This is the second-to-last week of this year’s writing workshops. I started class by telling the kids, “Fourth grade is the magical year. It’s your best year.” They didn’t understand what I was talking about. Over the next 90 minutes, all of the following happened:

• A student asked if he could use the word “pelvis” in his writing piece. I said, “Sure, why not?” He said, “Because it’s down there,” then pointed to ‘down there.’
• Later, after another student asked if I “was alive for 9/11″. I said, “Sure, why?” A different student cut in and said, “Did you actually watch it? And did you know the whole thing about the plane hitting the Pentagon is a cover up…SUPPOSEDLY…?
• Finally, when class was wrapping up, another student looked at me a little panicky and said, “I can’t find my backpack.” I stared for a second and said, “It’s on your back.” He patted the bag strapped over his shoulders and said, “So it is.”

Magical.

–

A friend, the father of a 12-year-old, asked me about this year’s writing workshops. He wanted to make sure they weren’t happening in early summer. “We travel then,” he said.

“They start in mid-July,” I said, “and continue through August.”

He grinned.

“Ahh, the dead season,” he said.

Hot, humid, dead or alive, whatever choice of words you use to refer to summer’s dog days, make sure and give the young writers in your family an opportunity to keep their pens and pencils moving across the page (or their fingers plugging along the keys, if that’s their preferred mode of expression).

If you’ve landed here by accident, hop over to the Young Writers Workshop page to learn about two separate camps, one at the Attic in SE Portland, and the other at Opal Creek. You can also also download a registration form for the workshop at the Attic, and get in touch over on the Inquire page.

Believe me, the kids have plenty to write about. Give them the space and time they want to put the words in motion.

–

Greetings friends and neighborhs,

I’m delighted to be the featured presenter at the next Young Willamette Writers meeting, set for Jan 3, 2012 at the Old Church in downtown Portland. You can find out more about the Young Willamette Writers here.

We’ll be doing an hour of poetry, starting at 7 p.m. The Old Church is located at SW 11th and Clay, and the event is FREE. It’s a great way for young writers to start the new year off with some new words.

I’m delighted to post the following three poems (with a very thankful nod toward William Carlos Williams) written by three of my very favorite local (Portland) writers, each of whom I’m happy to know. Their poems came from a prompt in which they chose four words from Williams’ The Red Wheelbarrow, then ran with their own poem from there. Have a read.

RED DEPENDS UPON WATER

so much waits upon
rain

ten thousand pewter
trunks

dry gray barrows of
bark

cinnabar leaves fractured red
wheels

ready and willing to
decay

— B. Campbell Ford

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
rolling

through a white sky
agitating

molecules until atoms breathe out
blue

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
mounding

scattered clouds
glazing

gray undersides
coral-red

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
tearing

through static
wool

freeing whorls of white
rain

loosening skeins of black
thunder

so much depends
upon

a white wheel
spinning

purple-black opaque silk
shielding

our eyes from the
plasma-

maddened Midas
touch

of the white-wheeled
sun

— Pattie Palmer-Baker

WHITE RAIN DEPENDS, WHEEL

the world depends
upon

the wheel turning
steadily

moving the earth
surely

keeping the seas
contained

maintaining mountains’ upright
positions

sending flowing rivers
seaward

always the wheel
turning

earth and sky
singing

all systems dancing
gaily

world radiant in
white

from hot sun
shining

and cool rain
shimmering

wheel keeps turning
turning

— Mary K. Moen

–

The following is intended to clarify my approach and goals when working with writers in individual and group environments. For parents interested in connecting for writing workshops, I encourage you to read the following, then follow up with me through email to continue the conversation. You can reach me at info(at)davejarecki(dot)com.

The overall goals of my writing workshops, whether working with young writers or adults, are as follows:

1) Create a comfortable, inviting and inclusive atmosphere where participants feel welcomed and encouraged to engage with their own creativity and to share their creativity with others, free of self-judgement.

2) To impart valuable tools and lessons that will support each participant’s growth as a writer, no matter where he or she is in their own growth. (In this way, even within a group dynamic, I take the time to connect with participants individually to be sure they are continuing along their own path and pace.)

3) To encourage consistent, constructive writing habits so participants begin to build a daily writing practice into their lives.

4) To increase and enhance each participant’s literary vocabulary, building their strengths as writers, editors and reviewers. Much of this work comes in the form of constructive critique. To introduce the concept of constructive critique, we generally begin with pieces of literature written by someone not in the workshop. From there, we often critique pieces of my writing. Then we get into critiquing the work of writers in the workshop. This is a safe and supportive way to build toward critique, especially with young writers for who the concepts of workshopping, review and revision are still relatively new.

WORKSHOP SIZES

In the past I have worked with groups as large as 20, and as small as 2 (in addition to 1-on-1 sessions). In setting up a small, parent-driven workshop that occurs at one parent’s home, an idea number would be anywhere between 2 and 6, though if space permits, we could have as many as 8. The smaller the group, the more individualized attention each writer will receive.

