Teachers as Writers

Once a month, I meet with a group of teachers to write. I love the uninterrupted time to compose and it helps me to experience what our student writers go through as they write. Before writing, we read and discuss Breathing In Breathing Out: Keeping a Writer's Notebook by Ralph Fletcher. In his chapter, "The Echo of the Past," Fletcher states, "Your notebook allows you to dredge up and examine past memories but it can also help you preserve memories from the present, serving as a scrapbook to collect artifacts from the world around you, items to which you suspect you'll want to return." So that's what I decided to do...dredge up past memories from my childhood. Sitting in front of the next empty page of my notebook, I began to recall a number of random memories from my simple but marvelous childhood; lining up youngest to oldest, along with my three siblings and thirteen cousins, as my mom filmed each of us on Christmas Eve with her new 8mm movie camera; each and every Christmas opening my favorite Christmas gift, a new flannel nightgown sewn by Grandma Slone, until she was no longer able to sew for her nine children, their spouses and eventually 30+ grandchildren; Saturday morning trips to the public library followed by a Slushie at Dairy Queen; Saturday morning breakfasts which consisted of two chocolate Pop-Tarts and a giant Tupperware cup filled with whole milk while watching American Bandstand (I'm old and I slept late, I know); back-to-school shopping (funds were always limited, but my mom could do wonders); and my tin Brady Bunch lunchbox which included a game board on the back along with magnetic pieces and a spinner. Oh, there are sooo many more memories I relived in that short amount of time with my notebook. When our facilitator stopped us, I was disappointed the time had ended and I was surprised at the amount I had written. I have never been able to keep a diary or a journal. I just couldn't write often enough. Then I'd feel guilty because I was "chronologically" inept. My notebook, however, allows me to jump in where I left off and it never suffers if it takes me a while to visit again. Like many of our students, my notebook is making me feel like a real writer.