“I’m stuck. I can’t pedal!"

That was my nephew’s frequent cry during his attempts at maneuvering his new tricycle. The wail invariably came with a stuck-out lower lip on the verge. 

That is me in my writing.

That is Spring in my backyard.

That is my students when they say they have nothing to write about.

Time Blindness

I am a late person. 
Timeliness is elusive.

I lose time.
In a mere blink,
One last look,
Five minutes are gone.

I need deadlines
But I can’t meet them.
I am pushed clockwise
but not fast enough.

I magically believe
I can squeeze
a forty-five-minute time span
into a quarter hour.

The future is ethereal.
There are no plans
for two days from now,
a week ahead, a month coming up.
Future time is too far away.

Prompt people, Time people
don’t understand.
They see tardy time
as a weakness, a 
lack of being thoughtful.

They are people who hold and secure time.
TIme is a gift they easily tame.
I chase, lose and forget time.

                        Creative Commons Photo by Bobistraveling
Poetry Friday

So We'll Go No More A-roving
by George Gordon Byron

So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By light of the moon.

As a teacher, I ask students to write all the time. Yet my participation in the Challenge has pushed my thinking about why some students struggle.

External events. Why write when there are huge events happening in your world/home? After reading about and seeing the aftermath of the earthquake in Japan, it didn’t seem like I had anything significant to write about. Every topic or moment seemed inappropriate and empty of meaning. I need to think about helping students see that just the act of writing will help them. It gives them a voice and a tool.

Internal Critic. How do you silence that voice that tells you that you cannot do it? Or how do you overcome the feeling that what you have to say is not that good, not that creative, not that worthy of being written down? What works to overcome these attacks? Writing: even if you don't feel like it. I need to make “Keep writing” as a mantra for my students.

Over-thinking. A cousin to criticism. Over-thinking paralyzes you. It makes you rule out topics, ideas and feelings that make you vulnerable. It says “This far, no further”. Over-thinking creates barriers that restrict your writing. It points out that you shouldn’t write about a topic because someone already did. I think it is only time and practice that will help create a feeling of confidence. What I can do for my students is to make sure they feel they are writing in a safe environment.

Validation. I always make sure to find and share with my students something good in their writing. The Challenge has underscored the value of how these external comments, someone else’s observations, make you feel visible as a writer. As young writers, this encouragement is needed to keep them going.

I read a variety of genres but mysteries, especially if they are a series, are my first love. I devoured the Bobbsey Twins, Cherry Ames, Encyclopedia Brown, and it almost goes without saying, Nancy Drew, as a child. 

I draw on my history with Nancy Drew when I talk about reading behaviors (and/or begin a mystery unit) in school. Nancy Drew was not just a character in a book, I tell my students. She is someone who I know well. I shock the students when I start rattling off what I still remember nearly thirty years later: Nancy’s “titian” hair (who had ever heard of that?), her widowed father attorney Carson Drew:  housekeeper Hannah Gruen. And of course, there were Nancy’s best friends George, the tomboy, and her cousin Bess who was always plump. I could go on about Ned and the mysteries themselves, but I will restrain myself..

My students always ask how I remember all of this and why. I tell them as I read, I became part of these books. I was in the state that all readers want to be: inside the book. I bonded with Nancy or Ms. Marple and worked to solve their mysteries with them. Reading let me be a detective. Reading created these life-long friends.

Today when I downloaded the latest book in a series I am now following, I felt the same sense of anticipation Nancy always did when she stumbled on a new mystery.

Piles

Stacks
disheveled
tilting, leaning

drooping paper
expanding exponentially
teacher-originated
books, articles, binders

towering 
accumulating a-mass
infinite infiltration
bedroom, family room, desk...

resistant, replenishing
looming, haphazard
overwhelming
creeping chaotic clutter

Perpetually on the to-do list
Not checked off today.

Poetry Friday
Astrophel and Stella XXXIX
BY Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low;
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease
Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw!
O make in me those civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland, and a weary head;
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.