For a group of 4 or less, individual sessions will last approximately 90-minutes to 2-hours. For 5-8 students, individual sessions last between two and two and a half hours.

PROPOSED WORKSHOP SCHEDULING & TUITION

When launching a new workshop, I prefer to set parameters around the number of meetings, in order to help us clearly identify and work toward goals within a set amount of time. If, once the workshop is complete, we decide to continue, we can stick to the original design, or we can redesign the workshop to accommodate schedules, goals, etc.

I’ve provided the following example to help you conceptualize how a workshop may run. Again, I’m happy to work with parents to design a model that works for them and their child/children.

• Six group meetings of 90-minutes to 2-hours. Meetings are held in a parent’s home, or at a designated nearby location.
• At-home writing exercises to be completed during the week. The intent of the exercise is to help foster good, consistent writing habits. Students will bring the pieces they generated during the week to the workshop to be read, discussed, reviewed and revised.
• The overall six-week curriculum is a blend of creative writing and fundamental basics designed to enrich what they are learning during the school week. Writers will also be able to bring school-related writing exercises to the workshop for peer review, insight and revisions.
• Costs for this type of workshop generally falls in a sliding scale between $600 and $900 for the group (or, $150 – $225 per student, assuming four students). Parents are free to split these costs in any way they see fit. My goal with these costs is to ensure that parents are able to afford these classes within their family budgets.

PAST AND ONGOING YOUTH WRITING WORKSHOPS INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING

• The after-school writing program at Woodstock Elementary (SE Portland). Now in its fifth year, this program includes three, eight-week sessions throughout the school year for Woodstock’s third, fourth, and fifth grade populations.
• One-on-one workshops. These personalized sessions are designed to build on the strengths of the individual writer while also introducing them to new concepts, approaches and techniques. When working with young writers in one-on-one sessions, parents are invited to participate, share their thoughts and offer their input into the direction the workshop takes.
• Summer Youth Writing Camp at The Attic Institute (2011). The inaugural youth writing camp (Summer 2011) welcomed more than a dozen young writers, ages 11-16, for a four-week, eight-session workshop built around creative expression, writing fundamentals and critique/review. Writers wrote and shared during each three-hour session, and also engaged in at-home writing exercises.
• Winter/Spring Poetry at Depaul Treatment Centers (NE Portland, 2006/07)

AND ONE LAST NOTE . . .

Take a look at this previous post about the Summer 2011 Youth Writing Camp, which delves a little further into my process, thoughts, and drive behind working with young writers.

Thanks for reading!

–

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Shawna Harch, a local writer and member of the Reading Local community, and she was kind enough to share our conversation on the Reading Local site. Here’s a little bit of it:

RL) Can you talk about process vs. content? What’s the significance of cultivating a process?

DJ) I think we live in a highly content-driven society and it starts affecting us at a very young age. The focus is on the product, the final grade. When I teach at public schools, I tell students that it’s okay to make a mess. Rather than dictating a word count or a due date or a structure, I emphasize the drafting process. When I work with adults, I tell them they need to write 1,000 words to get 100 good ones.

I had a dream once that Hilary Clinton and I were at a conference and had to write a haiku. She insisted on writing the perfect haiku, and I was trying to convince her to write a mess. We went back and forth with battling philosophies.

I maintain you have to trust the mess and trust that you will work your way out of it. Most people become gifted writers over time, with practice. I think of Malcolm Gladwell’s “ten-thousand hour” rule. You have to put in those ten thousand hours. The more you trust process and the mess that comes, the faster you will arrive at the “right words,” if they even exist.

And here’s a link to the interview in its entirety.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

I’ll be facilitating two new workshops at the Attic starting in July and continuing through August: another rendition of the ever-popular “Time to Write,” and a one-day (three-hour) “No Strings Attached” poetry session for the workshop-curious.

Take a look at the Workshops page for more info, or jump to the Attic’s Classes page to register.

AND: there are still a few seats available for the upcoming YOUTH WRITING CAMP, a four-week (eight-session) workshop for writers ages 11-15. We’ll meet Tuesdays/Thursdays, starting July 12 and continuing through August 4. You can find more info about the Writing Camp on the Workshops page as well.

FINALLY: the “Turning Up the Heat” poetry workshop (eight-weeks) starts tonight at Writers’ Dojo in St. Johns. Thanks to everyone who expressed interest and helped share the word. We’ll have a full table of wonderful poets cracking the whip on their work.

–

A few weeks ago I was hedging on whether or not to plan summer writing workshops for young writers. I’d received a few inquiries from parents who’d found DaveJarecki.com and stumbled upon the Workshop page, where information for LAST SUMMER’S workshop was still live. How did last summer’s workshops go? They didn’t. Whether it was a challenge of timing or planning, I wasn’t able to get enough parents interested in registering their students.

People have a lot going on in the summer, when the rains finally go away and the premium is spent on outdoor recreation. I can’t blame parents for planning canoe trips, day hikes and backpacking adventures with their kids. I look forward to doing the same thing. Likewise, I discovered that parents like to have their children’s summers mapped out as early as possible. I didn’t publicize the workshops until mid-May, and by then it was too late. Decisions were made and the kids’ days were already lined up.

