Today I had my lesson plan preempted by an eleven year old with a story to tell. I let her tell it.
I teach Creative Writing to middle schoolers through a charter school. Last year, I had a group of high-achieving kids, studious and driven. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those students in particular ends up publishing a book before she turns eighteen. Her writing style and voice are finely tuned, and she knows the craft of telling a story. I had her sign up for the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program. Her mom can’t stop her from writing. She’s twelve.
This semester, I have very different kids. These kids are in it for fun, and for the cookies I sometimes bring to class. They’re funny and snarky. Minor things like spelling aren’t a priority for them. And sometimes—well, they lose focus.
A few minutes before class, Jade asked me if she could draw on the white board. I let her do it, as we waited for the rest of the class to arrive. She began drawing a character, whom she named, and told me his back story and character attributes (clearly she had been listening to our previous lesson). As she drew, she described her setting in detail (she’d listened to that lesson, too), and added another character as a love interest, with a complication: her parents disapproved of the match (Lesson on conflict–check).
When the rest of the class came in, I let her keep going. She was on a roll, telling the story with flair, as she moved all over the board, illustrating like crazy. Her two characters find a portal in a tree and travel to another dimension. After a series of adventures involving ogres and dungeons, the two characters manage to get back home, where they are welcomed by their parents and live happily ever after. Or as Jade scrawled on the board ominously when she finished: Or do they?
The rest of the class chimed in with questions and suggestions, totally into it. The story ended up taking up half the class. When I finally got to my planned lesson on description and setting, I used Jade’s story for the examples. What seemed like a long diversion became a great teaching moment, something I never could have planned. And, in line with my class’s taste, it was a lot of fun.
One of the most important things you can have as a writer is ballsy confidence. A belief that yes, you do have a right to tell your story. And if you put your story out there, people will listen. How do you grow this in someone? On my own path as a writer, I’ve struggled with this.
Today a kid got time and space to tell a story. I didn’t just give her that, the whole class did.
I hope this gives her confidence to make more stories.
