Writing'S in the Bag

Sheryl Lain
Central High School
Cheyenne, Wyoming

So much depends upon Ben's and Joe's arrival in the room.
In my daily rush
they
(Have you read Dragonlance Chronicles?
Will we write stories in here?)
ground me in purpose.

Later,
in drydead politics of faculty meeting,
Ben and Joe are life:
blood against white snow
dog's brown-eyed adoration
evil and good locked in mortal combat.

I agree:
I'd rather live in Dragonlance worlds than here.

Joe's reaction:

You want a respne. Im shock I relize the troubles and efforts yo goe trhough to grade we, the student's work. Your peace litturature holds enough truth to suprise me so I wrote one for you:

by Joe
So much it means for us
Mis. Lains early arival.
Now in your daily rush you answer
(Yes I've read Dragonlance Cronicles.
and Yes students do write story's in my class.)
Mrs. Lain the new life of dead politics
the very heart of our class.

Writing Down the Bones. I open the book on the airplane heading to my very first NCTE convention in Atlanta. The author, Natalie Goldberg, urges us to set up situations where we have to write. Don't just daydream about the slant of light as it strikes the house across the street, she cajoles us. Press against the inertia. Write.

Write from the center of yourself. Write and write until you shush all artificial voices--the stilted one you acquired in English 101, the vibrant one you lost in third grade when all you learned to care about was staying in the lines. Write until all that's left is the glowing ember of your own voice. Write without practicing the sentences in your head first. Write without an outline. Write without a thesis. Write, write, write, until you write from the inside out.

"Right, Goldberg," I mutter to myself. It's harder than it sounds. How to empty the mind: Kids Mrs. Lain-ing me to distraction. Parents calling to lobby for A's. Administrators haranguing about hall passes. Superintendents rattling around threats of budget cuts.

I read on. An organization decides to hold a carnival as a money raiser. Goldberg's asked to help. She agrees to set up a poetry booth. She writes a poem on the spot for each person who stops. Something like a cross between a gypsy fortune teller and a portrait artist who sketches your likeness while you wait. She makes money. She gets warm feedback.

Wow! I wonder if I can do that. It'd sure be good practice. It'd sure reinforce the Writing Project tenet: writing teachers should write themselves. It's sure be a nifty way to break into a poetry unit, demystifying poetry for kids.

I wonder about linking Goldberg's impromptu poetry idea with a classroom writing exercise I've used off and on for 20 years: Classmates give each other the gift of words collected in brown paper bags. The purpose? Using the holiday gift giving tradition, the exercise builds classroom community and it encourages writing. I give each kid a lunch bag with his name written in magic marker on the outside. Everyone also gets 20 or 30 pieces of paper, enough paper so every kid can write a message to every other kid in the room. Earlier, I'd thwacked out these 4 by 4 inch strips with the paper cutter.

It's the last day before winter break. "This is a writing day," I begin in my teacher talk. "We never take time in life-- rushing along as we do keeping up with bells and bosses and busy work. We never say what other people really mean to us. What we notice about them that's unique, admirable. So take a slip of paper. Write a person's name on it--someone from this class--and begin to write to her. Two rules: Be positive and be specific. No generic, 'I'm glad you are in this class' or 'Happy holidays.' Say what you admire, what you'd never say out loud in the hall, because we're always protecting ourselves out there. Say what you remember from second grade, what you noticed yesterday. Something distinctive."

"Write a message to each person in the room." I restate for Dylan who never listens the first time. "Hurry! We have to mail them in the brown bags before the bell."

Everyone scribbles. Concentration builds by the minute. I look at the kid in the back of the room and write:

Sarah
refuses every rule
She snorted today--just audibly.
I'd said, "Take the pass,"
when she asked to use the bathroom.

she considers
rules ludicrous.

Ah, Sarah.
Some rules are required
to stretch us,
calisthenics of growth.

We need them to break.

When none are imposed
we have no tension--
like a stretched rubberband--
to propel us forward
Without them, a vacuum.
Too much like death.

I move up the row to Dan:

Dan rides.
The Wyoming prairie is his business.
Sagebrush brushes the underbelly of his horse
scents the dusty air
its memory lodges forever--
a permanent definition of home.

Then, Jon:

Jon--
a sports lover.

You name it:
soccer
baseball
basketball
football
hockey
boxing

He knows and loves the games.
Sports bracket his week.
School's just one long commercial break.

