President Saigo's appreciation for teachers shone through. As he gracefully exited, we were left silent, speechless, touched. Leadership with heart, leadership that connects. Developing ourselves, our students, our professsional communities. This is how I think of the leadership we are developing here, the OWP teacher leadership.
John's blog post ('informational writing' in the genre of poem, sub-genre: limerick) captured not just the content of yesterday, but also the spirit of the past three weeks: connections, appreciation, community, openness, humor, respect, risk-taking. All of it—all of our teaching, our writing our lives—us always a draft, always in revision.
"How many speeches have I torn up? Ray Saigo asks, rhetorically of course. But as Rick Taylor reminded us last week, "OWP makes you enough of a writer" to embrace the revision process, to understand that it is the revision process—the ability to revise— perhaps above all else that we are teaching our students. "There is no great writing, only great revising," noted Justice Brandeis (this quote didn't quite make our 2014 T-shirt, but came in second after "To Funny!").
This morning, reflections on the past three weeks flowed freely. Notebooks, hearts, and minds were all full. For my part, I've rediscovered my writing self, the writing self that extends beyond the project report, the grant proposal, the course description, the newsletter article... to writing that gets to the essence, that distills experience through words. I've written poems:
Skinny-dip
At the bend
in the river:
blue glass,
icy thrill.
(thanks, Heather). I've written six-word stories (thanks, Cindy), and a mini-story by a mouse about an obnoxious transluscent cheeseball. Heck, I've even written dialogue (thanks, Kim and Amy W.)
In a world of frenzied professional obligations that seem to press ever closer ("They tell me to be a freighter..." thanks, Amy S.), it has been a delight beyond words to immerse myself in a professional community of writers and teachers who know the importance of full minds, full notebooks, and full hearts — and are willing share them all. (Thanks, Sasha, for helping us uncover what's in our hearts, and connect it to our writing and teaching.)
We have broken free free of the tyranny of 'text types,' to the excitement of real-world genres. Whether we can identify a writer's gender or not (thanks, Nancy!), we are certainly more attuned to the way our language choices convey identity, and the importance of empowering students to have a voice on issues that matter deeply (thanks, Carrie!).
"I remember the time" (thanks, Andra) when John brought in "a table full of violence "thanks, Amy S.), and we all wrote stories about objects we had never seen before. "The rock has a thousand stores," says John. We conjure up just twelve of them, and it turns out to be exactly as Cindy explained last week: "There isn't a story, and yet there is."
And why? Because "your brain is genius. Your brain extrapolates every day." John tells us this; this is what we must remember to tell our students: "your brain is genius."
As President Saigo pointed out, writing is a deeply private experience. This writing together has challenged us, changed us, and at times tested us. "Type quieter, you're driving me nuts!" Carrie says to Heather. And that exhortation, that expression of what really "fries her bacon," says so much of what we have experienced as a community of writers: honesty, authenticity, the attempts to speak our truths with each other, the willingness to bring our full selves to the process, to agree or disagree, to let others push us a little further along the way of what it means to write, to teach, to be human, and to do what is meaningful.
Jeanne asked us: "What is a treasure?" Surely, it is this:
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