On Writing. And Teaching Writing.

Last Friday, I went to a speech by Nancie Atwell, a woman who uses poetry as a window to all other forms of writing. I listened to he talk, and felt for several reasons that I was in the right profession. I agreed with her thoughts on teaching how to end a piece, teaching specificity, teaching writing outward from the self (without making every student an Ann Sexton), that poetry can teach students, in a compact form, everything they need to know about memoir, non-fiction and every other genre.

The speech made me simultaneously want to be a better writer (and stare at the five pages of a start of a novel on googledocs and shudder) and also quit my job and just write. I realized that the latter is completely ridiculous and a decided to channel the former into becoming a better teacher of writing. This is completely do-able, and, as I thought more about it over the weekend, made definitive plans about how I could do that in my classes.

Then this week, I went to get a drink after work with AB, one of my eighth grade co-teachers. Two Woodchuck Ciders later, she and I were completely ready to re-shape the world. The last time I'd had that kind of writerly inspiration was closing out the Cambridge Common with EC. It felt great to talk writing, talk teaching and talk about our thinking in a really productive way, down to the grabbing a cigarette outside of the bar stealthily so no small children caught on to our badass (or cancer-causing) ness.

By the end of it, she got me to agree to live band karokee, taking a class in creative non-fiction or memoir writing at Columbia College this fall and doing some writing together. We also talked about ways to teach writing, conferences to go present at and...and, I keep realizing that despite the lack of money, despite my constant worries, I feel like I am in the right profession. I finally feel like I know what I'm doing. Or what I should be doing, rather.

Then today, my school went to a Muslim school with this group called Poetry Pals who brings teaching artists (in this case, poets) into schools. However, watching one teaching artist, he didn't know how to relate to the kids and I pretty much (gruffly, and probably too rudely) took over the session and got them thinking about their senses--how to share common experiences.

I felt energized.

It's in these moments that I know I've found the synthesis of what I'm doing. This work is fulfilling work in ways I couldn't even imagine it being in the beginning.