The bell rings, interrupting a few who take longer to spell out their hearts. This year, thanks to Goldberg's impromptu poetry idea, I don't finish. Impulsively I promise, "I'll write a poem for everyone during the holiday." They hurry to finish, pack up. Kids rush out, clutching their bags, their gifts of words. Later, I hear from the home ec teacher, from the art teacher that the kids are rattling their bags, reading their notes in other classrooms.

I've been doing this writing exercise for years when Duane, the prickly-as-cactus science teacher, plants a seed of doubt. "Do you read them first? How do you know they aren't insulting, threatening each other?"

At the end of the day, after 130 ninth graders blow through, leaving behind their trail of pencils and scraps of paper, I spy Doug's bag on the window ledge. He'd started his vacation early. I've never read the contents of a brown bag before, except my own. This time I open one and read: "Remember in third grade when I moved here and you showed me where the pencil sharpener was? I'm never going to forget your kindness, even though we aren't friends."

One after the other, the slips are little warm smiles in my hand.

When school resumes after vacation, is it just my imagination, or do the kids' faces warm up when they cross the threshold into my room? "I put my bag in my sock drawer," Amy pipes up. "I'm keeping it."

"January is poetry month," I remind them. "We're gearing up for Romeo and Juliet in February. It's a play written in poetry. Gotta get used to poetic language, like a foreign accent. Pungent as lemon juice. Tight as eyes squeezed against the snow-glare. Tender as the floor burn on your knee, Jeremy." (Basketball season is in full tilt.)

"Here are the poems I wrote for you." In my head I'm thinking it'll be a little harder for the kids to whine, "I hate poetry," when right before their eyes is a poem about their favorite subject-- themselves.

"Can we read them out loud?" Dave wonders.

Dylan can't wait to volunteer:

Dylan's
off on vacation at his desk sometimes.
He wants to write his own way
no limits
and his story of the gruesome, man-eating tree
proves he should.
He learned to be in la-la land at school.
Elementary school
forced him to color in the lines of very narrow hallways.
Junior high
combed his hair flat, taming boyhood cowlicks.
But in high school,
this Halloween House of Horrors,
he finds fun.
Dylan's a Huck Finn grinning hero.

Someone elbows Jude into going next:

Jude.
Today at school
an unformed lump of clay
stuck in the mud of his own definition.

But inside
a red-cloaked gypsy
striding Zorro steps,
an Arab stalking
through swirls of his sheep and women
cruelty curling his mustache
scarlet passions firing jet-black eyes.

Alas, a desk again
so trivial a domain to contain
his rich red blood.

After everyone reads, Jason comments, "You hit every one. How do you know us like that?" and the next day, Sarahbeth says quietly, "My mom cried when she read mine."

Sarahbeth,
a Southern belle's name.
She's
sweet as sugar-coated drawl
soft as shade-dappled skin.

She's not Wyoming,
bouncing over rocks
catapulting into destiny.

She moves sedately in a green world
dropping white magnolia kisses on quiet ponds.

Build learning communities. Write down your bones. Blend the two and you have brown bags, a customized poem for each kid, and good practice for everyone. All this writing in English class takes time and courage--for all of us. It's such a risk to really write, especially in school, schools being such impersonal, bureaucratic places. I lack time and courage, too. But if my poetry isn't first-rate, it doesn't matter to these kids, enamored with the words that catch them, like a camera, in mid-stride. and if my time is short, well, these poems are worth it--I get more mileage from them in terms of credibility and cooperation than, say, scoring an essay assignment.

All this writing for one another builds a sense of belonging, of community. Adrienne writes her end-of-the-year reflection, saying what I hoped someone'd say:

Dear Mrs. Lain,

I've been a pessimist for a long time, feeling like there is no hope, sanity or love left. I hope now that I've been in our class that my sour days are over. The students left feeling like something truly good went on this semester, something so individual that it couldn't be duplicated.

The atmosphere was almost family-like. Some people tried to leave themselves out, but I wanted, we wanted everyone to be part of the whole. When we circled up for discussions, it was as though we had this strong diverse chain, even though the chain didn't notice it. I started caring about these people. They weren't sheep anymore.

When this year is over, which it soon must, I will look back and think so sweetly of these people.

Adrienne 5-7-94

Using brown bags and impromptu teacher poetry gets us all writing, writing down our bones.

Work Cited

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1986.