Small victories

Last weekend I taught a Creative Writing course to a bunch of teenagers.  Working with older kids was a new experience for me, and oddly enjoyable.  I realized if I treat them the same way I treat the kids I work with at school we got along great.  I hope I will always remember the look on the 'ring leader's' face when I called him a gentleman.  I was worried he'd complain but he actually warmed up to me, let me read a couple things he wrote during the exercises we did.

I kinda got roped into teaching this class, I never would have volunteered to do it on my own.  But the person in charge of setting up the workshops knew I fancy myself a writer and so taDa! Self Expression through creative writing was born.  I kinda forgot she'd mentioned it to me, thinking if I don't come out and say yes she'll forget about it.  Boy was I wrong, and it was something of an ugly wake up call when less than 14 days before the event I was reminded that I'd be teaching a class.  YIPE!

Just a few of the story stones

Thank god for Pinterest!  I'm addicted.  And I remembered seeing these things called story stones, painted rocks and thought, perfect!  Then I went and actually looked at story stones and that's when I realized not perfect.  They are intended to inspire creative play in young children, with pictures to fuel the imagination.  Not to be daunted I thought, what about words?  Words on rocks, pick three random rocks and write that story?  Brilliant!!!  So now I knew I needed rocks, and lots of them so that every kid through the class could select some story stones of their own, a set of ten to start.  Keep in mind, there is no budget for supplies for this class.  My plan is to forage for rocks at the beach, find enough perfect skipping stones to make my dream come true.  Yeah, that didn't work so well, rocks are heavy, and it's 'winter' here in the Pacific Northwest, so the beach is a chilling place.  We are not put off by cold though, Bug and I, we are often found on the beach in winter.  We have it mostly to ourselves, it's wonderful to feel mother nature all around us, and I do great thinking while I walk the miles of beach.  Sometimes we collect rocks, and always we look for sea glass.  Well okay not we, mostly me.  Bug enjoys finding usual things on the beach, toys, buoys, dead things, you name it he hopes to find it.

Drat! Back to story stones.  In the end I bought a bag of River Pebbles from Home Depot, I'm sad to report they weren't perfect skipping stones, but I made them work.  I spent hours and hours after work that week Modge Podging stickers to stones.  I also stamped words on some of them.  Turns out I could have stamped on all of them and the kids would have been happy.  The word rocks were the first to go that day.  Everyone loved the activity, which was wonderful for my ego.

Some with words, some with stickers

My other activity that day was done with paint swatch chips, the kind from the hardware store, pick two paint names and write a story that includes those names somehow.  I noticed that across the board this one was harder to do.  Paint names are goofy, this is my theory, and I share it because one of my students wrote "charisma is a weird name for paint."

In the end I had extra rocks to bring home, but then not all three of my sessions filled up, the middle one was pretty empty, except for a girl who had signed up, and one who stayed from the first session.

This is after my first group

My single request of all my students was that they weren't allowed to judge me based on what words I'd written together on the stones.  Each stamped word stone had a word on each side.  I tried hard to create unrelated word combos because I wanted the stones to be used in several ways.  So you pick up the words       spaceship        mourn          rainbow      what sort of story can be had with those?  Well supposing you don't want a sad story and so mourn doesn't work.  Okay fine, use the opposite of mourn.  I think the word on the back of the mourn stone was toast.  To me it's a comfort food but who knows what another mind might come up with.  My point was some of my stones were very beyond bipolar.  Well actually that wasn't my point, but it's a good side stop.  My point was they could use the opposite of the word or, follow a train of thought to get somewhere else.  Like spaceship.  Can't think of anything?  What about alien?  No?  How about undocumented citizen?  I love following words where they lead in my brain.  I realized they didn't all see those connections when I followed the spaceship thread in my brain.  They laughed like it was a huge stretch to get from a to c.  Oh well this is my brain and I like it.

I plan to make more of them, I think I will create a set for my cousin's 'daughter' for Christmas, from talking to her yesterday I learned she likes to write, and read!   Bonus points for me.  Great Journal, couple of snazzy pens, story stones, and a few books and that gift is done!

As another funny little aside, the bag of rocks I bought had a huge number of heart shaped stones in it, Bug and I called it the bag of love.  Goofy I know!

I think I will collect them all up and take a picture to post here.  Stay tuned for that fun!