Coming or Going

Here's something that happens frequently around here:

1. Teacher gives an assignment that can be described as "general." Said assignment usually includes language very similar to "make an argument about a significant experience/place/person."

2. Student chooses experience/place/person. Said experience/place/person is significant for some reason or another, but that significance is elusive and ethereal, tucked away in a messy drawer in the student's brain along with countless other experiences/places/people of varying significance, and thus any attempt to set it down on paper results in vague notions of importance that could be (and are) generated by just about anyone about just about anything.

Example: Student writes about significant place: home. Where is home? A place on the reservation. What place? A house. Student is able to verbalize little more than that. Reading the paper + inquiring verbally reveal that this paper is nearly fully focused on the student's experience with the Catholic Church across the street, specifically during Lent when she would venture across the street, despite not being Catholic, to experience the ceremonies at the church during the Easter season because they were Catholic, yes, but also wove in the ceremonies of her tribe.

This student was having a difficult time zooming in to the specific place. She was stuck on "home" and didn't know that she could write about going from her backyard, where she grew up hearing the church bells and smelling the mesquite wood that the church burned for heat, over to the church itself every Friday and Saturday evening during Lent.

She didn't know that she could choose a topic so small. I see this all the time. General assignments like the significant experience/place/person often lead to big fields of thought, not small ones. To help her see how she could choose, I decided to tell her something about how stories work and go from there.

I drew two circles on the whiteboard. On one of them, I drew an arrow starting outside and ending inside. On the other, I drew an arrow originating in the middle of the circle and extending outward.

I told her that every story is one of these two. It is either someone/something new coming into an established environment or someone/something leaving an established environment to go on some sort of adventure or journey.

She recognized which hers was: Option #2, adventure. She recognized that the established environment (the circle) was her backyard and that the adventure (the arrow) was going to the church. I emphasized that she could pay attention to her time boundaries, all year vs. during Lent. We talked how she could smell the mesquite wood from the church. I asked her if this fell under all year in her backyard or during Lent at the church. Backyard. The Deer Dancer that was a part of the ceremonies? Church.

We talked about the intro could (and should) include details from all year in order to show us that she lives right near the church. The thesis is where the adventure starts. She journeys outside her backyard to the church itself.

I think drawing those diagrams helped her understand how the beginning of the paper related to the rest of the paper. At various points in the conversation, I added on to the drawings. I'd drawn them before, but never added on. I labeled the circle "backyard all year" and the arrow " church on Fr + Sat during Lent." I wrote the word "choose" above the arrow and "forced" below, then wrote "why?" I'd never thought about breaking the paradigm down like that, but it seemed helpful. I doubt that will be the last time that shows up on the whiteboard.