My first job after after grad school was traveling around the state of Montana in a succession of elderly cars, teaching writing to kids in schools, a week at a whack.
Your memory kindles another in the recess of my brain.
In the spring of 1970, I was a student at American University in Washington DC. Our Creative Writing class had a volunteer tutoring program (or maybe it was a requirement for passing the class). The kids we tutored were African-American high schoolers from Southeast DC, all needing help with their expository writing. Our class never met with our tutees; instead, their teacher sent their writings to our professor in a manila envelope each week, and the following Monday our corrections and comments would be mailed back to them.
For a lot of these students, for whom the home language would probably have been a type of Black vernacular with its own unique rules and structure, writing in “standard” American English would be more challenging than for kids growing up in a different environment, where conversational speech conformed more closely to its formal written counterpart . (I realize that statement may sound condescending, but it is not meant to be).
Anyway, one week their English teacher had assigned an essay; write three paragraphs on the topic of “My Dream”.
One of my tutees – the standout kid in my group – was a girl whose essay on “My Dream” described her love of designing and making clothes. She wrote that her dream was to become a fashion designer, or a model – or both, in Paris.
I could only imagine what a reach that would be, for an American kid coming from what I assumed must be a family of limited means. Just to travel to Europe, much less live and work there, was relatively rare in those days. It was a bold dream, so when I returned her paper with a few blue pencil edits I added some encouraging comments.
I was truly delighted (and deeply touched) to have a thank-you note from her the following week.
I probably got as much or more out of those tutoring sessions as any of my tutees did.
Thank you for sharing this—what a lovely experience to preserve that moment for her by giving her a poem. I always began with "real" poems. "Papa's Waltz" was one of the poems we read. One activity that worked for me was handing each student a form poem and asking them to figure out what the poet was doing. What "rules" of sound, repetition, and rhythm were they following and how did that serve the poem? Usually we read a poem and then wrote what it inspired us to write.
Thank you for posting this. Although I don’t teach anymore, I’m still interested in pedagogy.
Every time I read something that touches me, I can't help it, but I laugh/cry and have to stop reading for a breath or two.
One of my favorite Koch poem(s): his series of parodies of William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just to Say" - here's one of them:
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
What a sweet, charming memory. Thanks David.
Your memory kindles another in the recess of my brain.
In the spring of 1970, I was a student at American University in Washington DC. Our Creative Writing class had a volunteer tutoring program (or maybe it was a requirement for passing the class). The kids we tutored were African-American high schoolers from Southeast DC, all needing help with their expository writing. Our class never met with our tutees; instead, their teacher sent their writings to our professor in a manila envelope each week, and the following Monday our corrections and comments would be mailed back to them.
For a lot of these students, for whom the home language would probably have been a type of Black vernacular with its own unique rules and structure, writing in “standard” American English would be more challenging than for kids growing up in a different environment, where conversational speech conformed more closely to its formal written counterpart . (I realize that statement may sound condescending, but it is not meant to be).
Anyway, one week their English teacher had assigned an essay; write three paragraphs on the topic of “My Dream”.
One of my tutees – the standout kid in my group – was a girl whose essay on “My Dream” described her love of designing and making clothes. She wrote that her dream was to become a fashion designer, or a model – or both, in Paris.
I could only imagine what a reach that would be, for an American kid coming from what I assumed must be a family of limited means. Just to travel to Europe, much less live and work there, was relatively rare in those days. It was a bold dream, so when I returned her paper with a few blue pencil edits I added some encouraging comments.
I was truly delighted (and deeply touched) to have a thank-you note from her the following week.
I probably got as much or more out of those tutoring sessions as any of my tutees did.
Thank you for sharing this—what a lovely experience to preserve that moment for her by giving her a poem. I always began with "real" poems. "Papa's Waltz" was one of the poems we read. One activity that worked for me was handing each student a form poem and asking them to figure out what the poet was doing. What "rules" of sound, repetition, and rhythm were they following and how did that serve the poem? Usually we read a poem and then wrote what it inspired us to write.