Where Tanner's From

If this post's title sounds familiar, it's probably because you remember an entry from a while back, Where Malik's From.   See the original writing assignment here.

I'm just stopping by to remind all of us that writers bloom throughout the year.   I get a whole lot of flowers in September, but I also get some children who are seeds, bulbs and tubers...and planted at different times.   That's pretty normal in 8th grade.

There's a whole lot of research about boys and language arts instruction, so go ahead and read it.   Don't discount what you know to be true from firsthand experiences either.   There's not one magic key that unlocks a joy of writing for boys.   The young men who are most successful in becoming writers with my style of teaching have these commonalities:

They listen to mini-lessons on writing skills.

They practice these skills in small bits of writing.

They then work these skills into larger pieces of writing.

They welcome feedback.

They recognize that writing is a craft.

They get downright metacognitive about their use of language.

They believe that the world around them is to be examined.

They know that a final draft means edits and revisions, not simply neatness.

Before you think that I am a "my way or the highway" kind of writing teacher, I'd like to say that I don't think that I am.   I can't be certain, but I am pretty sure that if I were reviewing student writing with Stephen King, Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg-- we'd at least recognize and agree upon bad writing when we saw it.   And...yeah...it's totally okay to see some bad writing from 8th graders.   I mean, they're 8th graders.   Sheesh.

I center September around some of Laura Robb's mini lessons for writers and Nancie Atwell's lesson on narrative leads.   If I can get kids using specific nouns, strong verbs, a variety of sentence starters, PARAGRAPHS, effective narrative leads and a unified topic...I feel pretty ding dang good about that.

(Pardon my shouting.   I'm still teaching perfectly kind children how to paragraph narratives.   It's December.   It hurts.   My eyes are bleeding from the dreaded BIG, FAT PARAGRAPH.   I might write a song about it.   Never mind.)

Back to Tanner.   He came into class on day one with a strong work ethic, unmatched tenacity, a kind spirit and some sharp writing skills.   Even so, his mom is pretty impressed with his current interest in getting all of his words in the right spots.   I sure do wish I could just let you see all of his various writing work from this year because he's a perfect example of a talented, developing writer who fits all of the qualities I listed above.   

Check this out.   Remember the two-sentence journal assignment I borrowed from a class I took at William and Mary?  Here's one of Tanner's entries, "It's the time of year when the smell of corn chaff and diesel fuel fill the air.  Visibility soon becomes low as the farmer takes the combine for another round."   You better believe I asked his permission to write that gem down for other grasshoppers to see.   It was feng shui perfection on the white board.

Here's where Tanner's from:

I’m from sunglasses in the rearview,

From tie straps and duct tape,

I am from eggs in the nesting box,

(Dry and Warm with a surprise inside)

I’m from orchard grass,

The yellow poplar,

Whose leaves fall every year just for me to collect.

I’m from fishbites and pellet guns,

From Pride and Horton,

I’m from the bluecollars and the hardheads,

From “How ya whole family doin’?”

I’m from “American born and Southern by the grace of God.”

I’m from Genesis and Communion,

3 inch slugs and ram rods,

From the man who died for our sins,

And the 10 commandments.

From the gray uniform stained with blood,

Whose owner long gone from Earth,

Waits patiently in the Promised Land for the ones who honor him most.

Stephen King isn't as scary as you think he is.

I grew up in a neighborhood with sewers.   After the made-for-television film of Stephen King's novel It stalked our living rooms, I noticed that formerly fearless friends no longer saw that clean patch of concrete hugging the curb as an acceptable gathering place.   Commonplace manholes had transformed into cursed portals to fear overnight.   This is the power of prose.   I remember spending a day of spring break as a teenager stretched out in my backyard reading It.   Horror is not my preference, but I loved the film Stand By Me which was based on King's novella The Body.   I decided to give It a try.

Zoom.   That book is a hunk of pages, but I was done in record time.   King's writing style is economical and his pacing is genius.   It's like getting on a well-oiled machine and zipping along a track.   Weeeee.   Even if you don't care for his subject matter, there's a lot to learn from his style.

Pick up a copy of his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.   My favorite bit of advice is to prune adverbs from our writing.   An adverb can be a blinking neon arrow that says, "This verb is weak."

Now and then, you will need adverbs, but be merciless when it comes to those that water down your writing.   Once you are on the lookout, bad adverbs become very, very, very obvious.   It's also great fun to teach the workbook lessons on adverbs and have students get the right answers and then revise the sentences that remain.   Sure, they are grammatically correct, but we can do better than that.   Really.

If you need to brush up on your adverbs, here's a link to Schoolhouse Rock's instructional film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWYmEICNgOQ

Thank you to one of my Christopher Newport University college professors who helped shape my writing style, Dr. Roark Mulligan, for donating a new copy of On Writing to my classroom.