8th Grade Writing - Midnight Stranger
Caroline and I moved into the house little over two years ago. Can you still believe there are unpacked boxes tucked away in the attic space and backs of closets? A co-worker told me if I could survive two years without knowing what was inside these boxes, I probably didn't need them anyway. My friend suggested this simple solution- put the them to the curb. Maybe they were right and should have heeded their advice. Should have, could have. . . but didn't.
I only had enough patience to sort through one box; the others have to wait until some future date. We're talking way future. The process of sorting through was tedious enough, as the contents were stack and stacks of papers dating back to before my wedding. Reading through the contents of this box, page by page, I discovered: love letters from Car, teaching credentials, student loan notices, pictures kids drew for me back in the day of substitute teaching, my college diploma, lesson plans from student teaching, my passport, and a book of random bits of stories and poetry I started back in highschool.
Flipping though the collection of my adolescent stories and poetry, I came across something I wrote my eighth grade year. The assignment was to write an original story incorporating the vocab list from Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights". Up until that point I had never ventured to write a story before. The "whole language" movement in education came about in the 80's, when I was still in elementary school. Catholic schools were way behind on teaching trends, and English was systematically taught through Voyages in English. In other words, our "writing" instruction was devoted to: parts of speech, punctuation, sentence diagraming, outlining, writing reports / bibliographies. We didn't give presentations, write scripts and act them out dramatically, write poetry (beyond eight years worth of limericks and diamantes), or craft a short story to my recollection. Creative writing was saved for writing an original sentence for spelling / vocab words.
Fortunately I was an avid reader, and knew a little something about stories. My grandfather gave me a set of leather bound books that included the complete works of great authors- Ibsen, Stevenson, Wilde, Zola, Tolstoy, etc. Most of those books were well beyond my level of comprehension; rather, my mind soaked up the writings of Stevenson, Wilde, and Poe. Rereading this story, I now view it as a fusion of Bronte, Poe, and my imagination. Viola, I submitted my first and final draft as any regular middle school student would. The teacher liked it enough to volunteer me to read the story aloud in front of the class. How embarassing! But that was the moment when I considered the possibility writing might be something that I could be good at.
That was fifteen years ago; I still have a great deal to learn about writing. As a middle school language arts teacher, I get paid on the job to learn more about the craft. The National Writing Project at Rutgers has done wonders to get me back into the joy writing after all of these years. I'm far from being a decent writer, but it's something that I enjoy doing. Therefore I'll keep seeking out ways to self-improve as an author. I'm publishing this story thanks to my rediscovery, and to celebrate my upcomming fifth year of teaching.
By the way, count all of my grammar mistakes. In particular, look out for inconsistent verb tense and misuse of commas / parentheses. Looks like eight years of intensive grammar studies didn't pay off. Surprised I still earned an "A" considering the nuns were grammar hounds. Then again this was a vocab lesson after all, and what does punctuation have to do with vocab anyway? As a writing teacher myself, I know that a balanced literacy approach is the way to go: teaching both the science of grammar with the art of writing craft. If only the nuns knew this approach way back when. . .
Seeing that it was getting late I bid farewell and started my journey out into the streets. Taking my eyes off the road, I noticed a light breeze racing through my hair. I glanced up farther into the midnight summer sky to see clouds shroud the moon. Guided by a somber glow (given by a streetlight above), the sky darkened greatly as the clouds covered the last morsel of the moon. At the same time the monotonous music of the katydid, and soft breeze becalmed. Silence is now dead at hand.
A thin fog rolls over the ground and an outline of a stranger appears from nowhere. The form of this creature became more obvious. A human strides toward me as I continued my procession. her appearance permiated a feeling of folorn. She had an insecure gait that expressed an inferiority to others. Her skin looked milky and soft but was covered in a dark cloak. A medalion was tightly grasped by her boney fingers (leaving the other hand completely free). her long crimson red hair had a noticable grey streak which said that she was once put through a great ordeal.
