mentors

we just had a staff development meeting on writing. we watched a "totally radical" (in the parlance of those times--1980's) video on writer's workshop which featured lucy calkins. one of the things that both she and ed (principal) shared was their lack of student-centered writing training in elementary school. how strange that both an accomplished, professional teacher of writing and an accomplished, professional principal (who can also write), turned into such great authors and educators even after only being subjected to teacher-generated writing situations! hmmm...

this got me thinking: how can i explain my love of language and words, my love of writing? i too was taught to write to prompts in elementary school. i too was not encouraged to be an authentic "author," observing, recording, and writing what interested me. (i didn't even enjoy reading books for pleasure until i was in college...) yet i still thought/think of myself as a half-way decent writer...

most people say they've had at least one teacher that they remember encouraging them, mentoring them, guiding them... i wish i could say that. aside from my mother, i don't really feel like i had any teachers like that. my mentors were musicians--their lyrics my "touchstone texts." the wisdom i gleaned through their songs--even in elementary school--is what i remember most:

peek-a-boo!
i can see you, and i know what you do!
so put your hands on your face, and cover up your eyes--
don't look until i signal--peek-a-boo!
laugh if you want to or say you don't care--
if you cannot see it, you think it's not there--

it doesn't work that way!

--from "peek-a-boo," devo

...or how about...

how can you say that you're not responsible?
what does it have to do with me?
what is my reaction? what should it be
confronted by the latest atrocity?
driven to tears

hide my face in my hands; shame wells in my throat.
my comfortable existence is reduced to a shallow, meaningless folly.
seems that when some innocent die
all we can offer them is a page in some magazine
too many cameras and not enough food
this is what we've seen
driven to tears

-from "driven to tears," the police