Posted on by Laura Lee

Writing to and in the voices of fictional characters

writing to characters

       I’ve written to fictional characters for many years; sometimes, I get replies.  When very young, I used to write to Anne Frank to offer comfort, to seek comfort, to wish she had lived.  Imagine what she could have written, what she could have become as an adult. I wrote to her when I was very young, before I really understood her history.  I wrote to her as if she were a character in a book, and I just loved her.

I have written in characters’ voices to other characters, in the form of ekphrastic poems.

I have written poetry in the voices of Levin from Anna Karenina, of Macduff from Macbeth, of Simon from Lord of the Flies.  I have written in the voice of Lucy Gayheart in Willa Cather’s fine novel of the same name.  To characters in the novels of Thomas Wolfe–o, lost!  To characters in the amazing novels of John Steinbeck.  To characters in those many young adult novels I read when a teen–I wanted to tell them I understood.

Do many others do this?  It seems such an incredible thing to me when a writer creates characters that truly speak to me; they help me grow as a person.  They help me empathize, see things from other points of views.

From one mind to another, across the years and the miles? That’s such an amazing gift of literacy.  Literacy means we don’t have to be confined to one place and time, and that is a priceless gift.

Posted on by Laura Lee

Writers: writing, politics, art… Tuck Magazine mini review

journal      As promised, I will continue to post links to sites I find are good for teachers, writers, poets, and more.

Tuck Magazine
–an online political, human rights and arts magazine, because social justice and the arts are important.

From their site:

“Tuck Magazine is a political, human rights, lit, music and arts journal with a difference: we aim to entertain a wide variety of readers globally.”

Now don’t you want to go there and read?  I feel it’s important to have creativity walk with compassion, which is the “slogan” of this site, after all.  I like what they are publishing.

If you have some sites you consider worth reading and investigating, let me know!

Laura Lee

Posted on by Laura Lee

Creativity and compassion should walk together.

teach                     Creativity and compassion should walk together–what does that even mean? Thank you, students.

I had no business entering teaching later on in life, and certainly had no business teaching where I did for my first full-time teaching job. I’d come out of business, gone to graduate school, and entered teaching in my middle years.

Prepared, but totally UNPREPARED for the great needs of the kids. My kids. Yes, I found teachers tend to refer to our students as OUR KIDS, MY KIDS. We love them.

My kids taught me so much, and among the many lessons learned is that it is better to be compassionate than talented.  Does the world need another poet? Maybe, although I love poetry and would argue how important poetry is to the ever changing world. But does the world need better teachers? Oh, yes. (Poets don’t hate me. I love poetry! We need great poets of social justice and to keep poetry alive!)

I found my talents were challenged daily, hourly, even every minute I taught.  I grew so much as a person in patience, humor, and love.  Yes, love. Can we even use that word?

I found my talent for researching resources and creating lessons to engage even the most reluctant learners were challenged every day.

Some time I will write about what I lost by teaching where I did for so long, but for now I want to acknowledge something that has changed my life for the better:

Kiddos, my Kids, all the students even my college students–you’ve helped me become a better person. I had no idea the heart could grow so much. (Can we say heart?)  I had no idea how much my talents that lay dormant when I worked in business would be needed as a teacher.

I know I am a much better teacher than I am a writer, and I am okay with that.  What I’ve gained through teaching is immeasurable, even shocking.  I had not expected that!  I promise I will continue to improve as a teacher, even in retirement years.

Thank you, students past and present–I so hope you are doing well.  Thank you.

Posted on by Laura Lee

And *this* photo was a writing prompt!

IMG_6070                     I kept this photo for nearly 18 years.  We produced some interesting (erm!) writing from this photo prompt.  I know a few friends and I are clownaphobic, and this really spoke to us. Wish I could find the writing.  I am sure it was BIZARRE.

Try, just try not to think of this photo as the day goes on…the red hands, the red throat… Sinister and humorous at the same time.

Posted on by Laura Lee

Cold Ones Rule/ response to a writing prompt long ago

From the old MSN writing groups, long closed… UFO

More than once we had writing prompts based on photos or images.  One was some type of floating supernatural ball. Wish I could find the image! This one isn’t it…but will do.  From that, I wrote  many versions of this poem:

COLD ONES RULE

Earthbound no more
not flying
but landless

cities melted
lights mock
our little kingdoms

domed over, micro-sized
feel your humanity
slipping, slipping….

hang on to your souls
those skittish, slippery
links to warmth

the cold ones rule

(c) L. Lee 2000

 

Posted on by Laura Lee

I miss the MSN writing groups

coffee and writing

I remember getting up at 3:45 AM to have time to read, write, and post at my favorite MSN writing sites before work.  I wanted to read what my peeers close and far were writing and reading.  It was a great experience for nearly nine years.

