For an explanation of this project, click here.
Plants in glass vases sit on sills on one side of the Computer Lab. I think they’re real, but they’re the kind that don’t seem to need much water. Pebbles fill about a third of the vase and the green shoots out from there. I don’t know anything about plants or flowers or gardening. Maybe these plants don’t need any water to keep growing. Maybe all they need are those pebbles. If they’re real, that is.
Some of the 8th grade boys sit next to the plants. I take attendance and watch as one of them sticks his hand in the vase, grabs some pebbles, and chucks them at his buddy.
“Seriously?” I say. “You’re going to stick your hand in a vase and throw rocks? Really?”
“I didn’t do it,” the 8th grade boy tells me. “Also, he hacked my email.”
“You’re not supposed to be on email. You’re supposed to be writing.”
“I’m not on email.”
Trying to have a rational conversation with some of the 8th grade boys is like walking into a black hole. I don’t have time for it today. Actually, I don’t have time for it ever. Probably, they think I’m stupid, but I’m ignoring it. Every single person in this room has about five pieces of Creative Nonfiction that are jaw dropping fabulous, including these boys playing with the plants, and I’d rather help them with something that matters than have this conversation.
So I move on. They laugh when I turn and walk away. I take a deep breath, let my feelings be hurt for three-two-one and then I kneel down to another student. “Listen,” I tell him, “I think this is a poem. I don’t think it’s an essay. Watch me,” I take out a pen and I show him where I think a few line breaks could be. “Do you see that? Look how that reads. I think you should try to make this a poem.”
“Are you kidding me with this one?” I tell another student. “Do not change a thing.” She wrote a poem that harkens to Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son.” Instead of the stairs, she uses embers as a metaphor for growing up and keep on keeping on when times get hard. It’s stunning.
“I think your story starts here,” I suggest to another student, pointing a third of the way down his paper. “You’re clearing your throat in these sentences. Also, I want you to omit the word “grace” in this piece.”
“But I’m writing about grace,” he tells me, annoyed.
“How would you tell me what grace means if you couldn’t use that word?” I walk away.
Another girl shows me about eight memories from Kindergarten to 8th grade. She’s frustrated because she doesn’t know what to do with them. “What about writing a collage essay?” I explain that she can think of these as snapshots – photographs – that show a vivid image of a specific time period in her life. “It doesn’t have to have a beginning, middle, and end,” I tell her. I pick up my pen and show her how to make line breaks, how to design her story so the reader understands this is a montage of memories. “This part right here?” I say and point to a line she wrote. “Where you were lost and then your dad found you? That’s really good.” She was frustrated before, but she is smiling now and her fingers fly over the keys.
The boys are giggling and throwing rocks again. I walk over to where they are.
“He wrote inappropriate words on my essay,” one tells me.
“He put rocks down my shirt,” another one says.
Yesterday, Harper kicked Hadley in the head. Hadley spit in Harper’s face. Both were crying. “I don’t know what to do,” I told them. “Are you guys OK?”
It’s what I say to the boys now. “I don’t know what to do.” I am smiling when I say it because I’m going to miss them and I don’t know what to do and this is all ridiculous. “Are you guys OK? I mean, you’re both smiling. You seem OK.”
Class is over. For 90 minutes I did the best I could to bring out some truth and beauty in these kids’ writing. As they’re cleaning up, I walk over to the 8th grade boys and say, “Listen, can you just put the pebbles back? Just make sure they get back in those vases?”
They nod, dig out what’s in their pockets, and pour it into the vases.
“Thank you,” I say.
I don’t know if those plants are real. If they are though, I want them to have what they need to grow. Just in case.
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