Today I had the opportunity to drive 8 OHS students to Kearney to attend a Writing Festival that my wife organized through the Nebraska Writing Project. After the festival was over, I was completely impressed.
The whole goal of the festival was to embrace and encourage students to write. They started the festival with a writing marathon, where the participants would break up into groups and go write individually. After writing a bit, the groups each met back up and shared some writing. After the marathon, the students attended a handful of different workshops, ranging from blogging to anatomy writing. At the very end of the festival all of the participants gathered back together for an "open mic" opportunity, where they could share writings from the day or previous materials they may have on hand.
I wasn't around for most of the festival, but I did get to sit in on the read around. This was great. It was amazing to see high school students share. These students shared a wide range of writings, from poetry to fictional stories. It was great to see these high school students vulnerable around others that they didn't even know. It was really amazing hearing students from OHS read some of their materials, and I even had the opportunity to hear some writing from Ava Leininger (she was a student who moved to Aurora this year). What really topped it off was that one of my current students wrote a piece about me. If I get a chance to get a copy of it and I get her permission, I will post the piece on here.
What Kelly wrote was heartfelt and hit right to my core. It helped to provide closure from the concert last night, and it was extremely genuine. I hope that Kelly will share this with me simply so I can keep it, and pull it out during those ROUGH teaching days!
So why the title of the blog? Because regardless of my abilities and frequency, I came to the acceptance today that I Am a Writer. The leaders today really drove home the fact that to be a writer, you simply have to state that you are a writer. What I say may not be earth shattering or world moving, but it is my ideas, thoughts, ramblings...and that is why I can safely say...I AM A WRITER!
Good stuff. I wrestle with that myself as I blog and even attempt to finish an ebook project. I often think to myself, "I'm not really a writer, I just write". It's odd because writing was not something I enjoyed on any level earlier in life. It wasn't until I found some subject matter that I was really interested in that I began enjoying writing. I write for a good 4 to 6 hours a week now. I've managed to squeak out almost 10 over vacation this week. I get a lot of energy from it, but I also learn a lot from it. As weird as it sounds, I really write for myself more than anyone else. My blog is kind of like "public journaling" I guess. At any rate. I suppose I should just take a cue here....
ReplyDeleteI am a writer as well.