Saturday
June 17, 2023
If you are someone who has followed this blog in the past, you know that Saturdays on the MGS campus are varied yet focused on taking care of the campus. The students clean their classrooms, tend the plants and garden, do their laundry all the while singing and laughing with one another. And, of course, they also have scheduled study time, especially when they are preparing for the final exams of the term.
This afternoon, Joni, Kaelen and I had our third writers group. Joni and I weren’t too sure what could be accomplished or whether the students would have had the time to write a response to our first prompt which was essentially Michelle Obama’s quote about the importance of sharing our own stories with one another.
“Even when it is not pretty or perfect. Even when its more real that you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.”
To our delight, everyone had written something in response to the ideas we had talked about on Thursday. Everyone was looking forward to sharing something with a partner.
We asked each student to quietly read their writing and underline a favorite sentence or paragraph. Then they each chose a partner and found a spot around the campus to share their chosen passage. The listener/reviewer could ask one clarifying question of the author and also share something that they liked about the writer’s work. They went to work quickly!
When we reconvened in the large group, students volunteered to share their sharing time experience. Encouraged to speak in clear voices so that everyone in the big room could hear, I was very impressed by their sharing. Joni appreciated how each student felt they could “feel the emotion my writer was saying.” She heard them commenting that they “enjoyed reading each other’s writing. “I like the fact my writer wrote things that I have been thinking…things I did not write this time but may try next time.”
Clearly writing is something very powerful for these students. One can see that the emphasis that Sister Juvenal and Sister Laetitia have placed on strengthening a culture of reading and writing has influenced these beginning writers. They have been eager to participate in our project. They are thriving on sharing with one another. They are taking the process seriously, even thinking ahead to what can I write next? Can I be published? Joni and I are encouraging them to slow down the dreaming!
At the close of this lively session, we gave the girls a version of the prompt I give my Tufts students in my course The Role of Story in Education. I’ve taken to idea from the the words of James Redfield, “the aims of education are the aims of life; education is simply a general term we use for the process by which we become wiser than we were.”
Think about a time you learned a lesson in which you became a wiser person than you were before that lesson. You may have learned how to solve a mathematical equation but also think about what you learned about yourself as a learner. How did this lesson help you understand how you are becoming an educated young woman
Before the dinner bell rang, the girls already had ideas to share! I am sure we will be delighted by the stories they can share next time.
Linda V Beardsley
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