Change the Hole not the Peg - Valuing Student Artists

Today, I'm sharing a success story - my son. What his journey represents is important for all the young artists out there.

Alice in Wonderland

The lad never fit the mold of traditional education. His right brain dominance and creativity surfaced very early on. Unfortunately it didn't mesh with the left brain rigors and demands of public education.

Sadly, that disconnect tends to label artistic students as inferior to our high academic achievers.

I say malarky.

Here's a quote from my son at six years old when a classmate drew a butterfly without wings...

"That's a butter-not-fly."

Is that the insight of an inferior learner?

His wit and humor took off from there to new levels of sophistication beyond his years. He was born with perfect pitch, developed an uncanny ability to pick up instruments, and was a natural performer. No spaces on the report card for those talents.

He could never memorize his multiplication tables. That and other perceived deficiencies pegged him as an "at risk" student. 

He wrote his own plays before his classmates had mastered paragraphs.

Problematic grades in required classes that had no meaning, connection, or impact on his creative goals landed him in night school to earn his high school diploma.

He started his own improv group with friends and won awards in theatre competitions for the high school that was continually labeling him inadequate. 

What's wrong with this picture?

 Why aren't there a variety of measurements for success in our public schools? Why aren't our young artists valued on equal terms as our young scholars? Why is there such a narrow pathway for success especially in high school?

photo credit

Is there a foundational education that students need? Absolutely. But I ask you - what's more important - knowledge of the quadratic equation or balancing a checkbook? 

The commonly accepted high school expectations do not serve our student artists. Often they result in an academic pommeling out of sync with creative goals that burn students out and turn them off to continued education.

For example, why doesn't a blossoming actor study the history of theatre for their social studies requirement? Hmm, civilizations such as the Greeks, Romans, and the world's political movements are reflected throughout theatre and art history. Why isn't a budding painter encouraged to read biographies of Picasso and Michelangelo to enhance their literacy? The key to student engagement is to validate and encourage their goals, talents, and dreams.

Yes, budget shortfalls enter into this discussion, but a motivated learner can follow an independent study path that doesn't require additional classes. The same teacher that would be grading a research paper on World War Two could grade a thesis about the effects of the Expressionist movement on society.

So what was the game changer for my son? How did "he who eschewed college," end up in college?

Enter Pacific Conservatory for Performing Arts - PCPA. This program is a brilliant model that combines a scholarly and practical training approach to theater. The body is fine tuned as an instrument and every academically rigorous class is relevant to the developing life of an artist.

Key word here - relevant. 

Fiddler on the Roof - PCPA

Fiddler on the Roof - PCPA

Suddenly the reluctant scholar is writing ten page college level papers on classic Greek tragedies. Not exactly light summer beach reading for a kid who just squeaked through high school. He's memorizing pages of dialog, complex dance routines, and intricate musical harmonies. 

Relevant. 

When you match education with passion the result is success. 

The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, FIDM is another college experience that nurtures the talents of artists following a path that leads to fashion and costuming arts. 

We need to make these focused opportunities available earlier in our schools, especially at the high school level so our young artists are valued and inspired to follow their talents, not discouraged.  

My son just signed his first professional acting contract. He's living the dream, but how many disillusioned talents have we lost along the way?

The Writer's Voice - Moon Strings by Leslie S. Rose

“The Writer’s Voice” is a multi-blog, multi-agent contest hosted by Cupid of Cupid’s Literary Connection, Brenda Drake of Brenda Drake Writes, Monica B.W. of Love YA, and Krista Van Dolzer of Mother. Write. (Repeat.). It's based on NBC’s singing reality show The Voice, so the four hosts will serve as coaches and select projects for their teams based on queries and first pages.



I'm honored to be a participant in this wildly generous opportunity for hopeful writers to bring their stories into the light.

Query:

I offer MOON STRINGS, a YA science fiction love story, with a word count of 82,000 for your consideration. 

Everyone in fifteen-year-old Mellylora Whisper’s life is bent on forcing her into a tidy package of obligations. Her royal godparents press her to commit to a future with First-son Prince Jexa. Her military father insists she channel her science genius to aid the Echo Galaxy in their endless dance of defense against the decaying Earth. Jexa pleads with her to control her manic impulses and focus on duty.

