I do most of my planning for school in three places: in my
car to and from school, in the shower at home, and when I am walking in my
neighborhood. If you will notice, none
of these places are conducive to taking notes.
But every once in a while, I hit on an idea that makes me stop and write
it down, right then and there, and that’s what happened with Bookmarked: Teen Essays on Life and
Literature. Bookmarked is a
compilation of my students’ essays that morphed out of an assignment I created
after reading This I Believe, a book
based on the CBS Radio Network program hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow.
I was shopping with my close friends at TJ Maxx, and I was
telling them about this idea that kept swirling in my head. After reading This I Believe for my book club one night, it occurred to me that
my Honors American Literature students could do the same thing; they could write
about what they believed in, from their 16 or so short years of life
experience. However, I needed an angle that tied into my curriculum, so I said
aloud to my friend while holding up a cool shirt, “What if I had my students
anchor their life philosophy in a quote from literature, from anything they’d
read, from kindergarten until high school?” My friends loved the idea, so much
so, that one even had me record the idea into her Blackberry to remember the
idea.
As soon as I could weave it into my lessons, I assigned my
students the essay prompt, not having any idea what they would turn in or use
as anchor quotes. A week later, as I read through the essays, I was absolutely
shocked: the stories, wisdom, and insights these young adults shared were
absolutely amazing! So amazing, in fact, that I went outside of the proverbial
“box” and contacted my former students in college. I asked THEM to write to the same prompt, and
brazenly suggested we create a compilation of essays to collect into a book,
having NO idea that only 3 in 10,000 manuscripts ever get published. There I was, weeks later, receiving email
after email, each with an essay attached; for months, I poured over more and
more stories and learned things about my students I hadn’t even known about them
when they were in my classroom! Not a single essay repeated the same anchor
quote and the book they had chosen were as varied as their demographics.
Fast forward: After working with two amazing student editors
who have since graduated from college, I sent out a single query letter to Free
Spirit Publishing. Bookmarked was published in the spring of 2012, with 50 student
essays about life and literature. It is now being used in the AVID 11th
grade curriculum for Personal Statements and I use it in my AVID and English
classroom to aid juniors in writing their college and scholarship essays.
It’s almost surreal that my students’ voices are out there,
nationally, sharing their experience, strength and hope with other young
people. I am grateful for the IB program
at North, which allows me the freedom to work under a fairly large umbrella of
curriculum and grateful for the mindset of innovation that my administration
and District supports in our classrooms.
A short note here: throughout this project, I had to face
some fairly challenging aspects about the profession I dearly loved. I figured
I put in about 600 hours outside of my class over a period of 2 years. I was
riddled with doubt at times, wondering if I was going to look like an idiot to
my students, essentially promising this was going to be a big deal and fearing
it would fall flat on its face. Except for a few pats on the back from close
friends, it has taken years to get my
colleagues or others in education to even read it, let alone grant any
accolades about the book or the writing project…despite the fact that many of
them shared the same students, which was probably the hardest thing to bear. So often, I felt like celebrating and doing a
victory dance when the book would meet the next goal or benchmark; and though there
were those close to me who acknowledged the beauty of this project coming into
fruition, overall, it felt like a hollow victory. I’m
not sure what I was expecting, but I have come to terms with it these days,
because I finally realized that it wasn’t about me. In fact, it wasn’t even about my student
essayists. It was about believing that there is more to education than just
what is in the pacing guide, or what the state curriculum dictates we do in our
classrooms.
Teaching, at its finest, is an art form, organic and alive. My ability to take what is current in my life
and build a connection for my students to cross over the “bridge” into the real
world is what true education is all about.
Bringing all of our voices into being was exciting, but even more
exhilarating was seeing this project come to life beyond the classroom into a
real-world existence. My students will always have this evidence that what we
did in my class was not just busywork.
It was a transformation of their willingness to take a chance with their
writing, the courage to be vulnerable and the ability to follow through with
their commitment to write regardless of the outcome or reward. To my students’
credit, when I suggested we put all proceeds from Bookmarked into a scholarship fund, all 50 essayists readily
agreed, once again, reflecting how incredible these young people were and still
are today.
There are so many stories that go along with this enormous
undertaking I started years ago, too many to share here, but so worth
telling. Yet it is clear to me, today,
what the biggest gift from this writing project has been, even more than
knowing my kids’ voices are out there. It
has been the relationships and connections I have built with so many of them,
as they have grown up and gone on to college, graduate school, careers and even
marriages. It has been a gift for me to
be a part of sharing their successes, their challenges, and their life lessons
as they’ve continued on from my classroom. As one of my students, who is now a
teacher and has students of his own, wrote in
Bookmarked, “Let us shine
like stars in the universe, each more brilliant than the next” and know that
each one of us can make a difference.
Guest post by Ann Camacho,
North High School
