The Slow Burn of Analysis

Adolescents spend time outdoors. At least they used to. I have been thinking about tapping into experiences in nature as a source for writing--especially for middle school students.

I spent several days sketching a "neighborhood map" or a collage my recent experiences with nature. The act of focusing on what I see and know now allowed some more distant memories to make it to the page. I am not talking about earth-shattering stuff. I am suggesting teaching giving value to all of our experiences.

Annie Dillard's narrative prose does this for me.

I do not know how Dillard words, but the slow form of analysis that comes to me when I read her, arises during my sketching, coloring, and annotating my thinking. Slow analysis appeals to me--and I wonder if we can't teach that to adolescents? Too often, adolescents want to launch themselves into analysis and then frustrate themselves immediately when each detail writing is not clear, is not planned.

Analysis doesn't always have to be called--or thought of--as analysis, does it? Not that analysis is a dirty word, but certain academic vocabulary seems to trigger certain acts. We teach what analysis is by definition and by practice with a short shelf life, but do we teach the underlife of analysis?

Analysis is a slow, slow burn fed by tinder gathered as we willingly travel greater and distances to discover.

I have written about the blue owl in the center of the page. When I first sketched it, the owl was only a light pencil sketch. Over time, I colored it as I thought about the night when it startled me. When its head turned towards my noise. When it fell forward like an uprooted tree. When its great wings expanded in silence. When its great wings caught an invisible track of air. When it glided, in silence, only a few feet above my lawn, up the slight rise, over the post and rail fence, into my back yard, and vanished through the weeping willow and then the darkness. All in utter silence. It was all effortless.

My thinking about that owl from 2012 is still not finished.

Yet, what I have done and what I am doing right now is a part of the journey of analysis so often squeezed out of our classrooms.

Learning How To Observe

Learning how to observe takes time, patience, and practice. Also, it takes silence...which can be tough to generate in a middle school classroom. Some adolescents almost tremble with energy. Teaching adolescents how to observe is certainly a challenge in larger groups...but...I may just take another whack at it this year.

In 2012, I studied deer paths for myself. Mostly, I sketched them. Researching deer paths proved challenging as most of the texts I found about deer were about how to control the population. For example, when I referenced gardening texts (about the types of plants deer preferred to eat or bed down in) I encountered words such as pest and nuisance. Yet, to my surprise, I found the best information--full of subtly and nuance--from texts written by hunters.

For a year, the research supported a picture book I imagined and sketched. In the end, it did not go anywhere as a story; nevertheless, I grew as a writer. I honed my sketching ability (a.k.a. my thinking). By focusing on what was there, I became a better observer. I learned to detail with imagery which led to detailing with words and color.

I worked on this sketch for several days. Sometimes, I took my classes outside to also practice observation. At worst (best?), if they were stuck and did not know how to begin sketching or writing (there is nothing to write about!) they saw and heard me practice the act of observation. I shared my thinking. I shared how my thinking was flowing better if I could make myself relax (sort of like when ideas flow late at night, just before falling asleep).

I always wanted to return to this type of activity with students for an extended period of time. Our principal is encouraging us to brainstorm ways to upend the apple cart for the month of May. He wants to call it Mayhem...we teach, students learn, but take a deeper risk with something which we believe we never have the time to do.

Paper Mirrors

Paper serves as a magic mirror. Paper is sharper, more unclouded, than the marriage of glass and aluminum powder. Whether we scratch our thinking or our imagination onto the page, we are looking deeply inside ourselves. We are seeing things we did not know where inside. And we make decisions with each line...if we want to keep going. Do we like what we see?

Sharing our writing--at any level--is revealing to others what we look like beyond the protective shell of appearance.

My notebooks are accumulating years of sketches, lists, broken paragraphs, side notes, and illegible scrawling--extemporaneous thinking, planned picture books, ideas for teachers, and knowledge gained through reading and attending conferences--some of this work never evolves beyond that moment. Most (high 90%) never sees the light of day. But some of my work (single digit percentages) in my notebooks has evolved, has been read, has been shared, has been published.

Keep writing. Keep your students writing. Building a community of writers begins with the writer in the paper mirror.