I am a writer.

I am a writer.  When asked to define myself, this is one of my first go-to labels.  But this means I am meticulous in my writing; there is rarely any half-assing involved in anything I write down.   This makes forced writing quite difficult for me.  Not being someone who has ever struggled with writing, I don’t really know what it’s like to be a “struggling writer.”  Yet I feel confident in my ignorance that it is far more frustrating to be a phenomenal writer and unable to find a muse frequently than a mediocre or entirely incompetent writer who is never able to compose eloquent prose.

I say this because I am sitting here, trying to thoughtfully reflect on an occasion that would be worthy of discussing, yet the words are not flowing off my fingertips.  I could discuss the conversation I had with a boy I work with, who is eight years old and has autism, during which he told me that the “Slow Children Playing” sign was quite mean, and that people should not call the children slow.  I could discuss how this same boy told me today, as we were discussing idiom meanings, that if someone had a frog in their throat, they might just croak (get it? Cleaver, right?).  I could even talk about how this boy has a larger vocabulary than most of my professors, yet he can’t produce the language to carry on a conversation for longer than a single turn.  But the words to produce such an essay just…aren’t coming.

No, my muse, the stubborn being that she is, only seems to want to write about the frustrations of writing.  I suppose this is appropriate enough, so I will allow it.

This struggle is something I infer many of our students face when given writing assignments.  They wait and wait for the muse to inspire, yet nothing ever comes.  Is it really fair, then, to punish them for turning in assignments that are bereft of beauty, passion, or detailed analysis?  “My muse took a vacation, Ms. Teacher.  I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault.”  This seems like suitable enough of an excuse for me; I can relate! 

But the real problem here is not that their muse took a vacation.  She’s just taking a little nap, lounging around, and our students don’t know how to wake her.  It is our job to teach them how to rattle her catches and wake the sleeping dragon, filled with flames of inspiration that burn away all doubt and leave only the most brilliant compositions.  We can do this through frequent, ungraded writing activities, such as free write—the tool to blame for this mess of an essay—or other simple strategies. 

In truth, aren’t all our students brilliant writers simply lacking the ability to use their own muse?

Falling in Love with Reading

So you've heard my sob story about hating reading in Elementary school.  Now let me share with you the lovely strory of how I came to love reading and became an English major...

How I used to feel about reading...

How I now feel about reading!

Once upon a time, there was a lovely 6th grade English teacher named Mrs. Lightner.  She read a beautiful book called The Giver to a class of hormonally insane 11-year-olds.  One student, who happened to loathe reading, fell in love with the book.  A chapter book had never been read to her, and due to her struggles with reading, this made chapter books rather unappealing.  Mrs. Lightner then introduced the book-hating girl to the sequel of The Giver , and opened her eyes to an entire series she could love.  "And," the kind teacher added, "it doesn't matter how long you take to read the books.  Take as much time as you need."  What a concept, the young girl thought.  Time to read?! This is remarkable!  She read every book Lois Lowry had written and adored each and every one.  She then discovered, again thanks to Mrs. Lightner, another series beginning with Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix, and all the sudden there was an entire genre for the girl to explore: dystopian societies.  As if by magic, her eyes were opened to a world of books she actually enjoyed reading, and the world was made a better place.

In case you hadn't guessed, the little girl was me.  I never knew how amazing reading could be until Mrs. Lightner helped me find the right book and gave me some time and patience.  What a world of difference she made!  I now love reading, and while I'm still slower than a sloth eating sloppy joes (which is a pretty long process, in case you aren't aware), I love reading!  What a difference a great teacher can make on a student's life...

Add caption

Publishing Imperfection

I was first published in seventh grade when I entered and won a school-wide poetry competition.  It was the first time I had really shared my work, and it was exhilarating.  An essay I wrote was also published when I was a sophomore in high school in the Diocese of Charlotte News and Herald.  That was also exciting I suppose, but not nearly as important to me.  My most emotionally significant publication was with UNCG's very own Coraddi.  I was likely glowing with joy and thought I was simply the bee's knees.  Unfortunately, no one else seemed to care.  But hey, this is probably one of my proudest accomplishments, so I say I'M AWESOME and you better recognize!

I have sense been published, and I hope to publish more work in the future.  Looking back at my first few publications, I have come to realize their utter mediocrity.  They were perfect representations of imperfections, but they represented me as a writer at that time in my life.  And I, as a writer, believe it is important to document and, if you can, publish your work as you develop and evolve.  This is a lesson I plan to teach my own students.  I want to provide them with a plethora of opportunities to publish their imperfect work and share it with the world, with all its complements and criticisms.  Because, despite the response of your audience, publishing something that was completely your own creation honestly redefines awesome.

Discovering Writing

In second grade, I used to dance around the playground singing songs I made up.  One of my favorites was one I called "Animals:" Animals, animals are such to see.  Animals, animals have a lot of beauty! What luck we have to have such things!  And on it went.  It wasn't until much later when I realized the love I was developing was a love for writing.

