Writing

     This morning while at an Orlando Writing workshop a roomful of Florida finest teachers were handed an opening to copy down.  The room buzzed with sounds of pencils and pens as teachers hastily followed the instructors directions.  If only my own class were this obedient, I would have the perfect dream job! 

     Then we were orally prompted to create certain types of sentences to carefully craft a six sentence paragraph.  Our goal was to describe one moment in time as we stood in line at Dairy Queen.  Diligently we all pondered clever ways to word our thoughts, feelings, and actions.  Excited to read our finished paragraphs out loud to the class,  we giggled as we shared our stories flowing over with weak verbs, limited transitions, and no sentence variety whatsoever!   To my amazement I actually had written two descriptive words that I don't even tolerate in my writing community. 

     Thinking that I owe a few previous students apologies, I was lost in my thoughts as the instructor explained that our homework for the summer was to finish our story.  Wearing her professional business attire and flashing her biggest smile the instuctor leaned towards us whispering... when we meet again "We will be using the 4th grade rubric to score your writing, you will need a 4 to receive points for this weeklong workshop." 

    With our teeth clenched we all silently gathered our belongings and slowly exited the conference room on wobbly legs.   A few short days ago I had entered this room feeling confident of my teaching ability.  Afterall, my class had scored well this year on Florida Writes.   However now that I am expected to show my true mettle among my own peers, my hands feel shaky and knots are forming in my own stomach.  Words of horror from a previous writing teacher creep into my mind.  Hmmm... I'm so grateful I kept copies of my student's best writing.  Maybe I can grab a few ideas from them!