And these groups were easy to find.  We could simply go online and have them right there somehow, in our logons to our computers.  Yes, MSN was that mighty.  After the groups closed in 2006?  2007? We did look for comparable sites, but none were as easy to use or provided what we wanted. We tried Proboards and some groups that were plagued by nasty viruses.  We tried Facebook groups, and some of them are good.  Some went to blogs.

But what we didn’t find was a community in the sense of what we did have.  That’s gone. I was able to meet a few of the members of these groups, with some coming as far away as New Zealand and England, and finding one dear talented poet and fellow teacher from Iowa…

More than once we had writing prompts based on photos or images.  One was some type of floating supernatural ball. Wish I could find the image! This one isn’t it…but will do.  From that, I wrote  many versions of this poem:

COLD ONES RULE

Earthbound no more
not flying
but landless

cities melted
lights mock
our little kingdoms

domed over, micro-sized
feel your humanity
slipping, slipping….

hang on to your souls
those skittish, slippery
links to warmth

the cold ones rule

(c) L. Lee 2000

 

Posted on by Laura Lee

Train to No One

        trains black and white

From a year ago… places and memories…

I hold back, reluctant to get on the train. The train—a practical method of transportation. Leave the driving to us. Quick, mostly reliable. I can read during a train ride. I can daydream, as long as don’t fall asleep. Easy way to get to the new doctor’s office.

But the hold of place, the memory in the body of place.

This is where I used to get off the train and meet Earl, walk and walk and talk and talk away the day. We’d discuss teaching, life, family, everything and nothing. We’d talk about Ruth, his dearest friend for decades—how they loved one another but could not live together. We would go book shopping and I’d meet yet another member of his huge extended family. To meet Earl was to meet many wonderful people.

This is where I used to get off the train and meet Ruth, walk and walk and talk and talk away the day. We’d discuss teaching, life, family, everything and nothing. I helped edit her book, helped teach her about computers. We’d talk about Earl, her dearest friend for decades—how they loved one another but could not live together.

They are both gone now.

And I feel it in my body, this grief. And I get off the train to what—to no one.

I walk towards the doctor’s office, hoping he is busy and running late. I pass no bookstores on the way.

Train to no one.

Posted on by Laura Lee

Teach to Kill? On Arming Teachers…

insprie teacher change  Before I begin, I acknowledge there are caring teachers who need to protect themselves from harm while teaching; I myself was hurt more than once, threatened more than once, and was assaulted once.  I was lucky and wasn’t hurt badly at all, but I recognize there are many teachers who risk their own safety every day.  I also recognize there are teachers who could successfully handle being armed in the classroom.  Not me, however. 

And now…

This topic is so important to me, I’ve written two poems about the concept of making our American schools safer by arming teachers.  One has been published in  https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Mr-President-Journal-Modern/dp/0692100644/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527104908&sr=8-1&keywords=dear+mr+president+poetry+book

A more recent poem is out for consideration right now.

I cannot stop thinking about this–so much could go wrong. I’ve stopped my list at two dozen things that can go wrong with arming teachers!  While I do believe in some very rare circumstances perhaps a teacher could save a life or two, I believe this would be so rare that arming teachers would only make teachers, schools, and students possibly less SAFE.

I have also made a list of the many things my colleagues and I have done to try and make students safer; the list is very long.

Please don’t ask, expect, or rely on teachers to shoot dead.  Teach to kill?  I’m not sure I want to teach with someone able to make split second life and death decisions; I know I would not be able to do so!  I ponder everything, even simple things.

It would change the very nature of teaching and the teacher/ student relationship, which is founded on trust and respect.

When I taught in an urban area, I only half jokingly told my students I would take a bullet for them. I know I always kept my door locked, checked up on students I was worried about, tried to get them the professional services they needed, reported anything that looked dangerous at school, and more.  I do not even want to write down some of the things I did when I was terribly worried about kids–I look back now and wonder what I was thinking.

I wasn’t thinking. I was hoping if I stayed at school long enough, nothing bad could happen to these great kids.  That was magical thinking, as if I, who left each day and headed to my mostly safe suburban patio grading papers could someone change the reality of where they lived.