Mellylora has a different vision. She is determined to oppose her galaxy’s directive and save the Earth, not battle it. She’s only got the summer moon cycle to be taken seriously before mounting expectations pull her under.

When Mellylora enters a tri-planetary scientific competition, hoping for a win to validate her Earth project, brilliance does not work in her favor. She attracts the eye of a high level galactic leader who is turning traitor to the Echo Galaxy. Through his network of turncoats, that includes Prince Jexa's younger brother, he blackmails Mellylora to commit her talents and loyalties to his dark purposes.

The expectations Mellylora once resented, especially the one that kept Jexa by her side, dissolve into dreams that are losing their chance to come true.

1^st 250:

Mellylora Whisper wanted to see the sky one last time before she died. She flattened her body against the clear-steel of the balcony floor, limbs splayed like a starfish, straining to find any thread of blue peeking through the labyrinth of towers that sprang up between the Larkan Academy and the sea. The cold transparent metal under her cheek battled the flush spiking from her chest to her face.

The urgent-imperative signal screeched in the dorm room behind her. Mellylora’s ears throbbed as the wail sprang from her connectik communicator and bounced off each bare wall. The emergency frequency had activated the shields that slammed down over every clear-steel window, blocking her view. The only way to see the sky was through the balcony floor.

A cloudbird shot beneath her on its flight to the sea. She pressed the side of her face harder into the clear-steel until her cheekbone ached, but she was able to follow the creature’s flight through the forest of towers. There. Between the twin spires of the side-by-side government buildings, Mellylora found her sliver of sky.

The security panel above her bed showed no warning lights for fire or internal air contamination so the signal could mean only one thing. Warships from Earth that continually swarmed the Galactic Gate had breached the Echo Galaxy’s defenses. This attack had always been deemed improbable. Mellylora prayed for the day impossible would replace improbable. As the ectographic red-orange emergency aurora waved above her connectik communicator, improbable became inevitable.  

View From the 5th Grade Trenches: April 2013: Milo, Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze

As a teacher in these days of high-stakes standardized testing, no matter how hard I try to be fresh and interesting, I feel like I’m sending pre-packaged knowledge down a conveyor belt at a furious pace and simultaneously dumping it into 33 brains.

The days of “discovery learning” and gradual development of concepts seems to have gone the way of the Dodo.

Every so often, there is a magic experience where the kids and I connect as a collective soul. Our hearts swell and shine as one. We laugh together and cry together.

Thanks to Alan Silberberg, this wonderful synergy happened when I read his amazing story, Milo, Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze to my class.

Alan, perfectly balancing loving honesty and humor, guides Milo through the aftermath of losing a parent while navigating the insanity that is junior high.

There is a child in my class who recently lost a parent so at first I was wary of sharing Milo’s experience. I gave the book to the child’s parent to read. She adored it and appreciated the sensitivity Alan used in his storytelling.

Milo, Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze in addition to being an important story, is chock full of terrific drawings. I am able to project books on an interactive white board in my classroom so the kids enjoyed the illustrations in real time as I read the story aloud to them.

We didn’t just read Milo together, we experienced it. Rich conversations sprang up as we laughed, cried, and shared our own emotional journeys with one another. The student who had lost a parent told me how much she had related to and appreciated the book.

Thank you, Alan Silberberg for the gift of Milo, Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze.

 The kids had a few thoughts to share:

Many students said they made a connection with Milo because they have lost someone they loved.

FAVORITE MOMENTS

Milo trying to make Summer like him

Milo getting really scared in the haunted house

Booger Flavored Freezies

Sylvia and Milo planting the flowers

Milo finding the blanket

Playing with the salt and pepper shakers

Milo wanting to celebrate Mother’s Day

The dentist’s office

Milo writing the poem

Tuna fish

QUESTIONS FOR ALAN

Did you really know a One-Eyed Jack?

Does Summer secretly like-like Milo?

How do you connect with Milo?

Is there going to be another Milo story like how he handles high school?

Why did you make Milo so clumsy?

Did anyone else give you ideas that were in the book?

How did writing this story effect you? Were you sad?

Stressor Stacks

Do you ever feel your life is a game of Jenga? If you pull out the wrong block the whole works is going to thunk down on your head?

