Writing our own Canon

Well, I guess I’ll just go back to my dirt.

Well, our puppet show performances came off well last week. What I mean by that is not that it was perfect by adult standards, but that the students felt really good about it. They enjoyed it and worked with a tremendous amount of focus to make it their best. Also, there were cupcakes.

Kenneth Koch, the poet/teacher whose books are a big inspiration for me, writes about how as his classes wrote poetry they began to form their own literature that included not only famous poems but their own work. The same thing happened with our plays. The Seattle play has a line that Frog says after Masked Shrew deceitfully tells him that Wolverine doesn’t want to be his friend (it’s a full on soap opera in this forest, let me tell you):

“Well, I guess I’ll just go back to my dirt. From now on I’ll only have frogs for friends. And I won’t drink anymore stupid coffee. I don’t even like coffee. I like tea.”

The audience didn’t laugh at this line, but the class agrees it’s the best line of the play. They go around saying “I don’t even like coffee. I LIKE TEA!”* It’s become a sort of assertion of personal truth, while “I guess I’ll just go back to my dirt” is the ultimate sad response.

But not only are the classes delighting in their own work, they’re quoting each other. They’re making work that resonates with their peers. They’re writing their own canon of literature. You can tell because they’re all yelling in unison, “It’s Joe the Desert Beetle’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa Bob!”

* And on a side note, the part about the dirt came from their scientific research. Turns out, Pacific Tree Frogs often live in the dirt.

Act 2, Scene 3, Mountain Lion Sits in his Cave

We have just finished our second-ever attempt at writing plays and, while I know I’m biased, I think they came out pretty good. Playwriting with children can be a little daunting, partly because the results can be so bad: stiff, surreal, melodramatic. Yet playwriting can also be a great exercise in collaboration, storytelling, character-building, plot, humor, and revision. It can also be seriously satisfying.

 

We began our projects this January, by making field guide entries of local plants and animals (more about this another time). Each student picked a plant or animal to write about. When we had researched them academically, we shifted to thinking about them creatively and did a character-building exercise. I asked them questions like: What is this creature’s secret fear? Who are its friends? What does it really want? Using the characters that formed out of this brainstorm, we began to write our plays.

We started by looking for points of conflict. Fox wants friends, but Bleeding Heart wants to be left alone. Hmm — what would happen if they ran into each other? I showed them how scripts are written and we started writing as a whole class, with my prompts. So Bleeding Heart just said “leave me alone.” What does the Fox say?  Hilarity already.

As soon as possible, we break out into small groups to write different scenes. One child is usually the scribe, with the other kids giving creative input.  The directions for the scenes are usually pretty loose. So Frog just got betrayed, and Fox comes along and wants to be his friend — what do you think happens? Eventually, we try to wrap up the loose ends. Then I type it up, and we practice reading it, revising as we go. Last year, we made masks and did a staged reading. This year, we’re going with puppets.

By usually having the people in the scene write the scene, everyone gets at least a relatively equal amount of airtime, since people tend to think up the best (and most) lines for themselves. By starting from characters, the personalities of the different characters come through better than they might otherwise. By writing it collectively, many perspectives come into the story. 

The best thing about it all is the excitement and authorship the classes both feel about their plays. They laugh at their own jokes. They quote their own play. That in itself makes it a success.

Curious about our plays? Curious about Frog Hollow? What to watch treachery and betrayal among woodland animals? Come to our puppet show, Thursday, May 15th, 1919 E Prospect St. Seattle, 98112. Doors open at 6:45, performance starts at 7:00. Free and great for all ages.

How to Build an Animal Nest

While my students wrote many moving letters for change this spring, there is one letter I wanted to share here, partly because you all are exactly who could enact the vision it describes (much better than the president!) and partly because I think it expresses something so beautiful and essential about what it is like to be a child — that intersection between the mythic and the mundane where children so clearly live. So, with its author’s permission, here goes:

I am Raina. I’m seven and I really want more people to have good plants for animals and make sure they have good food to eat and a place to live. For instance, people can have bird feeders and trees for birds and make animal nests. If you have two big plants that make a sort of cave then it makes a good place to build one. It’s even better if there’s moss in front of it because if it rained at night the moss would soak up water and if the animal was thirsty it could drink from the moss and it would stay dry in the night from the leaves. I’ll tell you how to make one: gather moss but not if its in front of the plants because then the animal wouldn’t be able to drink water in the morning and you will need a lot of moss. First you push some moss into the ground to make a sort of carpet then take some more moss and build up some moss 1 1/2 inch all around the moss pushed into the ground. You should make the moss carpet one foot by one foot. Then you should put some fluffy moss on the carpet of moss and make a sort of pillow. Then you’re done. You could also make the bed in your sandbox cover if you have a sandbox. I’m making one in my yard in a plant cave. 

Letters for Change

Writing is at its essence communication. However, unlike much communication, writing can cross barriers of time and space and society. Most of us will never sit down for a chat with the president, but we can send him a letter, which will be read (at least by someone), and added to the tally of opinions, and if it escapes the recycling bin that letter might still be read in 100 years. This is powerful stuff. It can be a little heady, especially when people just realize it. I can express my opinions to people who can do something about them. I can make my voice heard.

I like to cultivate this in my students. They have beautiful, passionate opinions about the world, and learning that they can communicate them feels like a counterpoint to potential apathy. Weighing in with opinions is the essential act of democracy, after all. Speaking up is also a way to keep compassion from turning into cynicism.

I ask my students, “What would you like to see change in the world? What do you love? What makes you angry? What do you think could be done better?” We talk about what happens when you send a letter to government representatives and newspapers and companies. We talk about how opinions get tallied. We talk about various children’s letters that have had impacts, from the girl in British Columbia whose letter helped save some woods she loved, to the boy who was instrumental in the dolphin-safe tuna campaign. I tell them about how I wrote to the ice cream store when I was nine, asking them to install a water fountain (they put out a water jug), and how I wrote to Hanna Anderson telling them to show girls running and playing in their catalog instead of standing around being cute (they apologized profusely and changed their photos for a year or two).

Then I set the kids loose. I don’t push my ideas of what should change on them (I can write my own letters), though I sometimes help them focus on specifics. For instance, a number of children were interested in writing about protecting forests and animals this year, which is too general for anyone to do anything about, so I told them about a particular old growth timber sale that has been in the news lately. Our poor commissioner of public lands got his desk flooded. Children wrote about everything from ending war to changing Smarties candy to make it unsnortable.

When they know what they want to write about, I help them figure out who the letter should go to: the person who can make the changes they want to see made. A company? The governor? Their sister? If it is something we can all do, we send it to the newspaper. If we can’t figure it out, we usually just send it to the president.

We practice addressing envelopes neatly. Sometimes this is the first physical letter my students have ever sent. Then we put them in the mailbox and hope for a reply.

I have done this project for several years now, and every year I am struck by the deep compassion and passion these young people have for the world. Anyone who doubts that young people care about anything besides themselves should read these letters. Better yet, they should answer to the challenges set in them. Our world would be a better place.