Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

  My Writing (Wo)Manifesto  May I overcome fantasies of perfection & just write write (right) now! May I find a joyful balance between academic & creative writing & living. May I accept that living fully is a form of prewriting, of gathering stories, of filling my writer's cup. May I allow myself to make  mistakes, to write without fear, to understand that my work will always be in progress . May my words be helpful to others, may they find those that are seeking them. --Bobbi Faulkner What is Your  Manifesto? After reading Sark's Thirsty Pens, Juicy Paper  (2008), I took her up on her invitation to write a contract with myself, to write my own writer's manifesto.  My writer's manifesto is published here to the left and transcribed above to the right. It is my contract with myself, my promise to stop letting my desire to be perfect keep me from writing.  I will never get better without practice, and this (wo)mani

Word Cloud of Poetic (re)Presentation of Plath made by B. Faulkner using Tagul "Plath's Last Supper": A Villanelle Exploration I grew fascinated with Sylvia Plath, always a favorite poet of mine, and read as much of her work as I could find, including The Bell Jar, followed by the reading of several biographies and books of literary criticism. I also love writing poetry that adheres to forms, as much as free verse is my natural voice and style, so it follows that I wrote my musings on Plath's life in this style, a rigid French form consisting of five tercets and a quatrain in which "t he first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as:  A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2 " ( Poets.o

I Saw Only Thirteen Years My mind swims with thoughts of Neesie You would be, what, 26, these days? A full thirteen years older than when I last saw you. You died and left me, my young playmate& friend— sister. Not twins, but closer. I remember you had gained weight --a good sign— You stole my tips & awaited your period & womanhood. Now I try to imagine your kids & mine— but instead I can only see your freckles below soft blue eyes. B. Faulkner 1:20 p.m. 12-11-09 Valdese, NC   She died 13 years ago today!

You're Not Sick--You're Nadia We walk so that you may dance a wild young rhythm on ballerina feet. We walk so that you may sing lustily, off-key, about princesses & love so that you can ask, "Do I get to go to Hollywood?" so that you can say, "Tell me no, mom, so I can practice crying." We walk so that your crying will remain just practice. Girl, you demand life like you demand food like you command your daddy to rub your feet like you sass me & say, "I know that" & roll your eyes. We're here to roll our eyes at cystic fibrosis, hands on hip, giving it full sass so that you can continue your strange way of calling people humans, your hourly costume changes-- We walk to spread your attitude--like you told Gavin, "I'm not sick! I'm Nadia!" My daytime Cinderella, we walk for you. B. Faulkner 4-26-2010   Come visit our team web page, Team Nadia Denise , for Great Strides.

"Original exploration of the craft alone expresses a poet's individual soul and conscience" (p. 178, from Ginsberg's Journals: Mid-Fifties 1954-1958). I agree, Ginsberg!  I've spent all of my time until recently exploring poetry alone and have stumbled into my "style" without realizing my cosmic influences, or who it was that paved the way for my eccentricities.  However, I feel that because I chose to leave my official English studies after my B.S. that I know nothing of styles, movements, criticisms, all the nuances the literary types pride themselves on (see, here I go, ending sentences with preopositions).  But I have always read like reading was a drug, and I learn well on my own.  The problem is making the time.  I've loved you, A.G., since my college boyfriend allowed that I could have your book of collected poems after the breakup because I loved it more.  And from you--stylistically--I stole the & and your habit of time, date, and pl

11-04-08 Election day! Students are taking too long on their first and second genre pieces! They need to work faster. They are also talking TOO much. I am circulating, pointing out to students who think that they are multi-tasking that they are actually sitting and talking with pencil in mid-air. This type of intervention seems to be semi-effective, as I am timing how long some just sit and chat. I hate days like this. Glitter all over genres where it doesn't belong, students sitting in peer conferencing corners without drafts, Ah Ha! I have been giving daily participation grades. That's how I deal with these time-wasters! Those who don't complete what they said they would at the beginning of class are breaking their contracts with me. More mini-lesson on genres--newspaper articles aren't covered in glitter.... Note to self---hide the glitter next year, and beg student examples to help them see finished products. HW : Begin to bring in materials to bind these piece