And they get to you, kids.  They get into your heart in a way I was not prepared for. Losing one?  The thought was terrifying.

So perhaps I would have taken a bullet, but fire one? I don’t know.  I’m such a nervous person no one should want me with a gun.  Hubby has said my most formidable weapon was my relentless caring and fast talking.  Me with a car is dangerous.

Please don’t put this on teachers who tend to enter the field to help others or to pursue and promote their discipline.  We are not trained law enforcement agents nor should we be asked if we have a FOID CARD.  Would that then be an unspoken new plus, being armed?

This HSP http://hsperson.com/ (me) could not live with myself if I shot and missed and killed an innocent person. Or if I left a class to pursue an active shooter and my kids got hurt.  Or if I did manage to kill a violent shooter? I would spend the rest of my life pondering the morality of this.  I know I would not pass the psychological evaluation to be a police officer!  I am a pro at teaching and mentoring, and I imagine I am not alone.

Please don’t put this on us!  To quote my own poem, please let us inspire students with other than guns.

We have an arsenal of skills to protect and inspire–please not with guns.

Posted on by Laura Lee

First Lines/ Where do they come from? Where do they go?

First lines–I think of first lines a lot as the day goes on.  Sometimes I imagine an opening scene from fiction.  Often times it’s a first line of a poem.  Something will grab me, a sight, a sound, a smell, a memory.  And then the storytelling starts in my mind.

I grew up with parents who were quite the storytellers.  I didn’t know until I was a teenager than many kids could ask a simple question and get a simple answer; I always got a story, and usually a long, convoluted, probably only partly true story.

All three of my siblings are storytellers.  My students say I tell a LOT of stories.

I love stories.

But it all starts with a few words, a phrase, a line or two.

And these are going through my head, a sort of off fairy tale tale of some sort or a poem?

And the child asked, “It cannot get any worse, can it?” And the big one answered, “Oh, yes, yes it can. It can get colder.”

Who knows where the lines will go.  Often they go nowhere, but they do become  a part of me.  These lines have been popping up for days now, so I think that child and that big one have a story to tell.

IMG_7249

Posted on by Laura Lee

On handwriting and the paper load… good-bye to journals & paperback books?

handwriting journal    When one has been writing as an almost sacred act since early childhood as I have, it’s hard to feel any of that skill slipping away.  I was a journal writer, often writing up to 30 (wretched!) pages a day.  From those early journals came some good poetry, some good fiction, and one important way of dealing with the world.  My creativity, my secret world, writing. I was a bit arrogant about my journals and more journals and more journals.  I fell in love with reading as well and became a double snob–give me books and a pen and I’ll reject much else.

But I only imagined making a living as a writer for a few moments; I am too sociable and loving of creature comforts to embrace the garret.  I worked in business for many years, and spent much of my time typing.  I then entered teaching, where I spent decades loving what I did, while damaging my hands, shoulders, spine, etc. Ask a long time teacher and you will hear about the toll lugging around multiple heavy book bags takes on the body!

Did I mention I became a reading, English, and ESL teacher?  Ask a literacy teacher about the paper load!

My hands, wrists, shoulders, all became damaged by overuse.  I could continue to type well, but for some reason, writing by hand became painful and difficult, even after surgery, physical therapy, and more.

Luckily, over the decades, the path from my mind to my hands as they type has become a quick one.  One of my jobs in business was to type up conversations as they occurred, so I learned to be “one with the keyboard.”

But handwriting?  My old friend?  No, that’s a loss to me.

But also a gift to realize not to judge others who need to approach literacy differently than I do.  It’s all right to type journals.  It’s all right to use the phone to write notes.  It’s all right to dictate journal entries.

A decade ago, we moved.  The thought of moving TONS of paper with us was causing my aching back and hands to, well–ache!  No, I let go of so much paper.

I now read mainly online–horrors!  I can carry hundreds of books with me on my phone.  While I do miss all those paper texts, it’s more important that I continue to read.  I now write mainly by typing.

I miss my old skills of being able to carry around the weight of the world in paper books and carrying my paper journals everywhere.But I admit I certainly appreciate the ability to remain a person of literacy by using technology.

Lessons learned? Don’t be a literacy snob, embrace reading, writing, and language in its many forms.

Just don’t ask me to walk through an office supply store without coveting beautiful journals, pens, and papers.