What I think we should nurture in students is greater awareness of the fact that writing can be not only a shaper of the inner reality of their thoughts, but a shaper of their knowledge of the world around them. Janet Emig has said that writing is “more readily a form and source of learning than talking” because it is our “representation of the world made visible, embodying both process and product…

From an education graduate school paper I wrote in 1982, saved for all these years: A Writing Unit Integrating Experiential and Epistemic Approaches to Composition

The last year I taught at the small school I wrote about recently was in 1983. Once I made it through my first year of teaching everything seemed magical. I entered a golden interlude in a life of fits and starts. I was continually amazed and delighted by the freshness, creativity and abundance of the life force my students surrounded me with.

Each day was fun. I taught my final and most enjoyable 8th grade class for two years, in two grades. I got to know them quite well, and they had me sized up pretty well, too. We liked what we saw in each other, for the most part. There were times when I got impatient with their endlessly varied teenage enthusiasms and early adolescent capriciousness. But as one said to me, quite unexpectedly near the close of a schoolday, “Mr. V__, You know we’re the light of your life.” How true.

I don’t want to get mawkish, but those were wonderful days and wonderful kids. I felt I played a significant role in their growing knowledge of themselves and the world, through our study of literature and history.

I have a folder of various bits of memorabilia I especially wanted to save from that year, stuff you could really put in a scrapbook. Bits and pieces of this and that which remind me of certain events and days, and lessons, and particular students, because it also contains examples of their writing, much of which startled me and filled me with wonder at the creative energy with which it was imbued. I think the best thing was how their output surprised even them, as they reacted to various poems, short stories and essays I read in class. They could see how much their writing revealed about them, and the creative forces they had unleashed, unbeknownst to them at first. And the age they were then revealed a growing capacity for abstract thought, a marker of adolescent cognitive development at that grade level.

They made me feel young. They taught me about life. I’ll never forget them. And that folder of memorabilia, those treasures from long ago, set off cascades of associations and recollections whenever I look at them. I’m so grateful I still have those keepsakes. The lined paper they wrote on is not even yellowed by the passage of time, even though it’s been 40 years.

The following masterful essay never fails to make me smile. I haven’t read it in awhile. It was published in the student literary anthology I produced in 1983.

My Grandfather
By an 8th grade student

Iused to think my grandfather was someone who knew everything. He would tell me stories of people and of his boyhood. He was someone with whom I spent a great deal of my time. He would keep me when my parents were at work or went off. He never turned down an offer to see me. We would go to the beaches to swim. We would go out to lunch and compete against each other to see who could eat the most. He would always beat me, of course.

If I ever called him up on the phone, he would pretend he had a video picture of me and say, “You’re looking fine.” I knew he didn’t have one, and I asked him all kinds of questions.

If I had a problem, he knew it, and would talk to me about it. He always had answers to my questions. He knew how to cope with a problem. I guess he had the same problems when he was my age. Everything I got such as trophies and awards, I would give to him. He would tell me I earned them, so I should keep them. I would tell him if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have gotten them. He would laugh and take them to make me happy. I hoped that when I grew up, I would be just like him.

The only reason why I don’t feel the same way about him now is that I have learned I can work out my own problems. I can think for myself. I still ask for his advice once in a while, but I don’t look for him to solve my problems.

I still love him, and we spend a lot of time together. Some day I can tell my grandchildren about the stories he told me. I can give them advice and help them with their problems. I am very proud of him.

THOUGHTS
By another 8th grade student

I enjoy laying in a hammock, looking at the sky.
Listening to the birds sing, watching clouds go by.
Humming to myself, while swaying in the wind.
Pulling on the leaves, that love and nature send.
Hoping to be in silence, sitting by myself.
Eating some chocolate cookies, that I found up on the shelf.
Hearing distant noises, guessing what they are.
Hard to tell the difference, because they seem so far.
Looking for the answers,
To questions I’ve heard before,
wondering why they’re asked,
why? why? what for?
It seems to me I lost,
I can not find my way
Looking for the answers,
I bet they come some day.