the students who cannot physically write. They have a whole variety of reasons from sight to arthritis to pre Alzheimer issues. Last week I transcribed for one of them and Charlie did for another. It was not until after the writing assignment we found out another woman could not write. For last week, she told the class a story, but I am not sure what to do about the coming week so that she can fully participate. Mercy has limited staff and I only have so many hands.

I also realize that so much of my library is about younger people. I want to find some books about/ by people a little older to take my readings from.

4th Class

Let’s try something different today, I said to the class, then asked my friend Joyce, who was sitting beside me, to write two sentences (which I took from my student's work) on the whiteboard: “I run curving over the lawn out towards the street. I fly and fly, my blood starts pumping, and my teeth clench with the thrill of being chased.”
By looking at these two sentences, I said, what else can we add to draw the reader into the character’s world? Look at the list on the board. I pointed at the list next to the two sentences:

• physical setting that invokes one of the senses (hearing)
• dialogue
• first-person point of view
• action that provides a sense of real time (night or day, etc)
• detailed physical character description

We can add two or more of the senses, right? I said. What are the five senses?
Touch, smell, sight, taste, hearing, one student said.
How about adding smell? I said. We know there is a lawn.
The lawn might not smell pleasant, another student said. Since it is night time, the lawn might not smell fresh.
What does this tell you about the air the character is breathing? I said. What about the sense of sight? We know there is a street. We can assume there is a streetlight, right?
They nodded. If there is a streetlight and if it casts a shadow of a tree over the character’s feet, I continued, what does that tell you? They just looked at me, then at the board. What I am saying is that you don’t need to say it directly to the reader that there is a tree somewhere near the character. The streetlight casting the tree shadow says that already. It is all shown through the character’s surroundings.
Afterward we went over the last item on the list. I was glad that they had digested the technique that makes up a scene and applied it to our workshop. Hooray!

3rd Class

I love teaching! I was into the mode of teaching. Although I set my lesson plan down on the table, I did not look at it even once after the class started. My lesson plan was in my head. We were checking in. I asked the class how they felt about their second assignment. Two female students said it was hard to narrate a “slice of their lives.” Yeah, it is not an easy assignment for sure. One participant, who I assumed is an ESL student, wrote half a page with lots grammatical errors.
Another, the one who “stole” the technique from Amanda Davis’ “Circling the Rain,” said, I am going to rewrite my piece. It was hard to focus just one moment, since there are many moments to write about.
It makes me think about, said another male student, the most memorable moment of my childhood, rather than just a memorable moment. It really made me think about it.

I don’t have high expectations of the class to write well because they just begin to learn the craft of memoir writing. I remember when I was an undergraduate I did not know how to “think small” until I wrote an essay about Adam and Eve. I wrote ten pages based on the five lines from Book IV in Milton’s Paradise Lost:

As the Vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but requir’d with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best receiv’d,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet reluctant amorous delay. (4.307-11)

Yes, it was a very close reading assignment. And I had to pull my hair out in order to finish the paper up and became very exhausted at the end of Spring 2007. I wrote that essay because it was challenging. If fact, it was a very good stimulated exercise. I often find that I don’t have writing sample to imitate. I think it is best to learn by seeing how other people write. That is why I provided the class with my 1000-word writing sample (about my childhood). Two out of five students have so far kind of known how to write a slice of their lives. I am satisfied that all of them are trying.

My students are interested in writing but they are not fully revealing what they wanted to write about their lives. It is very personal, the “Circling-the-Rain” imitator said, it's hard to share it with strangers. You know.
What she said rings true to me. It is hard to build trust—especially in this five-short-week-course community.

Instead of giving the class a writing prompt, I tried something different this time. Yes, Elmaz. It is one of your teaching tricks again. It is in my pocket now. Write a list of things you owned, I said, when you were seven years old. I go first. The class looked at me. Then I said quickly: I had a bamboo stick, slippers, and a sling shot. I gave them five minutes to do this exercise. When the class was done with their list, I said: Let’s share them.
I had a blanket, Jenny said, which I am still using now, I had a teddy bear, a dog, a notebook with stories I copied from books, a library card, a pink backpack, Lego toys I used to play with my brother.
What does the dog tell you about that kid, I asked the class, when she was seven years old? They looked at me. That child was an animal lover, right? After we finished this exercise, I said: The purpose of this exercise is to guess what family background this person comes from, whether she was a playful, smart, or responsible kid, etc, etc…. by using the list Jenny shared with us.
Show rather than tell, Pamela said.
You got it, I said. See. You don’t need to say it directly in your story. Your reader can gather all the details in your story. We want craft. Writing is about craftsmanship. They all jotted down what I had just said.

This time we workshopped 2.5 pieces. Toward the end of the last piece, I think I made a mistake saying in a soft voice: Don’t ever write didactic statement like that. It might offend the reader. I shouldn’t have said that in the first place because I had no rights. The student explained to the class: The statement is talking about myself. I mean I only have one life to live…

My mistake reminds me of what L’Engle said in “The Domain of the Word”:

Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it’s dead. But we’re allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures. And that’s how I learn, by falling flat on my face and picking myself up and starting all over again. If I’m not free to fail, I will never start another book, I’ll never start a new thing. (Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity, p258)

I will pay more attention to what I am going to say this week. If fact, I am going to use the above quotation as one of my teaching tools. I am learning how to teach, just like other first-timer teachers. I have sent my student an email apology.

I was still energized when class was over. Now I think I am getting used to teaching a class. I am sure this teaching experience will prepare me for the 2010-11 graduate assistantship at Mills. Yes, I am going to teach again! More to come!