Writing with kids

I'm back in Salina, KS this week, making up for the two snow days of December. As I write this, it's snowing and very cold. I hope school is on tomorrow.

Today was fun. I was at Sunset Elementary School. Today was a writing day with fifth graders. In the first session, I had all four classes (10 year olds, more or less) together for a storytelling performance. Because most of the kids at this school have heard me tell stories through the years, they know me. One teacher said that when she wrote my name on her whiteboard as "Miss Howe," the kids asked "Is that Priscilla?"

We had a good time in the storytelling session. Trixie and the baby puppet came out briefly, and the kids asked if I had other puppets. I promised to bring them out briefly in the writing sessions.

I did three writing sessions (one was with two classes at once). I began with a quick show-and-tell of three more puppets (the Gunniwolf, Mavis the monkey and Trixie's little sister Roxie). Then on to the writing. I read aloud a folktale, written in a slightly archaic way, and then told it. The difference in the kids' attention was startling. We talked about the two versions, what makes a good story, about the importance of imagination in writing and telling stories. In the storytelling session, I had given them an idea of one story structure, so now I gave them another. Then I introduced the idea of writing practice, and gave them an abbreviated set of rules for writing practice from Natalie Goldberg's book Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life. Here they are:

1. Keep your hand moving.
2. Don't think.
3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation or grammar.
4. Be specific.
5. You're free to write the worst junk in America.

The students wrote these down and I explained what they meant. The goal is to stretch the writing muscles, not to have something perfectly written. I gave them a topic and set the timer for three minutes. Ready, set, write!

When they were done they read aloud in small groups. Then the whole class heard a few of them. After this, we did it again, this time for longer. More kids wanted to read aloud.

We didn't have much time, so we rushed on to one more story structure game. It's a game where we write a story line by line, folding the page backwards after each line and then passing that paper to the next person. I prompt the kids for each line: "Who was it?", "Where was he/she?", "What did he/she do?" and so on until the story is done. After each line, the paper is passed to the next kid. They're not supposed to look at the previous lines, so when the paper is unfolded, it's a completely ridiculous story. Some of them make a strange kind of sense.

The kids were great. Though some occasionally got stuck on the timed writing, generally they dove right in. I love the intensity in the room as they're writing, writing, writing, occasionally shaking a cramp out their hands. The more they do this, the more easily the words will flow out of their minds onto the paper. They seemed to like the last game, though we could have used another 15 minutes for them really to enjoy it.

Tomorrow is a storytelling day at three other schools.

More family stories: Traces of the Trade

There are stories that families tell and stories families don't. While we were growing up, we heard in a vague way that our ancestors were slave traders. It was always tossed off cavalierly without any detail. This was a story we didn't tell.

About ten years ago, my cousin Katrina Browne began making a documentary film called Traces of the Trade about our ancestors, the DeWolfs. We began to hear the vast scope of our family's involvement in slavery and to understand more clearly the issues of race, entitlement, and privilege in this country, not just in the distant past but today as well.

As part of the project, Katrina took nine DeWolf descendants on a physical and emotional journey retracing the Triangle Trade from Bristol, RI to Ghana to Cuba and back home--during slavery, ships carried rum to Africa to trade for slaves who were taken to Cuba to cut sugar cane which was taken to Rhode Island to make rum.

Of course I knew about slavery. The first "chapter book" I ever read when I was about seven was about Harriet Tubman, and I'd read myriad books on the topic ever since. The horror of slavery became even more real for me when I heard that Katrina had found manacles and a whip used on slaves. Awful.

At the beginning, Katrina wondered about "productive guilt" and if that was the reason that so many of the descendants became clergymen (and women), writers and artists. I don't know if she followed that line of questioning. Also at the start of her project, many family members wondered if Katrina was doing this to diminish feelings of guilt for having had a relatively privileged upbringing. It quickly became clear to most of us that this was not at all why she took on the massive challenge of telling this story. It is a story that should be told.

The film is now finished and will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival. I have only seen trailers, which were incredible. Katrina managed to make the experience both intensely personal and universal.

Our cousin Tom DeWolf also wrote a book about his experiences on the trip, called Inheriting the Trade, which has just been published. He'll be at Sundance with Katrina, and he'll also be on Book TV on CSPAN2 at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 19 and at 1:00 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 20. That's a filming of his reading of the book at Linden Place in Bristol, the former DeWolf mansion last week.

I'm really proud of these two relatives for telling this difficult family story! You can read more about it on my sister Mary's blog--I was trying not to duplicate her comments.

Harmonicas

I've got a few harmonicas. I thought this was the whole collection, until I remembered the one in the car (for emergencies) and the one in my briefcase, and the one in the kitchen that lost its pins. There's a pretty blue echo harp that lives with the props for the puppet show Rumpelstiltskin. There might be a few more lying around the house, too.


These two were my first real harmonicas. Yes, of course I had one as a kid, but I just played as kids do: I blew in and out tunelessly, driving everybody crazy. When I was a freshman in college, I went to the music store and bought a Hohner. I followed the directions enclosed and was playing "When the saints go marching in" by the end of the day. I carried that harmonica with me everywhere--notice how these two are squashed from being in my back pocket, and one is missing its screws. I played as I walked, getting the rhythm from my pace much as I do when I'm working on a story. Once again, I drove everybody crazy, but at least I was playing actual tunes.

I've got a reasonably good ear for music, or what Howard Gardner calls "musical intelligence." Anyway, if I hear something, most likely I can play it, if there aren't accidentals (sharps and flats in unexpected places). Someday I can even deal with those, if I learn to play the chromatic Hohner harmonica my friends Dave and Joanna gave me:

That nifty button on the side makes the sharps and flats. The little one next to it is a Yamaha, given to me by my friend Yuko in Bulgaria.


This is the one I use most often, a fancy pants Lee Oskar. I keep it in my puppet bag for performances. Before this, I played a Huang, which I loved, but the replacement I got doesn't sound as good (the one in my briefcase replaces the one missing its pins).

I play the harmonica sometimes before performances as kids are coming in. We usually play "name that tune," with standards such as The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Old MacDonald, The Chicken Dance, etc. The music focuses the listeners and gives us all something to do if we have to wait for other kids.
This is a cool box o' harmonicas my friends Thom and Sarah Howard sent me out of the blue a few years ago. Seven keys in a velvet-lined case!

And this tiny one with its cool satin box is a mystery: my siblings found this in Dad's desk after he died. Dad couldn't carry a tune in a bucket with the lid on top and he certainly never played an instrument. Why was this there? Was he planning to give it to me someday? I think I'm the only one of us who plays. Hmm.

Storytelling Tip #1a

At first I labeled this post #6, but I've gone back in to edit the post--it's really 1a, even though I said in the beginning that the tips are not in order of importance.

Listen.

One of the keys to being a good storyteller is being a good listener. Listen to natural storytellers, listen to other performers (not just storytellers), listen to the audience, listen to the people who hire you, listen to the words, listen to the thoughts, listen to the spaces between the words, listen to your body, listen to children, listen to dogs and cats, listen to your heart and listen to your daydreams.

By listening, you let the world inform your art, so that your art can inform the world.

Any questions? I'm listening.