Teacher Leaders

I sent an email out to BWP/SGWP members a week or so ago, asking about leadership positions other than Writing Project ones. The results amazed me. You folks rock! I'd be interested in seeing a long-term study of teacher leaders to see if Writing Project folks, on average, assume more school and district leadership positions than teachers who don't participate in Writing Project. I am not suggesting one causes the other, just suggesting an interesting correlation may exist.

Really, though, I just wanted to brag about you.

My workshop - waste time

COMP. Classroom Organization, and Management Program. The same thing we just had for four years by some of the same professors. So I get to spend all that time, 4 days, in a room hearing repeated information, while my students get no teaching just worksheets and they will go potty so that I have to fix everything again. ARGHHHHH!

My calendar is noted for next month. Even if it is report cards I want to be with people who understand. Not be locked in a world of my own making.

Self Hide Outs

I am my favorite hide out. When you’re a shy person, you can easily hide out right there in plain view. I pull inside and think my own thoughts, or I participate fully in conversations with those around me, only without letting any of my clever comments make it out of my mouth.

Teaching has stretched me in a good way and forced me to leave the hide out of shyness, at least when I’m in the classroom. I have to be the coach, guiding conversation and sharing my writing as a model.

My writing was another hideout. I get down all kinds of thoughts and feelings on the page (or the screen). Often, no one reads what I write. Even when I was in school, the teacher was usually the only one who read what I wrote.

After participating in the writing project this summer, one notion that I came away with was that I needed to share my writing with my students. There went another hide out!

At first I was reticent to air my musings before a class full of critical students. After half a semester of writing with my students and sharing my free-writes and drafts with them, I’ve found it to be very liberating. My writing no longer has to be a hide out. I can share it with others, and in the process, it becomes better. My students are always enthusiastic about hearing what I’ve written and offer great revision suggestions.

I still hide out in my shyness in many social situations. Maybe introverted people need to hide out in themselves periodically.

Hiding

I wish I were in hiding about now. I wanted to be at Hildegard's tonight, but grading has to come first so report cards can go home.

I was at a workshop on Friday, and afterward I needed to get the work done while I was away. I wanted to hide and skulk around corners lest anyone see me and point accusingly at me while whispering and shaking their heads at the behavior of my kids. Well my students. I felt lucky I am at an end and can go in to the room without passing another class. Sad huh? Obviously no teacher would have done what I envisioned, but the behavior of at least a couple of the little darlings told me my instincts about misbehavior were on the mark.

Now I shift my thoughts away from class. It feels like having a new born. All of a sudden there is this little person living with you. You rarely go out, and when you do, all talk revolves around that person. My classroom feels like that right now.

So, onto my real kids, the ones that I can never hide, and in defense they remain visible to me. I remember when they were small. Peek-a-boo games. As long as they could not see me, they imagined they were invisible too. When did that idea go away, what is it that makes us realize that permanence is a safe place?

Our oldest son just got married, but I still want to hide and peek, see what is going on, keep him safe. The other two are at home, their wings are flapping gentle breezes, trying to fly off, but not quite ready for the final push. Neither am I.

Other ways we hide, the phone rings, we check caller ID, door bells ring, and we peek around curtain edges. I think the best way we hide is in the open. We walk with our heads down and eyes averted, maybe we still think if we can't see them, they can't see us.
I suppose I better go hide again. All is quiet here right now. Kids and hubby at the coaches show.

Hide outs and pirates

As a child, every year our family went to Jekyll Island for two weeks vacation. This was back in the 1960s when Jekyll Island still had natural sand dunes. Not the small variety, but the enormous, hill-sized sand dunes thick with the cool, lush green vegetation of the Atlantic Coast. The trees were twisted leeward from the relentless ocean winds and annual Nor'easters that rolled up the coast wreaking havoc to its ultimate destination off the coast of Maine and into the North Atlantic.

The sand was white and powdery and wanted for children's footsteps which my brother and I happily obliged. We would run and play in the cool shade of the trees. The sand was cool to our barefeet—a relief from the blistering sands of the beach. We ran up inclines and slid down the other sides. We explored every accessible inch of our dunes, discovering new things each time. We even had a wind blown cave beneath the roots of the old oaks that held the dunes in place.

This was where our imaginations ran wild. We used to pretend that there was a pirate ship anchored offshore and the pirates were coming to bury their ill-gotten treasures. We had to stay hidden and quiet or they would surely find us and take us prisoner aboard their ship! Suddenly, a twig breaks and they look our way! Run for your life! Whew, that was a close one. Or maybe we were marooned on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific like the Swiss Family Robinson (a popular Disney movie at that time), then again perhaps it was the jungle like in the Tarzan comic books that we liked to read.

That was a wonderful, carefree time for two kids who it seems like spent more time arguing and fighting than playing in harmony. My brother and I are grown now, victims of the pitiless passing of time. The dunes are nearly gone, victims of progress and erosion. He has his family and new memories. In my quiet, lonely moments, I look back on those days of blissful innocence, to the days of sand dunes and pirates. Tears come to my eyes.

Hiding Out

I sit on the floor at Hildegard's, my back against the couch and my laptop on the glass coffee table. I feel young, giggling at the unfortunate noise my laptop makes as it scrapes against the glass. I sip coffee, wondering if it will age me. Nope, still stuck in eighth-grade mentality, snickering as I remember the noise.