If so, it's time to manage your stressor stack. We all have a tower of obligations that conspire to squash our creativity. The trick is knowing how many you can juggle at once and still have brain space to be creative.

Lately my writing brain has felt like cold oatmeal. 

Writer's block? No. A gazillion unfinished projects still rattle the bars in my noggin. 

Fear of rejection? No. Rejection is an expectation along the yellow brick writing road.

So what gooped up my process? Yep, you guessed it

 STRESS.

The human brain had a finite capacity to deal with stressors. When we overload it, we are zapped emotionally and the first thing to go is creativity.

I ignored and mismanaged my stressors, allowing them to shut down the creative factory between my ears.

So how did I solve it and jump back in the creative saddle? 

I identified and validated each stressor to keep them from immobilizing me. We all have them, and they're not going away. By ignoring them, I'd allowed mine to grow fangs and gnaw at my brain. Once I put a face and priority on the blocks in my stack, I could strategize, assigning each a fair portion of my consciousness. The stressors didn't disappear, but they no longer run wild, wantonly slurping up my mental time and emotional space.

I assigned importance to relaxing. I'm terrible at finding contemplative, peaceful moments, but I'm working on stillness to give stress an outlet to leak out of my ears and blow away on the breeze. 

More importantly, I re-validated the place creativity has in my life. It is a "have to" for me. By letting the stressors take the lead, I had passively relegated writing to a lesser priority. *slaps hand* I re-committed to treating my creative life as if I were an athlete in training. I focus on healthy eating, exercise, and not compromising the time my writing muscles deserve each day in order to tone and build.

And guess what?

The creative channels in my brain unclogged. The energy and drive to sit down and write came flooding back. Once again I'm surrounded by spiral notebooks overflowing with ideas and bullet points, and my laptop needs charging everyday.

So get out your whips and tame those stressors. Don't let them sneak up on you the way I did. 

Writer's have a right to write no matter how high your Jenga stack grows.

LATEST NEWS IN THE BATTLE AGAINST ANONYMOUS COMMENTS:

You may notice this post was blitzed by those maddening anonymous comments. Thanks to my fellow bloggers I learned the secret formula to block the buggers. Since sharing is caring, here is the sequence to solve the problema in Blogger. 

DESIGN

SETTINGS

POSTS AND COMMENTS

WHO CAN COMMENT?

Check: REGISTERED USERS 

Cover Reveal: The Binding Stone by Lisa Gail Green

The word gorgeous hardly does this cover by Lisa Amowitz justice. It summons me into the world of Lisa Gail Green's Djinn Series akin to the way Bert and Mary melted through the chalk pictures in Mary Poppins.

I've had the honor of reading The Binding Stone, and it is an amazing ride through a rich and complex world. 

Tricked into slavery by the man she loved, the Djinni Leela has an eternity to regret her choices.

Awakened in the prison of her adolescent body, she finds a new master in possession of the opal that binds her. But seventeen-year-old Jered is unlike any she's seen. His kindness makes Leela yearn to trust again, to allow herself a glimmer of hope.

Could Jered be strong enough to free her from the curse of the Binding Stone?

Coming soon!

View From the Fifth Grade Trenches: March 2013 - Put the Creative Back in Writing

Have you heard of the Common Core Standards? If you haven't, they are basically a new set of academic expectations that will hit public education across the country in the next year or so. 

The good news is CCS are rigorous and give our kids the chance to take their critical thinking out for a spin. The new standards will dignify and challenge intelligence while promoting the spirit of cooperative learning.

With the growing emphasis on research skills and expository writing, I fear for the future of creative writing. Even the current standards here in California lean heavily toward non-fiction reading and writing at a young age. 

Here's my issue. Shouldn't kids be immersed in wonder in equal proportion to the world of information? I agree both are important, but I worry about sending a message that creative writing is a lesser form than its non-fiction cousin.

We've all watched funding for the arts being pushed into the corners of public education. I hate to see creative writing joining it in the shadows.

What kind of balance or imbalance do you see between creativity and information in your schools?

Eenie Meenie Miney No Way

I challenge you to pick the BEST picture below.

