While winter break officially started Friday, right now, this instant is the first chunk of time I’ve had to myself. When I have a break I try to cram in all the normal activities of life and sometimes forget to take some time for me. Some time to think. To write.

I know that sounds all deep and shit. But what it really means is I have an ass ton of papers to grade, and I’ve run out of every other possible stalling tactic except blogging. So. Here I am.

The papers I have to grade are the result of a little experiment I did with my kids. I gave them time to write and be creative. Sounds funny, yes? An English teacher letting students be creative! The horror! But what about GRAMMAR? What about PUNCTUATION? What about debating the pros and cons of the SERIAL COMMA?

I decided that instead of giving a student midterm exam with stupid multiple choice questions and stupid essays that my students won’t study for, won’t care about and won’t perform well on that I would have them write a Medieval Romance that encompassed the Campellian Hero’s Journey in order to see if they actually learned anything this year.

I stole some ideas from the Youth Novel Writing Month folks and structured two weeks of class time for the activity--remember, this is three real weeks--my kids switch to their shops every-other week.

The first week I had each day be a set a goal for the kids to accomplish: describe the setting using sensory details and similes, create the protagonist, antagonist, sidekick and/or mentor, use the hero’s journey to map out the six points of plot, learn how to write dialogue, explode a moment to write a fight scene.

With those under their belt, my students actually had a lot of writing done, and they stopped asking, “how long does this have to be” b/c a) I never gave them a straight answer  and b) most of them had already written 3-4 pages.

Once over the “hump” of basic composing, I set them free in the computer lab for the whole second week. Since our classes are 84 minutes long, this gave my lovelies a considerable amount of time to write. Some used GoogleDocs so that they could work at home too, some didn’t have computers at home, or a quiet time/space to work and thus could only write in school. They settled into their habits quickly--earbuds in, keyboards on laps with chairs ultra leaned back or huddled close to the screen, typing in 6 pt cursive font so no one else could read their stories. Clumps of students merged into writing groups, preferring to bounce ideas, word choices, character names off each other and engaging in hypothetical discussions about how far snot would fly if the trajectory of a punch was X and the force behind the punch was Y. They stopped relying on me for information and simply Googled it themselves, “What do houses in Spain look like?” “What modes of transportation would they have used in Europe in the 1600s.”

I wish I had a video camera to capture the discussion about what kind of animal should be the mentor to the group of unicorns fighting to save their world--a giraffe b/c he would be similar in structure to unicorns, but taller, thus lending him authority through height. You know, like Gandolf to the Hobbits.

I was awed by their excitement, their enthusiasm, their LOVE of writing. “Miss,” one young man said, “I never got any of this stuff before, but now that we have to use it, I get it. It’s not that hard is it?”

“Miss, we really need another week of work. I didn’t realize it would take me this long to do a good job. My story is done, but it needs some correcting and there is no time.”

I bought each of my three senior classes sheet cakes congratulating their achievements. And what achievements! One young lady not only turned in a 62 page story, she also used a fashion app on her iPod Touch to create the characters for her story, took a screen shot of them, pulled them onto her laptop, cropped them and pasted them into the chapters. Another boy wrote 32 pages--most wrote over 10 pages of double spaced, normal font sized. These are kids who, in general, hate English and hate writing. I have never been more proud.

Of course, the downside is now I have to grade them all, and yes, they need a lot of grammar work to make them truly readable. The upside? “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done.” “I can’t believe I did this.” “I will never forget doing this school project.”

Sigh

I love teaching so much.

I just wished it paid a livable wage.