I graduate in less than a week, if all goes well (it may not). My last week and a half have consisted of caffeine, flashcards, and Times New Roman. Drop-in Writing workshops at 826 have ended for the holidays, with a promise of some new faces, some old, and more time to scribble a story ending once we restart in January. The kids will be back to their same schools, and I won't.
It all starts here.
My holiday plans start with sleep, for sure. I'm making plenty of time for movies, friends, and ungodly amounts of cat videos on the internet. Work will continue, as usual, slinging books at the library and wondering when adults will learn to take care of their messes. But somewhere in there, there are robots.
I still haven't run a workshop; I want to try that, sometime, when I feel a little less scared of all those faces looking at me. I still haven't tutored. I hear they can use people like me, who did more than stumble through math and who still remember biology. I still haven't learned how to package Robo Toupees (stylishly marketed in the Asimov line of products) or use a price gun. I still haven't talked to those kids who finished NaNo, or asked them for their secrets.
I'm not done. School is almost over, but the robot revolution has just begun.
Here we go.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
The Most Harrowing of Tales
Tonight's mission: To write scary stories. Not the old scary stories, mind you, with their vampires and werewolves and dark stormy nights, but new ones. Ones with... oh, knitting needles. Or maybe some chocolate chip cookies.
Every drop-in writing night has a theme, some sort of format that gives the kids a place to start. We may decide to work on starting sentences, finding ways to catch the reader and draw him in to the writing. Or we may brainstorm conflicts -- funny ones, silly ones, ones that have cake in them -- and set the kids to ending the stories. Tonight, we wrote scary stories.
To begin, the group leader asked the kids for all the things that went into a scary tale. Ghosts, witches, full moons, and devils all had a line up on the whiteboard, and many more. Nighttime was mentioned, as was murder and violence. Every kid knew the basic formula, and the things on the board could have spawned dozens of best-selling books and films. Most of them already had.
Next came the challenge: Each of us had to write a scary short story of our own, without using a single idea listed on the board. Cue gasps of shock around the table. This would be impossible!
No, says the leader, not impossible. How about... a cucumber? Cucumbers could be scary, couldn't they? What if they started doing things they shouldn't?
It'd be scary to be eaten, says a ten-year-old. She's a precocious writer, and she catches on fast. Like if you were writing as the cucumber, and somebody tried to eat you, and...
...and away they go. The ten-year-old chooses a chocolate chip cookie as her protagonist, and ends with a rather morbid tale about his last thoughts and his wish for a quick death. Another writes about a piece of yarn, trying to hold its breath as it gets knit into a scarf. As the sweet little girl in pink proudly reads her piece, describing the way that the yarn's tail turns black and face turns white as he suffocates, the volunteers exchange a look. We're a bit worried about the trend, here. The leader hints again that violence has been banished to the board. Thankfully, nothing dies in the next, as an invisible man leaves "gross things" on the protagonist's bed. Hmm. Three children protest that their stories aren't finished yet, and that they need to keep working on them. So far, so good.
The boy beside me has trouble concentrating, and he doesn't like to talk in front of the others. He picks up a pen and promptly disassembles it, shooting a thin spring across the room and sending a flight of giggles around the table. I let him fiddle for a little, then take the pieces and direct him back to the story. A few lines, and then nothing. Would he like to try drawing it? I ask. He flips the paper over and begins illustrating. After another five minutes, some coaxing, and a little extra time to think, the light blinks on. He stops fidgeting, clicks open his second pen, and starts to write. He doesn't stop until the workshop ends.
Good workshop, good fun, good times. Several kids hand over their papers to be photocopied, which will go into a pile of candidates for the end-of-year omnibus. By the end of the year, at least a few of these kids will have their stories published. And how many third graders can say that?
Every drop-in writing night has a theme, some sort of format that gives the kids a place to start. We may decide to work on starting sentences, finding ways to catch the reader and draw him in to the writing. Or we may brainstorm conflicts -- funny ones, silly ones, ones that have cake in them -- and set the kids to ending the stories. Tonight, we wrote scary stories.
To begin, the group leader asked the kids for all the things that went into a scary tale. Ghosts, witches, full moons, and devils all had a line up on the whiteboard, and many more. Nighttime was mentioned, as was murder and violence. Every kid knew the basic formula, and the things on the board could have spawned dozens of best-selling books and films. Most of them already had.
Next came the challenge: Each of us had to write a scary short story of our own, without using a single idea listed on the board. Cue gasps of shock around the table. This would be impossible!
No, says the leader, not impossible. How about... a cucumber? Cucumbers could be scary, couldn't they? What if they started doing things they shouldn't?
It'd be scary to be eaten, says a ten-year-old. She's a precocious writer, and she catches on fast. Like if you were writing as the cucumber, and somebody tried to eat you, and...
...and away they go. The ten-year-old chooses a chocolate chip cookie as her protagonist, and ends with a rather morbid tale about his last thoughts and his wish for a quick death. Another writes about a piece of yarn, trying to hold its breath as it gets knit into a scarf. As the sweet little girl in pink proudly reads her piece, describing the way that the yarn's tail turns black and face turns white as he suffocates, the volunteers exchange a look. We're a bit worried about the trend, here. The leader hints again that violence has been banished to the board. Thankfully, nothing dies in the next, as an invisible man leaves "gross things" on the protagonist's bed. Hmm. Three children protest that their stories aren't finished yet, and that they need to keep working on them. So far, so good.
