Letters to a young teacher

ms paaaaarish.

Waa! Thank you for that! Thats alot to think of. Eid is coming and our family is going for a (not so long) vacation, and I think that is just the right time to plot wonders! I have ordered ‘writing down the bones’ and hopefully will be getting a call (of order arrived) soon!

And yes! I write. I write whenever inspirations knock me on the head! I’ll send you a post from my blog. Whats illogical lately,  is how tradition affects individuals. So this is something about that.

For whiles and wonders, you can be mine. For days that translate into years, for all those times that never come. For hopes and dreams and a great big title in red and black letters. For points of pitiful convoy. For the uneven paving stones of the road. For dares. For enough fooling around. For ‘no we’re not in love again (although that doesn’t stop me from caring a great deal for you and waiting impatiently to see you again)’.

For the sun already low in the sky. For far away cities. For no track of beginnings and endings. For how the snow falls free. For belief, that keeps slipping down. For you, also holding a length of my rope.

For the drift of wonders. For the end of words.

For that being all.

Hubbbaaa!

Sorry for the delayed response. Looks like your exam craziness coincided with a bit of crazy I had going on myself.  I plan to make it up to you this weekend!

But first things first. You need to get some people to teach!

I can only help you in this to a limited degree, because in some ways, publicity is a lot like writing an essay. You have to know your audience, and know how to present your message to them in a way that will reach them. I don’t know your audience.  Do you?

That’s probably a first step. Who do you want to teach? Children? Young teens? Young adults? Adults? Be specific. Don’t try to teach everybody at once!

Something that might help you narrow your focus is doing a bit of research. Find out what kinds of creative writing workshops *are* being offered in your city.  You can either fill in the gaps, or supply an additional resource if they’re really popular for a certain age group.

And you should definitely do some research anyway. Find out what other models are successful in Pakistan. How much do they charge? What do they do? Who takes these courses? You might also find organizations who are looking for creative writing teachers. Then you won’t have to worry about a lot of the administrate stuff, and you can probably still have the freedom of developing your own curriculum.

Make contact with other people who are doing similar things. You might be able to form partnerships!

So, get thee to google, girl. Who knows what you will find. When I searched “creative writing pakistan,” I found this wonderful interview with a young writer named Shandana Minhas. Check out the beginning:

Welcome to Pakistan Paindabad, Ms. Minhas. What does your first name ‘Shandana’ means?

Glorious pimple. No. Glory and intelligence.

Ohhhhhh, I like her. And I think the interview would be really instructive for you. And she could be a really helpful contact for you.

But do your homework before you contact her, asking for advice. Do some research about what exists already. Come to some understanding of who you think your audience is. I bet she’ll be able to nudge you in the right direction.

onward!

Ms paaaarish,

As much as I was amazed with the fact that the whole Writer’s Craft idea was working so well ( I had everything in grip and was on my way to chaste freedom), I had totally forgot that, apart from all the happiness it brought, it was to be held as a private class. And to hold and carry out a private class and to actually  have people want to take the course in the first place is a veeeeeeery difficult thing.

It is just you and I (and the rest of the teachers teaching writers’ craft and the students taking it ) that know how wonderful the course really is. But it is exceptionally hard to try to convince people that this course really is “meant for them”.

n short, I don’t know how to PUBLIC ATE this course.

At first I thought I would make nice brochures and flyers and give them out and people would just be automatically drawn (since I thought I already had the location and all I needed was students) , but then last night my Dad walked in through the door and told me that the office he was talking about is totally empty (no chairs, tables, rugs, couches, NOTHING!), and that it was still under construction. And I can’t wait!  If I wait too long, a time will come when I wouldn’t want to do this whole thing at all.

Soooo what do I do? Where do I find a nice classroom with chairs or couches or anything, and how do I let people know that there is a wonderful course out there, just for them!

There are private tuition academies here that teach courses, so if I contact them than maybe they would be willing to lend me a classroom for 90 minutes or so everyday – but that sounds like a miracle, and academies don’t usually do that. And advertising is still an issue!

Help. Help.

Hubbaaaa

huuubbaaaa!

excellent! I’m so excited about this. You know that you are doing something very powerful, ya? I was really astounded when you told me about your idea, back in June. I think I told everyone I knew… “Hey, I have this student who’s going back to Pakistan after she graduates. Guess what she’s doing????” Most people said, “getting married?” I wish I had had the chance to meet your father. He is giving you an extraordinary gift. Truly.

I will start to compile a booklist for you. But the first book I would absolutely recommend is Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. All of the Garneau teachers who have taught Writer’s Craft have used it and they all recommended it to me when I started to teach the course. And there are many copies of it on Amazon, and cheap cheap too. We used it in our class for that time we dressed up as other people to write. I think you’ll find a lot of the ideas in it quite familiar to you from my classes. It’s a VERY good guide!

As for the writers you will have in your class, you don’t know who they will be, and how they will write. And that’s your first job as a teacher of writing: find out who they are and accept it joyfully as a gift.

In Rilke’s first letter to his young poet, he writes:

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.

I think that’s very good advice for a young teacher too. Do not be concerned with whether or not your writers are any good or not. If you are concerned about that, then they will feel it, and they will want to be GOOD Writers and they will write for you, and for your approval. Plus, you’ll be frustrated when they do not write well, and they’ll feel that too, and they’ll stop taking risks.

So, in your first week, do as many “get to know you” exercises as you can. Remember how on the first day, I had you respond to a quotation about writing (quotations about writing).  Perhaps what you didn’t know was that I was watching all of you while you were doing that. I was watching to see who found it easy to write and write and write. Who was just looking for an invitation and a blank page. I was also watching to see who found it difficult to sit and write an open response for 20 minutes. I was watching to see who was concerned with “getting it right.”

Finally, don’t worry about whether or not you are a good teacher.  The department head at my first school once said to me, “Katherine, don’t worry about whether or not you’re good at this job until you’ve done it for five years.” And she was sooo right!!! Bring the same compassion and acceptance towards yourself as you do towards your students, and you WILL be a good teacher and they WILL be good writers

Alrighty. I got to go prep for my own students. We’re starting the poetry unit tomorrow. You can just guess how excited I am about that!

msp