Bud the Teacher

    I’ve got a piece in today’s Fort Collins Coloradoan on fear and writing and basketball.  The best part is that my students were a big piece of this column — I basically gave myself their first writing assignment and was able to model for them what I wanted them to do — take an experience from their lives and relate it to writing — while getting their feedback and participation in my process.  Real life workshopping in action.
    Some days, all the bits of the universe line up — those are the best teaching days.

    A couple of weeks ago, I submitted my final newspaper column for the time being.  The newspaper is going to replace me with student writers, which is quite fine with me.  I’m a writing teacher — I love it when kids have something to say AND a place to say it.  The local newspaper is a great forum for students.  That said, though — if you need a weekly newspaper columnist, let me know.  I work cheap.
    Anyway, here’s the last piece.  Hope you enjoy it.
_________________

When I was
in high school, my father wrote me a letter out of the blue.

It was a short piece, a one-page
note about the excitement of the “adventure” that I was on (I was on a church
mission trip at the time, and was not told where we would be going or what we
would be doing until we arrived.). My
mother also wrote a letter, making for quite a special moment when I opened the
“care package” from home.

I still
have the letters in a box of treasures that I’ve kept from my childhood. I’ll always have them, because the words are
permanent, forever there on the paper for me to read and reread whenever I need
a reminder of that special time. I also
keep a collection of the letters and cards my wife has written for me. They are in a special place where I can reach
them whenever I want a reminder of special moments.

Writing is
a way to make a mark on the world and on the people and issues that we care
about. We write to share our
experiences, our questions, and ourselves. At school, we teach students the conventions of writing so that they can
communicate their thoughts, ideas, questions and experiences with whomever they
choose to share them.

December being
a month of gifts and giving, there is no better time to share your writing with
the people who are important to you. Here are a few prompts that you might use to complete a writing project for
someone special this holiday. Sit down
and try to get some writing done. You
might choose a night as a family to sit down together and write presents for
each other this year, or for family members in faraway places that can’t be
with you. Remember to use all of your
senses in your writing – each sense of taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight
can bring something special and memorable to your essays, stories, letters and
poems.

1. Write about how your family spends the holidays. Who or what makes that time together special? What unique family traditions do you have? Ask someone who knows how they might have gotten started and write down what they tell you.
2. Think about the places that you travel during this time of year. Who do you travel with? Where do you go? How do you get there? Have any crazy things happened during your travels? 
3. In many families, holidays involve some pretty important shared meals. Write about a family meal that you remember as being exceptionally good or special or downright unusual. Was it the quality of the food? A special family dish or treat? Smells or tastes? Who was there to share the meal with you? What made it such a special or strange occasion?
4. Put all of the names of your family members into a hat. Ask each family member to draw one name. Write about the family member that you’ve picked. What makes them unique or special in your family? What would you like to tell them that you’ve never had the time to say or share? Is there a special memory that you have that you would like to get down on paper? Take an hour as a family to write about each other.

Whatever topic you choose to write about, make sure that you
share your writing with your family. You
can publish in a variety of ways:

• Send out the best family writing in a holiday letter or card.
• Box  and wrap special pieces and give them as gifts.
• Post all the writing on a family website. Share the website with friends and family all over the world.
• Type up the good stuff, frame it, and hang it somewhere around the house where
        you will see it regularly.
• Set  aside a corner of the fridge for your writing. Take turns being the “featured author” at home.

Take the time to write with your family. You will truly treasure the stories and
experiences that you have to share with one another.

Bud Hunt is on the board of the
Colorado State University Writing Project, teaches at
Olde Columbine High School in Longmont, Colorado,   and blogs at www.budtheteacher.com. Send e-mail to budtheteacher@gmail.com

    Here’s my most recent column for the local paper.  Hope it’s useful.  Are any of you participating in NaNoWriMo?  I’d love to hear your stories.  I thought about joining this year — but my life is just too full.  Besides - -I’m doing the nonfiction version of NaNoWriMo through this blog.

—-

 So often at
school, one of the biggest challenges of teaching writing is not to help
students with the finer points of writing so much as it is to help them get
started actually writing. Once a student
has an idea that they care about, the writing comes easier, and we then have an
authentic reason to discuss writing with students.

 That can be
tricky, though, as every student is just a little bit different. What is motivation for one is not always
motivation for all. To get all students
writing, and writing more, I need a really good hook, something to get everyone
started. The real world is no
different. Many people want to write,
but need a reason to do so. Luckily, the
month of November provides just such an opportunity, and it costs absolutely nothing.

National Novel Writing Month,
founded in 1999, is “a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought
fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and
effort involved,” according to the sponsoring group’s website. The group is expecting 60,000 participants
worldwide this year, all passionate people who want to get some writing
done. 