The boy beside me has trouble concentrating, and he doesn't like to talk in front of the others. He picks up a pen and promptly disassembles it, shooting a thin spring across the room and sending a flight of giggles around the table. I let him fiddle for a little, then take the pieces and direct him back to the story. A few lines, and then nothing. Would he like to try drawing it? I ask. He flips the paper over and begins illustrating. After another five minutes, some coaxing, and a little extra time to think, the light blinks on. He stops fidgeting, clicks open his second pen, and starts to write. He doesn't stop until the workshop ends.
Good workshop, good fun, good times. Several kids hand over their papers to be photocopied, which will go into a pile of candidates for the end-of-year omnibus. By the end of the year, at least a few of these kids will have their stories published. And how many third graders can say that?
Monday, October 3, 2011
Everything starts right here
It's amazing how many people are afraid of children. Even those of us who insist we love kids, we want to have kids of our own, we think they're adorable, etc., end up shying away from the chance to be around them. There's something a bit frightening about kids. They say things that adults aren't allowed to say, and they ask questions we aren't prepared to answer. And a lot of times, they need help learning something we've already forgotten.
I walked past the Robot Supply and Repair shop several times before I worked up the courage to go in. I like robots -- at least, I like reading about them -- but I didn't know if I was allowed. I'm not an engineer, and for all I knew, the shop was centered around robotics clubs. Even if it wasn't, there's always a bit of pressure to have some purpose entering a store. Not everyone thinks curiosity is a purpose, so I stayed out.
Desperation finally sent me in. A good friend of mine writes android stories, and I wanted a gift for her. Inside, I found a keychain in the shape of a poseable teddy bear robot, as well as a wall of exotic robot parts and an explanation. I left with the teddy-bot and a volunteer app. The application stayed clamped in my notebook for a long time, but I never threw it out. (How can you throw out an app that asks for narrative tension when listing convictions?) When an email arrived from my teacher, explaining that we needed to find writing-related service projects, I had an excuse to apply.
Why robots? Because kids are funny. Funnier than a lot of adults, really. Even better, it takes less to make them laugh. I know a lot of college students who think the only good joke is sarcasm, but there's a better one: exploding cake. Or ice bears, or shark-cat hybrids, or aliens who eat motor oil for breakfast. It's not that all of us Roboteers are out of our minds; it's just that we're matching our audience. After all, why not robots? It's the question that's silly, not the theme.
I knew I shouldn't be nervous, the first time I came to help at a workshop. I'd been through training. I'm qualified. I've written stories for school, for life, for the heck of it, for years. The idea of sitting there with kids still scared me, having to talk about things that didn't start with "So, how's your job/class/project" and handle short attention spans. But the kids were sweet and the motor oil was delicious, at least according to one boy's protagonist. First encounter: success.
Things learned from my first few sessions at 826:
-Robots drawn on the whiteboard are always, always better off with fairy wings.
-Your intelligence may, at any time, be gauged by your knowledge of fairy wing anatomy.
-Underwear is always funny.
-Just because a sentence starts with "The animals were all sick so they went out of their cages for shots" and ends two minutes later with evil supervillains does not mean that there are two different stories being told. The best authors tie opposing ideas together neatly, and kids can be very, very good authors.
-If the kid won't say or write a word, but starts doodling, just let him draw. His fingers may know what his mouth doesn't.
-Some ten-year-olds have bigger vocabularies than adults, and more exciting ideas to boot. Let 'em loose and watch them go.
-Don't take it too seriously -- and don't be scared.
I walked past the Robot Supply and Repair shop several times before I worked up the courage to go in. I like robots -- at least, I like reading about them -- but I didn't know if I was allowed. I'm not an engineer, and for all I knew, the shop was centered around robotics clubs. Even if it wasn't, there's always a bit of pressure to have some purpose entering a store. Not everyone thinks curiosity is a purpose, so I stayed out.
Desperation finally sent me in. A good friend of mine writes android stories, and I wanted a gift for her. Inside, I found a keychain in the shape of a poseable teddy bear robot, as well as a wall of exotic robot parts and an explanation. I left with the teddy-bot and a volunteer app. The application stayed clamped in my notebook for a long time, but I never threw it out. (How can you throw out an app that asks for narrative tension when listing convictions?) When an email arrived from my teacher, explaining that we needed to find writing-related service projects, I had an excuse to apply.
Why robots? Because kids are funny. Funnier than a lot of adults, really. Even better, it takes less to make them laugh. I know a lot of college students who think the only good joke is sarcasm, but there's a better one: exploding cake. Or ice bears, or shark-cat hybrids, or aliens who eat motor oil for breakfast. It's not that all of us Roboteers are out of our minds; it's just that we're matching our audience. After all, why not robots? It's the question that's silly, not the theme.
I knew I shouldn't be nervous, the first time I came to help at a workshop. I'd been through training. I'm qualified. I've written stories for school, for life, for the heck of it, for years. The idea of sitting there with kids still scared me, having to talk about things that didn't start with "So, how's your job/class/project" and handle short attention spans. But the kids were sweet and the motor oil was delicious, at least according to one boy's protagonist. First encounter: success.
Things learned from my first few sessions at 826:
-Robots drawn on the whiteboard are always, always better off with fairy wings.
-Your intelligence may, at any time, be gauged by your knowledge of fairy wing anatomy.
-Underwear is always funny.
-Just because a sentence starts with "The animals were all sick so they went out of their cages for shots" and ends two minutes later with evil supervillains does not mean that there are two different stories being told. The best authors tie opposing ideas together neatly, and kids can be very, very good authors.
-If the kid won't say or write a word, but starts doodling, just let him draw. His fingers may know what his mouth doesn't.
-Some ten-year-olds have bigger vocabularies than adults, and more exciting ideas to boot. Let 'em loose and watch them go.
-Don't take it too seriously -- and don't be scared.
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