Lindsi and I talked about the hideout created at Hildegard's. We're below window level, hidden from onlookers. My nephew lounges behind me on the couch; technically, he could read anything I type, but his game intrigues him more than my words do. The door opens, and I glance that way, expecting Diana or Kimberly but seeing a man instead, a stranger. Two more women enter, more strangers. Another woman, another stranger.

I crave hideouts, needing more solitude than normal people. I've never been normal, but I'm okay with that. I looked normal in high school: cheerleader, student government, drama club, beauty queen (think really small high school to explain that role), tennis player, batgirl (I've retired my black cape). Even then, I hid in books, losing time as I solved crimes and recoiled in horror.

Maybe I'm forgetting some times, but I don't think I've been lonely often. I long for alone time, for solitary time, for time spent with a book or with chocolate or with coffee or (better yet) with all three. I need quiet time, unplugged time, no television, no radio, no computer. I don't mind long drives without company.

Solitude distances me from my students, who often study and write with television and radio blasting. A friend of mine grades with the television on, needing something to focus against as she grades. Not me. I want silence. I need silence. (I also need chocolate, but that's another story, one that Writing Project people completely understand.)

I bite into the chocolate chocolate mousse pie at Hildegard's and sigh, completely happy, experiencing a perfect balance of solitude and connection, connected to other Writing Project teachers here at Hildegard's and through the blog, but also alone with my own words, searching to find meaning right now with this keyboard.

Soon, I'll hide out at the motorcycle rally, hiding from my life in Valdosta, spending time with Wes and our Harley friends. But I'll also hide out from the motorcycle rally, secluding myself in our RV (yes, I'm embarrassed; it doesn't fit my idea of myself) with a book and with piles of workshop drafts to grade. The RV allows me to join and separate at will, a lovely concept.

I notice myself looking toward the door, wondering if anyone else is coming. I watch Lindsi's and Vicki's fingers, wondering if they're still typing easily or slowing down. I want to read their words instead of create my own. I think I will, looking to see if anyone else had added words to the blog.

Hide Me!!!!

Disclaimer: I am not depressed, just a little overwhelmed. Do not refer me for any type of "assistance."

I would love to hide me right now. Maybe somewhere that no one can find me unless I invite them. You know, I see you, but you don't see me? Then I could observe without having to comment. It's not being a part of life that gets old, it's pretending I care. I do, but sometimes I get tired of caring about other people. Wow, that's negative, but I'm gonna leave it. So my hideout if I can't hide me...

There's a park down from my grandmother's house in Stuttgart that has an open air market every Tuesday with fresh fruits, vegetables, breads, whatever you want. Mounds of color against the smell of rising yeast and floral arrangements. People barter and argue prices; it would be insulting to pay what's asked, and children run from vendor to vendor sampling the goods. I'd like to be in the park at the pond feeding the ducks. I used to spend hours feeding the ducks with stale bread the baker saved for the neighborhood kids. Poor ducks were probably miserable, but I was happy. My Opa used to walk to the park with me and even though we didn't speak the same language, we always understood each other.

I remember feeling grown when I walked to the park by myself. It was a few blocks from my grandparents, but in their neighborhood I was safe. I couldn't understand everyone, and I think that was part of the appeal. I didn't have to communicate. I could plead ignorance. Keine Deutsch. And I was alone. And I liked being alone. You can think, or not, in a hideaway, but no one asks questions, and if you want to talk you can, but no one forces you. Sometimes talking sucks.

But back to the park. The cobblestone paths lead through trees and playgrounds and people are sprinkled like confetti across the grass. A socccer game (their football) goes on in the middle of the field, and in true German style, everyone has a beer, but no one is drunk. Old men play chess on stone tables set up around the park, and children play their own game on a lifesize chess board with pieces almost as big as themselves. I laugh as they shoo the ducks out of the way to move their pieces.

I think this is my hide out because people here know how to relax. They take time to play. I want time to play...without feeling like there is something else I should be doing. When we were kids we never said, "Well, I would make some mud-pies, but I've got to clean my room." Why does that responsibilty have to be part of "growing up?" Does it? Or do we put too much pressure on ourselves?

In the park with the ducks and a warm pretzel. That's my hide out. Too bad it's in another country.

Topic: Hide Outs

Okay, tonight's Write Night topic is Hide Outs. Just start a new post, and write away. Or write on paper, but if you do that, please post some of your favorite lines to the blog so that we can share them in the next newsletter. Happy writing.

Newsletter and Write Night

Newsletter:
If we have your email address, you will receive a copy of _Blackwater Reflections_, the newsletter for Blackwater Writing Project, this week. If we don't have an email address for you, it may be next week before we get print copies mailed. We are trying to move away from print copies, though, so please consider notifying Blackwater Writing Project (333-7336) of your current email. Eventually, we will also archive the newsletter on the Internet.

Please send updates and articles for the newsletter to Donna Sewell, BWP Director, or to Diana Chartier, editor of _Blackwater Reflections_.

Write Night:
We'll meet at Hildegard's Cafe in downtown Valdosta Monday, Oct. 9, at 6:30 p.m. for Write Night. The topic will be posted to the blog by 6:30. If you can't join us physically, join us virtually.

Last call

Times goes by fast. Are we having fun yet?

I am in the process of putting together the few pieces that were sent. If you have anything else please send it along. The drafty of the newsletter is going out to Donna tonight.

Keep in touch everyone. We need your news and updates.
Di