Robin Dean is the regional
coordinator for NaNoWriMo 2005 for

Fort Collins

. She says that about fifty

Fort

residents are
participating in this year’s event. In
an e-mail, she told me that, “there is an astonishing diversity of backgrounds,
interests, and writing experience among people who attempt NaNoWriMo, which is
a big part of the fun.”

I discovered the event thanks to
one of my students, now graduated, when she began her first novel last
year. She’s at work on her second
now. 

The whole goal of NaNoWriMo is that
every participant write a novel of at least 50,000 words. The group’s website consists of writing
resources, forums, a handy word counter progress bar, and a meeting place for
frustrated or excited writers to get together and discuss their work
together. “Winning” the contest means
that you make the monthly goal of 50,000 words. No prizes, no grades, and certainly no test scores.

It’s an English teacher’s dream. Do
I expect that every novel produced by participants in NaNoWriMo to be the
finest literary creation ever to see light of day? Of course not, and neither do the NaNoWriMo
organizers. However, seven participants have managed to find publishers for the
work they produced during previous years’ events.

But it’s not about that. It’s about taking time to write and about
practicing writing.

While classroom instruction in
writing should take time to focus on grammar and the details of writing well,
we also need to take time to honor the biggest reason that people write – their
passion for the subject and for the writing itself. NaNoWriMo encourages and focuses on passion,
and asks writers to let their minds and imaginations run wild through their
words. Punctuation can wait until the
second draft. 

Too often, schools and teachers are
too focused on the details and teach the passion right out of students’
writing. When we do that, we fail.

 It is not
too late to join in the fun, if you are feeling up to the challenge. Families might even want to try NaMoWriMo
together. The practice will be good for
everyone’s writing abilities. The group
has a page, called the Young Writers Program, set up for the under-18
crowd. It even features a weekly
vocabulary lesson along with other motivators for students.

Parents and students can use
NaMoWriMo and the resources available on their website as great writing
starters. Pick a topic and get started
writing today. You might even discover a
budding novelist lurking in your family. Wouldn’t that be something to be thankful for and to share around the
Thanksgiving table?

Bud Hunt is on the board of the
Colorado State University Writing Project, teaches in

Longmont

and blogs at www.budtheteacher.com. 

    Here’s an entry into the Blogging 101 category — the latest installment of my "On Writing" column for the Fort Collins Coloradoan. 

Blogging gives students real audiences

By Bud Hunt

Students today have access to a
huge network of writing and publishing tools via the Internet. And, to borrow a line from Martha Stewart,
that’s a good thing.

If you can send e-mail, and I am
guessing that many of you can, you can publish your writing online for the
world to see. This is great news for
students who wish to communicate their thoughts and ideas to others in their
communities or to students in other states or even half way across the world. It’s even better news for teachers, as we
know that there’s no better tool for improving writing than a real, non-teacher
audience for the students’ work. The
Internet, via weblogs or blogs, provides just such an opportunity.

According to Dave Winer, a blogger
since 1997, a blog is “the unedited voice of a person.” More specifically, a blog  is a collection
of posts written for online publication. Blogs and bloggers cover almost all possible topics, from hurricane
disaster relief to creative writing pieces to dealing with candy
addiction.

Blogs are more and more becoming
first stops for those looking for news or information on the Internet. In the classroom and at home, blogs are
tools that students can use in order grow as writers and responsible citizens
in the digital world. At school, blogs
are not yet essential curricular tools, but they will be. While schools are still learning where
blogging fits into the curriculum, students are flexing their digital muscles
after school.

There are
several free sites out there that you can use to start a blog. Perhaps the best known of these is
Blogger. After a five-minute
registration, you can post your writing directly to the Internet. Many students use free websites like
Myspace, Xanga, and LiveJournal to tell stories about their lives,
share musical influences, and write about and discuss just about every topic
that you could possibly think of. On
their blogs, students are talking about the war in Iraq, how to help in the
aftermath of Katrina, and who the cutest kids are in class.

To get
started, try reading some blogs to get a feel for the genre. Perhaps the best way to do this is to use a
search engine that specifically searches blog posts. Two useful ones are Technorati and Icerocket. Try searching for a topic that you are
interested in and see what others have to say.

The
Internet is a big place – there might be some content out there that you find
objectionable. However, the vast
majority of bloggers are interested in opinions and viewpoints and good
writing. They will welcome you as you
begin to comment on their blogs and, preferably, starting your own.

Blogging allows students to both
practice their writing and to have a connection to the real world that exists
outside of the classroom. Interested in
astronomy? Start writing about and
linking to interesting astronomy websites. Along the way, you’ll meet others interested in astronomy and begin to
have conversations with them about your passion for starts and supernovas. You’ll also be taking control of your
learning in a powerful way that was unavailable to students just ten years
ago.

Because they contain hyperlinks,
blogs are a great way to visualize and show in practice how ideas connect to each
other.