11-3-08 The day before the election and students are excited. Some have decided to do an additional piece on this time in their lives because they feel it is so historic. YAY! The willingness and desire to do extra is exactly why I love this project. So, as students conference with me, I keep a chart of the date, what draft we worked on, and what we talked about. I gave a short mini-lesson/review to one girl today about sentence fragments. I also gave her a handout on sf rules and a quick practice sheet to do and bring back to me. I love writer's workshop because it allows me to do embedded grammar instruction individual to each student. My mini-lessons come from these conferences, too, and from my observations. Today's mini-lesson was on the author's notes (also called end notes or reflections). I shared a completed author's note from a student's paper, "I decided to write about my memory as a diary because it shows more feelings and emotions. It's just

10-31-08 Halloween! What a crazy day to have a controlled-chaos type of project going on, especially since our students are allowed to dress up! Today, students shared the genres they brought in. We looked at a menu from a Chinese restaurant. It had the restaurant's name, address, telephone number, and business hours on the front, as well as an attractive picture. It folded in two, with printing on all possible sides. The courses were broken up into appetizers, lunch and dinner specials, drinks, side items. There were pictures of the more popular items, and each item had a tantalizing description and a price. Then, we talked about how a menu might be used to share a story or a moment from our lives. One boy decided to use a menu to write about his favorite Thanksgiving, rather than the journal format he had chosen. He decided that he could title the menu "A Pendley Thanksgiving, 2007" and that he could, as part of the description, list who cooked the food. I liked the id

10-30-08 Another part of writer's workshop is to start each class with a relevant mini-lesson. As I observed yesterday, some of the students really didn't still quite "get" how genres differed from one another. One student worked on a wanted poster that was about a dog that he had lost. When he started the final draft, he promptly covered the edges in glitter ! So, in today's mini-lesson, I used that as an example and we talked about why a poster looking for a lost dog wouldn't be covered in glitter. We talked about what it WOULD look like--it would probably say "Lost Dog" or "Missing Dog" in large letters at the top. It would probably have a description of the dog and would include a picture. It would be neatly written so people could read it. The dog's name would be included. A phone number to reach the owners would be listed on the poster ( flyer ) and could even be on tear-off strips at the bottom. Among the facts would be where the

10-29-08 Today we started writer's workshop in earnest. Yesterday we went over the rules of the workshop (which I'll try to link here). The main rule is that students at their seats can not talk with one another. They can, however, go to the peer conferencing corners to quietly discuss drafts in progress. Once they have conferenced , they must fill out a conference sheet and attach it to the appropriate draft in their learning logs. Also, I have a basket on my desk that students can put drafts in for me to look at. But when they come to work with me, they must read their drafts aloud. It's amazing the errors they catch on their own this way, and having them read to me allows me to focus on content and form rather than conventions. I started off the class with a status-of-the-class meeting. This meeting is important in writer's workshop because it establishes the routine, allows me a record-keeping device, and allows the students to see where other students are at in

10-28-08 Today, students finished their planning. They picked four of their memories that they really wanted to write about and began making the hard decisions. They had to decide which genre(s) they wanted to use to write about each memory and then write a 1-2 sentence statement explaining why they had made that specific genre choice. (These statements about genre choice later become part of their author's notes in the final product.) After I modeled this part of the process, I just walked around the room and observed, stopping to help students at this juncture who seemed particularly stumped. For example, one of my students lost her baby brother several years ago to a tragic accident--he was run over by a family member in the driveway. This student at first wanted to write an obituary to show her memory. In her rationale, she wrote, "Obituaries are how we show that someone died." When I talked to her about the genre format, she realized that an obituary would reall

A Word Cloud of Key Words from this Blog Post 10-27-08 Wow! The kids were excited about this project! It was hard turning the class over to the writer's workshop format, even though I fully believe in it, and I've done it before! ( update: I now ONLY teach using a writer's workshop format.  It has revolutionized my teaching and my students' engagement and therefore their learning) We started class today with an overview of the project, a discussion of what memoir is, and brainstorms about our lives. Some of the students had a hard time feeling that they had anything to write about, although I stressed to them that their memories don't have to be tragic or adventurous or whatever to be important. I modeled this portion on the board as I did a simple brainstorm of things that had occurred in my life that I might like to write about (using a list format).   Students are to do all of their planning and drafting in their learning logs, the spiral bound books they