This is how I like to imagine my little elementary writing self, minus the Chinese :)

Since those lovely elementary days singing my heart out on the playground,  I have written over 50 songs, hundreds of poems, a handful of short stories, and have been contemplating writing a memoir for about a year now.  I absolutely adore writing.  My mother says I've been making up songs since I could speak, first creating mash-ups of various Madonna songs, and then moving to my own imaginings.  I don't know who instilled this love of writing, but I am so grateful to whoever did.  It is a passion I hope to never lose, and one I pray I can spark in at least a single student, if not all of my students.

I'm guessing this is how my mash-ups sounded.

Learning to Read with ADHD

I have a rather vivid memory of sitting on my parents' bed with my mother in our old, ugly red house with a book about a large bunny family.  I don't recall what the book was, as I have read many bunny books in my time.  In any case, we were laying on the bed, I was either in preschool or kindergarten (we moved after that), and my mother was trying to teach me to read.  "McAlister, just try," I remember her begging.  I was adamant that I absolutely couldn't do it.  I think she had been "teaching" me for quite some time at this point, and I was beyond frustrated, distracted, and unmotivated..  "You know the words," I thought, "Why can't you just read them to me!"  The memory ends with her storming off and me being left in the bed with a book I wanted to read but didn't know how.

That, unfortunately, pretty solidly sums up my elementary experience with reading.  It's always been a slow struggle, and I therefore never enjoyed the forced task.  I loved reading the Magic Tree House series, but that was about as far as my love for reading extended (Fun fact--I saw Mary Pope Osborne get her Honorary Doctorate of Letters this weekend at the UNC Commencement.  It was life-changing and awesome and I will never be the same).  Looking back, I belive this stemmed from my ADHD.  Reading was often done in class in a "self-selected reading" time, and there was rarely silence.  This left me only successfully reading about two pages in a thirty-minute period.  By the time I finished a book, I had no idea how it began!  I hated chapter books that had chapters longer than I could finish in a single sitting (Junie B. Jones: Excellent.  Judy Blume: Not so much.) because I never knew what was going on.

Educators, take note: I think this is a really important thing for teachers to be aware of!  Absolutely do not assign in-class reading if you cannot maintain silence within your classroom!  Even a single student talking is absolutely detrimental to some students' concentration.  Check out the simulation below to get a bit more of an understanding of what it's like reading in a non-controlled environment for a student with ADHD.

Language and Asperger's

My precious ten-year-old brother and myself

I'm starting with what is freshest in my memory: my ten-year-old brother and his struggles with language.  This cutie was born in 2002 when I was ten years old.  I was pretty young, naive, and self-obsessed, so my parents' concerns with his development was off my radar.  When he was 18 months old, he began early intervention services.  When he was almost three (and was finally beginning to develop primal language), he was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS).  At the age of six he was re-assessed and diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism.  All I understood at the time was that having a baby brother was not all it's cracked up to be.  Now that I have dedicated my future to working with kids on the Spectrum, I am a bit more aware of his needs.

Language has always been a struggle for O'Reilly.  At the age of two, he could only say or sign a total of eleven words (in comparison, most two-year-olds have begun to form and use two-word phrases).  At age three, his language development exploded, and by four he was capable of producing language similar to his peers.  Yet there was still something off: when he was hungry, instead of asking for food, he would throw his juice cup or plate or bowl rather than ask for something to eat.  When he needed help with something, such as reaching a toy, he would sit and cry rather than ask for help.  He still couldn't communicate his needs, despite his physical capability to produce the words.  When he began reading, he picked up vocabulary faster than I have ever witnessed.  "McAlister, stop being so obnoxious.  You're aggravating me,"  I call him saying to me when he was about four and a half.  Little did I know he had no understanding of the words, and simply understood that when I behaved a certain way, those were the words my mother spoke.

O'Reilly seemed to enjoy reading from a young age: he was a phenomenal decoder and had excellent word recollection.  But, when given the choice, he would pick up the same copy of Where the Wild Things Are and read it again and again without fail; he needed the consistency.  Today, as a fifth-grader, O'Reilly prefers reading nonfiction books above all else.  I believe this is due to the lack of emotional content in such texts.  The language of emotions, empathy, and of course figurative language are a constant struggle for him.  A text about Pearl Harbor, though it may describe the sense of loss the nation felt, is less likely to include phrases such as "She left him frozen, walking away with a cold shoulder and ice-dagger eyes."  He lacks an understanding of such terms, both the figurative meaning and the emotional implications.  For a kid who thinks tooting your own horn means to fart, most fiction works are a struggle to comprehend.

How O'Reilly would view a "cold shoulder." His next question would likely be "Why doesn't she just put on a jacket?"

O'Reilly's lack of basic Theory of Mind comprehension leads to a significant lack in reading comprehension.  In my opinion, his education has needed more emphasis on this understanding to give any hope to improving his reading comprehension beyond a surface understanding.   In an effort to diminish such literary short-comings in my own students, I plan to emphasis a development of Theory of Mind through book analysis.  What emotions do characters show?  How might this affect their behaviors?  Why would that change the story?  If my brother had been exposed to such practice rather than a focus only on how many words per minute he could ready, maybe he would have a greater comprehension of not only literary characters but also fellow human beings.