Parents have an essential
responsibility and privilege to stay up on what their students are writing and
thinking about. They should even be
regular readers of their child’s blog – both to learn about what learning is
going on but also to become a partner in that learning. Because blogs are
public, parents should also read to make sure that students are protecting
themselves by not sharing too much personal information online – phone numbers
and home addresses are probably a no-no. Families should sit down together to review family Internet policies and
privacy concerns.

Of course,
parents can and maybe should start their own blogs to provide a positive model
for writing with their children. Ask
your child if you need help getting started. They might just already know how. One estimate says that teenagers are responsible for more than half of
the sixteen million blogs current online.

That’s a
lot of writing.

Bud Hunt is a board member of the Colorado State University
Writing Project. He blogs at http://www.budtheteacher.com.

    For the next three months or so, I’ll be writing a monthly column on our community newspaper’s education page.  The focus of the column is on K-12 students and writing.  I intend to write one piece on blogs.  The first piece was on creative writing exercises that you can do in the grocery store.  I asked if it would be possible to produce a hyperlinked version of the column to run at the same time as the print one. 
    The paper suggested that I wait a day and then run the hyperlinked version.  Which made little sense to me, as I was hoping that a hyperlinked version of the piece would be more useful to those folks reading along who might want more information. But it’s their paper, and I was fortunate to get the space.  Below is the column as I submitted it with my hyperlinks.  It seems to me like this is the direction that online journalism should take — not a reproduction of the content that appears in the print version — but an expanded version, with the ability to link content to research to other ideas to more content . . .
    My high school journalism students will be writing like this.  It’s not a ton of links — but they’re helpful when they’re there.  Right?

Creative Writing Exercises Help Writers to Flex Their Muscles

Writing is
a tool that all students need in all classrooms and, more importantly, in their
lives. And schools and families both
have to help to make sure that students can write effectively by the time they
graduate from high school.

The
National Writing Commission, a group of educators and concerned others founded
by the College Board and chaired by Bob Kerrey, wrote in their first report to Congress on the status of writing in schools, that:

· The amount of time students spend writing . . .should
be at least doubled

· Writing should be assigned across the curriculum

· More out-of-school time should be also be used to
encourage writing, and parents should review students’ writing with them

Clearly, there is a lot to do, both
in and outside of the classroom. The
work does not have to be boring, though. Let’s start with a trip to the grocery store.

“If you don’t have the time to
read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write,” wrote Stephen King in his
book On Writing. Writers, the
good ones at least, don’t just read books. They read the world around them.

One of a writer’s best tools is her
skills of observation. Good writers
look deeply at everything and put those details and observations into their
writing. And there’s plenty to observe down
at the store. The grocery store has
everything a writer needs: people and
conflict. Ever waited in a long line
while the person in front of you counted out their thirty dollar purchase in
pocket change? That is one example of
conflict at the grocery store – I bet you can think of several more.

Next time you’re at the store, take the family, grab a notebook or an
index card, a pen or pencil or two, and give yourself an extra few minutes to
take a look around with a writer’s eye. Parents, if your children are too young to write, write for them. If they can write by themselves, keep your
own notebook and write with them. Creative writing can help you stretch those writerly muscles and get in
some writing practice. It can also be a
great family activity that everyone in the family can get involved with.

Writers notice things. Look and listen and smell and touch your way
through the store. Taste when
appropriate. The grocery store is full
of sensory information waiting to be captured in your notebook.

In addition
to using your senses, here are some things you might want to think about or pay
close attention to:

1. That guy over by the soda. You see him. Who sent him to the store today? How do you know? And why does he have five packages of bologna  in his cart?
2. Pick five items at random from your shopping cart. Write a short piece that incorporates each of those objects. (No, you can’t write about the time you picked five items out of your shopping cart.)
3. Many different groups use the grocery store as a place to sell things or share
        information. Think of a group that would never show up in front of the grocery store. Write about what happens on the day that they do.
4. Check the shopping carts at the front of the store. Has anything interesting been left behind? Describe what you see and imagine how it got there.
5. Close your eyes in the bakery and breath in deeply. Write about what you smell and what it suggests to your mind.
6. Visit the store on free sample day. As you taste different foods, think about what those tastes remind you of. Write about what you remember.
7. The families that you see in the store all have colorful stories. Invent identities and backgrounds for them. Consider what would happen if you snuck over and added some items to their cart. You choose the items.
8. At the checkout counter, look for a special treat that you wouldn’t normally buy. Write a letter convincing someone to buy it for you.

Enjoy your grocery store
adventure. Keep the good writing –
where else – on the refrigerator.

Bud Hunt teaches language arts in Longmont, Colorado and is a board member of the Colorado State University Writing Project. You can view a
hyperlinked version of this column, with more prompts and ideas, at his
website, http://www.budtheteacher.com.