Week 2

Ten piles of papers arranged in perpendicular stacks of five waited on the desk for my assessment and grade. I needed to complete two and part of a third stack of papers per day for four days to be comfortably ready to return them to the students by the next class meeting. The papers were journal entries about reading and writing habits and unforgettable places. I read about a hated fourth grade teacher who made a terrified little girl read aloud. She hasn't liked reading since. Two students made Baghdad with its heavy heat and second by second danger come alive. Someone else wrote about tending horses with her dad in the way back part of Montana. It reminded me of cowboys riding the range in the days of the Old West. One woman wrote about the loss of eight cousins to a house fire. And another writer described the "forest" next to his boyhood home where he and his friends built forts and trails to their own young boy specifications. Others wrote ineffectively about "awesome" trips to Disneyland, Hawaii, and the Oregon Coast. They don't understand yet that those meaningless words just lie flatly on the page not even attempting to kick up some life into the experience of wind-whistling rides or a sun that sinks into a tepid sea like a slowly dipped teabag. But they all try and if some essays jump off the pages while others just lie there barely breathing, it's all okay. I finished them in time to read more of my murder mystery before taking them all neatly graded and commented upon back to class.