Yesterday, we had the pleasure of having one of the team of novelists from The Warriors book series in our school to talk with students about her work as a writer and a book editor. Tui Sutherland was kind, and gracious, and opened the floor up to a lot of questions from students about where she gets her inspiration, how she works with other writers under a common pen name, and her career arc from editing into novelist.

Sutherland was brought to the school because fifth grade students decided they wanted her, and they sponsored a series of cat-related events in our school to raise money to pay for her visit. There are some die-hard Warrior fans, I guess. To be honest, I have not read any of the books in the series, nor her newest series — The Seekers — but I do see plenty of kids walking around with them under their arms. I suspect I will now see even more.

She repeatedly encouraged kids to write, and explained that when she was their age, she wrote and wrote and wrote. She also noted, however, that she rarely finished as story. “I love beginnings. It wasn’t until college that I really began to finish the stories I started. The more you write, the better you get about getting to an end,” she said, and I’ll bet that rang true with a lot of my young story writers, who often lose steam midway through stories.

As Sutherland spoke with sixth graders, I jotted down some notes about her as a writer.

First of all, she’s a night owl, and has a dog not a cat (which drew laughter from the students). After midnight “is my secret writing hour,” she explained. “That works for me.”

She became a novelist because she was in the right place at the right time. As an editor in a publishing company, she got her start as a writer by writing the text for sticker books, which led to writing early reader books, which led to a biography of Harry Houdini, which led to larger projects. Her connection to The Warriors series was first as an editor, and then when she left publishing to become a writer, the head author of The Warriors asked Tui to join their team.

She talked a bit about why writers sometimes use pseudonyms. In the case of her work in updating some Little House on the Prairie books, the name she chose for her work started with the same last letter of Laura Ingalls Wilder so that her Little House books would be located in the stacks near the original. In the case of The Warriors, the use of a single name for four writers allows each to contribute under a single name. But, Tui admitted: “I would love to have my name on all of my books, even though there are logical reasons” for pseudonyms.

She has written a few Disney novelizations of movies, including the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Disney forced her to sign all sorts of non-disclosure agreements and made her do all the writing on a Disney computer in a Disney office, and she could not bring any papers home with her. She also did a novelization of the updated Christmas Carol, which struck even her as odd, given that the movie is adapted from the Dickens’ novel.

And she urged students to write and aspire to become writers. She pointed out that televisi0n, movies and video games all have stories and characters at the heart of their work, and writers are behind them all. “There are all sorts of ways to be writers these days,” she encouraged them.

I see those writers just about every day in my class, but I was glad that Tui came and shared her story with us.

Peace (in the writing),
Kevin

When I was in eighth grade, I think it was, I attended a summer arts camp and remember clearly a performance of musicians from China performing traditional Chinese music. I remember it because at the time, I found it so incredibly boring that I squirmed in my seat and thought time had slowed to a crawl. This was music I had never heard before and its strange timbre, rhythm and sounds jarred me. Why were they making us sit though this, I wondered?

Now, today, I remember it because those sounds of those musicians and those odd-looking instruments still live in my head. That first exposure to music from Asia made its mark, even in my own reluctant head, and I can now appreciate as an adult what I didn’t appreciate as a teenager: the talent of the musicians and the breadth of music in this world (beyond Led Zeppelin and Charlie Parker).

I was thinking of this yesterday as we brought all of our sixth and fifth grade students to a live performance of Three Cups of Tea yesterday. It is a one-man show from the American Place Theater/Literature to Life series, with actor Curtis Neilson, and the audience imagination plays a role here, too (as Neilson told us in a discussion after the performance, about the partnership of actor and audience). The audience must imagine and believe. Luckily, all of my students read the young adult version of Three Cups of Tea last year and some even got to meet Greg Mortenson at a local college after a fundraising activity we did at our school. (The fifth graders will read it this year). My students last year also did a Glogster project around the book, its themes of making a difference in the world, and the character traits of Mortenson.

Discussing the performance with my students after the show, they mostly gave it a thumbs-down (“boring” and “I got sleepy” and “why didn’t they have more props” were common remarks), but I am convinced it because they — us, the audience — had to work, as the stage consisted of just the actor and a few simple props, and the words from the book. Nothing else. We had to imagine the invisible actors, and the scenery, and come into the story. The opening scene of Greg getting lost in on the mountains, which starts the whole story, involved the actor in the dark theater, walking through the audience as he laments the death of his sister and his inability to finish his climb to the top of K2.

(And just to be clear — I thought the actor did a fantastic job, using his voice and actions and the words of the text to draw us into the interesting elements of the story and the emotional part of the story, too.)

