Week 3: Five Days of Re-vision

Ms. Rhea and I closed out our third week with English 9 "Blue" with a descriptive writing activity designed to gently push the students to use some of the description techniques we'd shared with them (including sensory details, lists of three, metaphors and similes) and, we predicted/hoped, reveal some new techniques to share with the class. We had noticed that many students were still having a difficult time adding specific details to their "This I Believe" essays; in fact, some were resistant to doing so or were "giving up" too easily.

As I sat next to one of my students on Thursday and we re-read her draft to look for other ways to refine it, I let her know that I noticed that she did, indeed, have examples of respect in each of her paragraphs, but that I still couldn't see or hear or even feel what she was writing about. One of the things she was referring to--as, from her point of view, actions of disrespect--were the recent riots prompted by police shootings. So we Googled some photos taken during the riots and she proceeded to describe the "fire being launched from a man's hands" and the "men in masks in the background" and the "sea of clouds." She was beginning to see the riots and add detail to her description of them to make them come alive for her readers.

The next morning, then, before our long block Friday with the students, Ms. Rhea and I, with the help of Mrs. Weaver in the SRC, flipped through dozens of art books looking for interesting, strange, vivid paintings and photographs that we could use with the rest of the class in a fun, relaxing, but thoughtful Friday morning before lunch. We found 18 images (one for each student) that we liked, including well-known images like Dali's melting clocks and Pollock's splatttered blacks and browns and O'Keefe's floating skulls, as well as intense 19th century landscapes, natural science studies, and a host of really sweet sports photography. Ms. Rhea created 18 stations, numbering each one. With different kinds of music ranging from New Age to Drake playing in the background, students spent 3 minutes each at 9 stations, after which we gathered to share their favorite descriptions. The idea was that from this sharing we would identify more description techniques, write those on the board, and then go through another round of 9 more stations, practicing some of those techniques. Alas, the sharing and the lessons from it took longer than we expected. (They'll practice some of these techniques in the coming weeks in their notebooks instead.)

When we gathered in a circle to share selections from their nine descriptions, I gave each student five raffle tickets. The idea was that students could use these to compliment their classmates (they would have to decide how to distribute the tickets: one to five different classmates, all five to one, etc.). Students would put their earned tickets into a hat at the end and I'd draw one to win a prize. The only way to get into the drawing, then, would be to share at least one selection.

Students began sharing (more than half of the class eventually did): similes inspired by a football photograph, a story about ice cream toppings inspired by Pollock, physical descriptions of Norman Rockwell's Ruby Bridges painting, vivid verbs and nouns describing a nature scene ("disguised," "blazed," "peaks and creaks"--these, from the student who was having trouble describing the riots the day before). An incredible extended cheetah metaphor about a soccer goalie, a color analysis of a young girl in a ridiculously large hoop skirt (18th century?), and the turn of phrase that garnered one student a slew of tickets: "gladiator of glass," describing a man kicking in a window during a riot. The tickets and compliments kept coming. One girl even asked if she could use tickets she'd earned; another girl said that she already had. It had become, organically, not about the prize but about celebrating each other. Dang. Happy Friday morning.

Does this mean that everyone put their all into each description? That everyone was trying as hard as they could to use the descriptive techniques in their metaphorical toolbox? Of course not. But they made some steps.

And I was able to tell one student that there are no "can't"s in this class and another that there were no "mine are bad"s in this class--only TRYs and more TRYs--and another that "I'm glad it was harder than it looked." In a quick lesson about active verbs, we did get to laugh at Walton Ford's painting "Wild Kingdom," which featured something that neither Ms. Rhea nor I had seen when we chose the contemporary painting (we'll let you guess what it was). We laughed even harder in a quick lesson about specificity when a student and I tried demonstrating "catwalking" (versus just "walking"), which we both interpreted differently.

Fun, fulfilling Friday with the freshmen. These photos each speak a 1,000 words to me about how different they already are since Week 1.

Onward to Week 4!