Risking Growth

With poet Lynn Otto (right) at the Salem Poetry Project reading at Ike Box. 

What risks have you taken lately? 

I don’t mean texting while driving or leaving home without an umbrella on a cloudy day. I mean related to your teaching, learning, or disciplinary identity. Much has been written recently about risk-taking and its relationship to growth mindset, to learning, and to success. Perhaps you’ve seen the quote “If you’ve never failed, you’ve never attempted anything significant.” Or seen the classroom acronym for FAIL: First Attempt In Learning. Or heard the phrase “Fail forward.” 

It's one thing to tell students this; it's another entirely to model it. But it's true: If I want to bless my students with freedom from fear of productive failure, I first of all have to free myself, and to do that, I have to practice. I practiced with 2 risks this week: I read a poem of mine at an open mike event and I accepted an invitation to write an NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) post and lesson about a poet of my choice. 

I’d never even attended an open mike event before. I didn’t even know this event included an open mike! Here’s how it happened. A middle school friend re-established contact a few years ago on social media. It turned out he lives near my grown daughters. Last October, this friend and his wife invited my husband and me over for lunch. I discovered his wife is a poet. I bought and read her book, Real Daughter, appreciating the nuanced look at family relationships. Wednesday I found out on social media that she was doing a reading at a local coffee shop the next night. I attended. 

She greeted me with, “You ARE doing the open mike, aren’t you?” I protested that I hadn’t come prepared, but she pushed, "You have your phone--surely you've emailed someone one." I admitted I could access the poem I’d written and posted on this blog back in July. I signed up for the first available spot, #2, so as to have as short a time as possible to regret my decision. What I learned: (1) What constitutes risk is individual. This seemed like a huge risk to me, but after I read, so many others got up and read—people of all ages and all abilities. Likewise, I need to remember not to discount what feels risky to a student. (2) It wasn’t as bad as I thought. (3) There’s nothing like reading my writing to a real audience to help me revise, realizing words are not just about getting an idea out of myself, but also connecting with these particular people.

There's me on the far right, Lynn across the table from me. Credit: https://www.facebook.com/SalemPoetryProject/photos/pcb.2770797049664694/2770795376331528/?type=3&theater

The other opportunity arrived in my inbox Monday: “I saw your recent blog post on poetry. I wondered if you would be interested in being a writer for this year’s NCTE Verse.” Wow. So I’ve spent this week researching the Polish winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature, Wislawa Szymborska (pronounced Veeswava Shimborska), and fleshing out the lesson I’ve led students through on her poem “Possibilities.” What I learned: The value of over-researching. They asked for a short bio of the poet. There are short bios all over the place—but it’s basically the same 2 sentences in the lit book, on the Nobel Prize web site, and on The Poetry Foundation web site. Two sentences is all I need, but it’s impossible to not plagiarize when 2 sentences is all I know. Then I came across a Polish site dedicated to Szymborska with a long chronology of her life. I realized she lived through both Nazi and Soviet occupations as well as the return to democracy. I collected a half a page of notes, realized I was way past “short bio,” and ended up with 2 sentences similar to all the rest—but now they were MY 2 sentences.

One final lesson taken from this week: With all the negative press social media has been getting, I would not have these opportunities to grow as a writer without it! I’m thankful not only for the opportunities to grow myself, but to be able to model for my students an active writing and reading life—part of being the living curriculum.

How do you actively engage in your discipline, becoming the living curriculum for your students?

Hope to see Wislawa Szymborska on this poster for 2020!