I get the feeling that entertainment for too many of my students means “feed me what I need to know, and make it quick.” Or maybe I am thinking this  because I am reading the novel, Feed by M.T. Anderson, and that constant flow of data and entertainment is on my mind.  The connected world of mobile devices, gaming and wired computers often means instant gratification (and I know I sound like a digital naysayer here, and you should know, I am not). They have that expectation now, I think. To sit for almost an hour in a dark theater and be transported by one man on the stage …. they are not there yet and it requires a skill of patience few of them seem to have. A show of hands by my class afterward indicates that very few have ever even seen a live stage production of any kind.

So, why force them?

We sort of knew this might be the case. I go back to my own experience, with the Chinese music. Our hope as teachers is that this performance, and other experiences that bring them outside their comfortable circle, will enrich their lives, in ways that might not unfold for years down the line. We want them to see the possibilities of art, and drama, and music. Yes, I tell them: one actor on stage can transform an audience, if the story is powerful enough.

We need to expose our students to as much of the world of art as we can, and plant the seeds for creativity. It might not bloom for many years. But, it may bloom and that is enough reason in itself.

Peace (on the stage),
Kevin

An apt metaphor for my classroom yesterday was a busy bee hive, as my students zoomed around to different stations that we had set up to share out their invented words. Along the rim of the classroom, I had set up stations of laptops that were on our Crazy  Collaborative Dictionary (see yesterday’s post). On the blackboard, I had four large pieces of chart paper, where they were writing their words and definitions. And at my desk, I had a podcast station set up for recording their words and definitions.

I was monitoring this all with the eyes on the back of my head, as I did the main recording of the podcasts with Audacity, and then quickly converted the files into MP3, and then uploaded into my Box. net sharing account.

It’s on days like this that I realize why some teachers might worry about moving such technology projects into their classrooms. There is a bit of controlled mayhem that goes on. But the kids were great, and there was lots of laughing and talking about words they were inventing. We had a long conversation in one class about how they might actually get one of their words into the real dictionary (not just our online one).

Why do we do this activity? As part of our study of how words come into our English language, I want them to understand that language is not static; it is always growing, shifting, changing. Words reflect our times. The act of invention here is a fun activity, but in the world, words are invented for things that have a new nuance, or represent a shift in thinking, or are adapted for something new. Words are not shackles that hem in our thinking. Words are part of the vibrancy of our lives.

I also gave a mini-lesson on wikis, since we use Wikispaces as the home of our dictionary work: what wikis are and how to use them and how they can foster collaborative writing. That discussion touched on Wikipedia, of course, but also Wikianswers and now, Wikileaks. My hope is that the word “wiki” now has some context for them when they hear it referenced in the news. And of course, we talked about the word “wiki” itself (Hawaiian, meaning “quick”).

When I get the 2011 Crazy Dictionary up to speed (and also the larger Crazy Dictionary featuring words from 2005-2011), I’ll share it out, but I thought it would be fun to share a folder of some of the podcasting. I really enjoy hearing them saying their words, particularly as the audio files will become a permanent part of our growing dictionary project.

Peace (in the wordy words),
Kevin

Frindle: Words from Mr. Hodgson on Vimeo.

Today, we will be jumping on our class wiki site and students will be adding newly-invented words to an ongoing collaborative project: constructing a dictionary of made-up words. It’s called collaborative because since 2005, my students have each been adding one or two words every year to the Crazy Collaborative Dictionary wiki site (and adding podcasts the last few years). We now have about 500 words on the site, and another 80 or so will be added to the mix this year.

What I find interesting is that many of my current students have older siblings who also took part in the Crazy Collaborative Dictionary, which means they are collaborating across time. This is one of the beauties of an online space – the collaboration can go horizontal (across class) and vertical (across time).

They began their work last week as I read parts of the book Frindle by Andrew Clements to them. A fair number had read the book when they were younger, but there are some wonderful sections in there about the power of words and language. We then talked about William Shakespeare and his impact on our language even today. We spoke about the framework of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and other plays, and the foundation they have laid for so many plot devices in movies and books today. And we talked about how Shakespeare introduced hundreds of new words and phrases to our language, finding gaps between what he wanted to say and what words were available to express that meaning.

I have shared some of the newest words in the Oxford English Dictionary from 2010:

And showcased some past words from the Crazy Dictionary:

Today, they will get on the wiki, add their words, create a podcast of their word and definition, create a wall chart of their new words and begin to have fun with this invented language.

Who knows what words will emerge today?

Peace (in the language),
Kevin