What's Left Undone (#SOL15, Day 13)

Coming Undone (M.A. Reilly, 2010)

"I HAD THE STORY, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story." 

                                                                       Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome.

Since I first drew in the margins of Alice with thick wax crayons as I listened to my mom read to me each night, I've loved the spoken and the written word.  I've kept close to the heart a handful of characters who have humbled me, made me question and laugh, and most often made me worry.

And so it was not too unusual that a few weeks ago I was standing in a classroom at the close of day only to hear Ethan Frome mentioned.  A teacher was saying how her teenage daughter recently read Wharton's slim novel about impossible choices and even grimmer endings and this prompted her to reread the novel too. As I listened, two entwined memories came to mind.

The first is when I was 15 and reading a novel my mom thought I might enjoy. Ethan Frome. I can still see my teenage self stretched out on top of the off white bedspread reading the book--the one at the time that had no fancy cover, just plain brown with the title and author embossed--as stark as Starkfield. I didn't know then that this was one of two books I'd read in early high school that would allow me to understand that I entered into and out of texts in ways that could be unsettling, in ways that remained with me in the bits of prose I could recall and in the language that fit my mouth like no other.  I was in the throes of first love and it was too unsettling to even consider the doubts about marriage and love that Wharton raises--doubts I would not be able to say aloud for more than a decade.

The other memory is nearly 15 years later when I had the pleasure of teaching that novel to 12th graders.  I took the time to carefully write a letter to each student about the power of literature and sledding and how slim love sometimes feels so full and yet is so empty. I wished for them that they too might experience reading the novel as a profound act, not merely as a high school assignment.

It was February and the certainty of winter had settled about us when we first opened the book. Decades later some of those discussions that began in February and continued through to June graduation still come to mind.

"Were they justified?"
"Are most marriages so loveless?"
"Were they selfish?"
"What's up with the pickle dish? Is that a phallic symbol?"

Oh how we cheered the first blushes of love that Mattie and Ethan show during the dinner scene and we grew ever so quiet as we watched Mattie leave the house, and stood alongside the two on that fateful evening listening to the plan hatch--the one they thought might spare them from sure separation.

     "Ethan! Ethan! I want you to take me down again."
     "Down where?"
     "The coast. Right off," she panted. "So 't we'll never come up any more."
     "Matt! What on earth do you mean?"
     She put her lips close against his ear to say: "Right into the big elm. You said you could. So 't we'd never have to leave any more."
     "Why, what are you talking of? You're crazy!"
     "I'm not crazy; but I will be if I leave you."
     "Oh Matt, Matt--" he groaned.

Some books stay with us.  These are the ones that are never really finished. The ones we carry with us in our gestures , our actions, and our thoughts.

They help us to utter the unspeakable.

Leaning on My Reading Life When I Write: Let's Make Mentor Texts Kid-Determined

Walter Dean Myers (M.A. Reilly, July 3, 2014)

I. What We talk About When We Talk About Reading

A lot of what I write about begins while I'm reading/listening to text. Imagine that's true for you too. I read daily, often, a significant amount.

It's difficult to think about wanting to write, let alone doing it, without being a reader.  Let me say here that I use the term, reader,  in its broadest definition and I do so on purpose. I'm not talking about the close reading that is the mandate being acted out in schools as if that single method represented all of reading. So not true. There are so many ways to read and little reason to be stingy.  We ought to broaden our ways, not shrink them to a single method. It's actually kind of foolish to read in only one manner. No one I know does this.  Different texts, different purposes, different moods shape how we might want (or need) to read. Why keep this a secret from the kids? Let's teach children that power, not keep it from them.

I'm not limiting reading to putting eyes to a page, either. It's 2015 and the ways we can read continue to grow. So before we go further, think of reading as interacting with a text be it with your eyes, fingers, or ears. Think of reading as a full body act. Think of it more as co-authoring the work, rather than just consuming it. 


II. Learning in Grade 4

There's this boy in one of the fourth grades where I am working who I understand has had some struggles with reading and writing. 

He intrigues me. 

He appears to be at a critical turning point, putting together what he knows as a reader to help him with his writing and leaning on his writing knowledge to help him read better. 

Smart kid.

A couple of critical noticings:  

He has a teacher who doesn't shy away from the challenging-to-teach child. I have observed at other schools, in other classrooms children who are instructionally ignored.  They sit doing some form of busy work. This boy's teacher is not like that.  He's all about best ensuring that this youngster learns to read in credible ways and privileging the work most needed to help the child gain the skills, strategies, dispositions and muscle to read and write well.  The teacher's insistence and attention are paying off, as is the child's work. He is gathering his literacy confidence and skills around him like the cape of a superpower.

So one Tuesday morning, I was leaning over the boy's shoulder at his invitation and reading a passage he had recorded in his notebook. You couldn't miss the pride in this young boy's face.

"Really good piece. Its got such voice. You know who that writing reminds me of?" I asked.
"Who?"
"It sounds like something Water Dean Myers might write. Do you know who he was?"
The boy smiled, lifted his notebook and uncovered a Walter Dean Myers' book. "He's my favorite author."
"Not surprised you are reading him given the voice I hear in your work."

I'm reminded watching this child how important our reading lives are to the work we do as writers.

III. Mentor Texts

I read a lot about mentor texts and much of the time the domain of mentor texts belongs to teachers. There are countless books and blogs dedicated to explicating mentor texts that teachers can use with students. 

I love reading about these books and at the same time I think limiting mentor texts to teacher tools is largely a mistake. Yes I can and do share texts (print, digital, audio) I love. I share ones that have helped me to write and/or inspired me to write or forced me to write. But I don't share these as texts for my students.  I want them to simply know I lean on what I read to write.  More important: I want them to understand the habit of how text leads on to text--be it as reader or writer.  I want them to feel and know that power. I don't want them to experience that through me.  That feels too much like a form of servitude.

So I'm thinking about asking this child to co-present when I introduce his class to the idea of leaning on reading as writers. I am hoping he'll join me and perhaps talk a bit about the way he leans on Walter Dean Myers' works when he writes. I know I plan to bring a ton of books, comics, audio and visual texts with me that I hope the children might enjoy and find inspiring, perhaps--necessary. I'll leave these for the year so that they can take their time with these works. I'm hoping we have time to learn some of the ways children lean on their reading lives when composing.

In the interim, I ordered a copy of the print I made that tops this post that I'll be leaving in the classroom for this child and his peers. It was a collage I made last July when Myers died. I'll let you know how the lesson goes and the many things I learn from these kids and their teacher in Newark.