The fog thickened and divided us. I stopped filled with bewilderment. Then I pressed on forward and the fog lifted. The moon once again became clear in the midnight summer sky. I went back to look for her but never saw a person of that description again. She had returned from the night as mysteriously as she had come from it (lost forever).
I only had enough patience to sort through one box; the others have to wait until some future date. We're talking way future. The process of sorting through was tedious enough, as the contents were stack and stacks of papers dating back to before my wedding. Reading through the contents of this box, page by page, I discovered: love letters from Car, teaching credentials, student loan notices, pictures kids drew for me back in the day of substitute teaching, my college diploma, lesson plans from student teaching, my passport, and a book of random bits of stories and poetry I started back in highschool.
Flipping though the collection of my adolescent stories and poetry, I came across something I wrote my eighth grade year. The assignment was to write an original story incorporating the vocab list from Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights". Up until that point I had never ventured to write a story before. The "whole language" movement in education came about in the 80's, when I was still in elementary school. Catholic schools were way behind on teaching trends, and English was systematically taught through Voyages in English. In other words, our "writing" instruction was devoted to: parts of speech, punctuation, sentence diagraming, outlining, writing reports / bibliographies. We didn't give presentations, write scripts and act them out dramatically, write poetry (beyond eight years worth of limericks and diamantes), or craft a short story to my recollection. Creative writing was saved for writing an original sentence for spelling / vocab words.
Fortunately I was an avid reader, and knew a little something about stories. My grandfather gave me a set of leather bound books that included the complete works of great authors- Ibsen, Stevenson, Wilde, Zola, Tolstoy, etc. Most of those books were well beyond my level of comprehension; rather, my mind soaked up the writings of Stevenson, Wilde, and Poe. Rereading this story, I now view it as a fusion of Bronte, Poe, and my imagination. Viola, I submitted my first and final draft as any regular middle school student would. The teacher liked it enough to volunteer me to read the story aloud in front of the class. How embarassing! But that was the moment when I considered the possibility writing might be something that I could be good at.
That was fifteen years ago; I still have a great deal to learn about writing. As a middle school language arts teacher, I get paid on the job to learn more about the craft. The National Writing Project at Rutgers has done wonders to get me back into the joy writing after all of these years. I'm far from being a decent writer, but it's something that I enjoy doing. Therefore I'll keep seeking out ways to self-improve as an author. I'm publishing this story thanks to my rediscovery, and to celebrate my upcomming fifth year of teaching.
By the way, count all of my grammar mistakes. In particular, look out for inconsistent verb tense and misuse of commas / parentheses. Looks like eight years of intensive grammar studies didn't pay off. Surprised I still earned an "A" considering the nuns were grammar hounds. Then again this was a vocab lesson after all, and what does punctuation have to do with vocab anyway? As a writing teacher myself, I know that a balanced literacy approach is the way to go: teaching both the science of grammar with the art of writing craft. If only the nuns knew this approach way back when. . .
Midnight Stranger
Seeing that it was getting late I bid farewell and started my journey out into the streets. Taking my eyes off the road, I noticed a light breeze racing through my hair. I glanced up farther into the midnight summer sky to see clouds shroud the moon. Guided by a somber glow (given by a streetlight above), the sky darkened greatly as the clouds covered the last morsel of the moon. At the same time the monotonous music of the katydid, and soft breeze becalmed. Silence is now dead at hand.
A thin fog rolls over the ground and an outline of a stranger appears from nowhere. The form of this creature became more obvious. A human strides toward me as I continued my procession. her appearance permiated a feeling of folorn. She had an insecure gait that expressed an inferiority to others. Her skin looked milky and soft but was covered in a dark cloak. A medalion was tightly grasped by her boney fingers (leaving the other hand completely free). her long crimson red hair had a noticable grey streak which said that she was once put through a great ordeal.
The fog thickened and divided us. I stopped filled with bewilderment. Then I pressed on forward and the fog lifted. The moon once again became clear in the midnight summer sky. I went back to look for her but never saw a person of that description again. She had returned from the night as mysteriously as she had come from it (lost forever).
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