All of this was playing in my head when I received a fairly innocuous bit of literature in the mail, the 2011 “Report on Our Schools” from Portland Public. (You can find an online version of the same report here.) By all accounts, PPS is doing very well, as student achievement is on the way up . . . except in one key area that speaks to me both personally and professionally: “Seventh Graders Meeting Writing Standards.” It sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb on the report, the only “red downward arrow” in a column where all the rest are upward and green.

Why is this? I don’t know for sure, but I have my own thoughts and feelings about how writing is taught – and in some cases not taught – in schools. And when I boil my thoughts down to their simplest form, it comes back to the notion of process vs. content.

I believe that, as a society, our focus is on content. “What have you done?” is more important than “How have you done it?”

Overtime, what I’ve discovered and have come to honor is that successful writing has more to do with “How” than with “What”. Still, in a typical school day where classes are 50-minutes long, and occasionally half of that time is spent trying to get kids to stay in their seats, there just aren’t enough minutes to focus on “How.” And while kids may receive various tools and tips that help them find the “How,” the focus naturally shifts to “What” – after all, grading “What” is a lot easier than putting a stamp or letter on “How.”

My goal as a writing educator is to introduce writers of all ages to the concept and notion of “How,” keying the birth, growth and evolution of their own unique and individual writing process. Some parents have asked if workshops are geared only toward students who already enjoy writing and/or excel as writers. The short answer is, “No.” The workshops are extremely inviting and inclusive. I refer to each workshop student as “a writer,” because in the end that’s what they are, not only during the workshop but also when they leave the workshop and venture back to the world. I want them to feel confident that when they sit down to write, the words that will spin out of them will be valid and good.

You can learn more about this year’s Youth Summer Writing Camp in SE Portland on the Workshop page. Feel free to email info(at)davejarecki(dot)com with any questions.

I’m pleased to be partnering with the Attic in SE Portland to offer three exciting literary enrichment opportunities for middle, junior and senior-high students. Please feel free to share with any colleagues, family or friends who may be interested.

• SPRING BREAK WRITING CAMP – a week of writing and creative expression.

  From March 22- 26, coinciding with Portland Public’s spring break, Writing Camp offers multiple opportunities for middle school and junior high students to express themselves. During morning sessions, students will work with guest poets, including Sage Cohen, Pam Steele and Peter Sears. In the afternoon, writers will explore various fundamentals of creative and expository writing, including narrative structure, character development, dialogue, setting, and place, as they launch new pieces of writing and work on existing ones.

• FUNDAMENTALS OF FICTION, FANTASY & PERSONAL JOURNAL

  Saturdays from April 10th – May 15th, junior and senior high writers will work toward moving their ideas and stories beyond their first lines, first paragraphs and first pages toward completion. In so doing, they’ll focus on the fundamentals of good storytelling, including narrative arch, characters, plot development and more, with the goal of finishing their stories.

• WEAVING EXPERIENCES INTO WRITING

  Also on Saturdays from April 10th – May 15th, junior and senior high writers will uncover the steps it takes to turn their personal experiences into stories, poetry, essays, fiction and more. This workshop will be especially helpful for students preparing for college entrance essays, who want to write a book, and who are interested in exploring personal narratives.

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER at the Attic’s classes page, or email me at info(at)davejarecki(dot)com.

ABOUT THE ATTIC

Founded in 1999, the Attic Writers’ Workshop is widely regarded as a literary gem–a place that encourages & develops your talent, helps you focus on your writing, & invites you into the camaraderie & community of other writers. In addition to individualized consultations for writers at all levels, the heart of the Attic is the workshop: small, supportive, innovative, & intensive. Students receive generous attention, geared to their present & future writing.



–

Oregon poet Shaindel Beers will be making her way into Portland this weekend (from Pendleton, where she teaches at Blue Mountain Community College) for a one-day workshop at Writers’ Dojo.

During the three-hour workshop, writers will explore the voice that begs to cry out in their work, discuss ways to access and drive a strong, personal style throughout their writing, explore personal history as springboards and much more.

THE FACTS

DATE: Saturday, November 7th

TIME: 2-5 p.m.

PLACE: Writers’ Dojo, 7518 N. Chicago Ave., Portland, OR, 97203

COST: $59

MORE
This workshop is part of the Dojo’s upcoming November workshop series. Register and find out more about this and other upcoming workshops at the Dojo’s events page, or by calling 503-706-0509.

MORE ABOUT SHAINDEL BEERS

Shaindel Beers’ writing, including poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. In January of 2009, Salt Publishing released her first full-length poetry collection, “A Brief History of Time”, which is steeped in personal narrative, internal musings, and the personal longings of a girl reared in a flat country. Beers is currently an instructor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, and serves as Poetry Editor of Contrary.

You can learn more about Beers and her work by visiting her newly launched website.