I've just asked the impossible. It feels like a crime to place Monet, Rivera, Kandinsky, Matisse, Dali, Van Gogh, or Parrish in first place and leave the rest of these masterpieces to be also rans.

There is no such thing as THE BEST in art. 

This week the Academy Awards will choose a best picture. The concept boggles my mind. 

How do you choose between:

Going back in a time machine to watch LINCOLN shape our nation.

A beloved musical combined with the grit of the original novel in LES MISERABLES.

The heart pumping escape wrapped in a Hollywood lie in ARGO.

The triumph of the human spirit over mental illness in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. 

A shameless reality that exists a breath away from our comfortable lives in BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD.

The transcendental journey in THE LIFE OF PI.

I regret I haven't seen ZERO DARK THIRTY, AMOUR, or DJANGO UNCHAINED, but I have no doubt each would leave its indelible imprint on me.

A masterpiece is a masterpiece. We are all the better for them.

The Long and Short Story of It

At the beginning of 2012, I decided to mix it up a bit in my writer's journey. I've been on the 

draft

revise-revise-revise

query

revise-revise-revise

query again

revise-revise-revise 

hamster wheel with manuscripts for a few years now. 

I've faithfully gone to conferences, latched onto amazing critique partners, blogged, and been a reading fiend to polish my skills. All my energies were focused on novels until...

Last January when I sold my first short story, a paranormal Hansel and Gretel extension called The Shimmer in the Woods that will be released any minute from Cliffhanger Books. Ironically I wrote it in an "I wonder if I can pull off a short story," moment. 

What followed was a year of writing and working with whip cracking editors on three more short stories that have seen the light of day in the Journeys of Wonder anthology series (check out the sidebar).

Had I become a traitor to my manuscripts?

Not at all.

My short story work has honed and sharpened multiple aspects of my craft by forcing me to:

• Create a compelling story arc in a compacted space
• Develop characters that matter right off the bat
• Drop right into the middle of high stakes
• Agonize over word choice to get maximum bang for my buck
• World build in the blink of an eye
• Add immediacy to every beat
• Write in present tense instead of my beloved past tense

I've taken these mad short story skills and applied them to my existing manuscripts. It's been a great ride revisiting my darlings with a fresh set of eyes and making them the better for it.

What have you done to shake up your writing pattern?

If you want a brilliant "how to" on short story writing, run don't walk to get a copy of:
Ron Carlson Writes a Story

Love Letter

Once Upon a Time...

There was girl who was New York City phobic. No matter how many episodes of Sex and the City she watched, she was still intimidated by the intensity of such a place.

Until...

She walked through Central Park in the winter. 

She was wowed by one Broadway show and

then another.

She was dazzled by the lights of Time Square.

She hung out with an Avenger at FAO Scwartz.

She inhaled pickles, pastrami, and cheesecake while sugary snow sprinkled outside, and

She fell in love with New York City.

*********************************

Free - Free - Free

Sunday, February 10th through Tuesday, February 11th, JOURNEYS OF WONDER Volumes 1 and 2 are free downloads from Amazon. Click on the covers in the sidebar to hop over and grab your copies.

Hypnagogia

Thank you all for your patience at my impromtu blog vanishing act over the last month.  

Have you ever been awakened by a deafening noise? 

Or did you just imagine you'd been awakened by a deafening noise? When you embrace consciousness, the house is dead silent. Your middle of the night investigation fails to reveal any mass destruction.

You've been visited by the specter of HYPNAGOGIA.

It's the freaky transitional state between sleeping and waking where the real and unreal inhabit the same space. Yes, there may be unicorns.

I woke up in a panic last week POSITIVE a mouse ran across my foot under my covers. I've never leapt to my feet faster in my life. My blankets were whipped off that bed so fast I created a wind chill factor in my bedroom.

I had two more "twilight zone" encounter with the mystery mouse. Alas, I have yet to prove its existence. 

Finally I unleashed my cat, Padme, who is a huntress extraordinaire, into my room. All she did was look bored. No scent at all. 

It's time to admit my mousey nemesis lives in the ether between sawing zzzzz's and being conscious.

At least it wasn't a snake.

No Freudian comments please.

Have you ever had an oddball twilight vision?

I feel a Hypnagogia Club coming on.