In writing workshop, we work on turning small moments in our lives into larger narratives about our lives we would like to share with the world.
I love to read my students’ small moments.
Their stories are sometimes funny.
“One day I was playing hide and seek with my brother and when it was his turn to hide, he went to his hiding place, and I just left without trying to find him because he was getting on my nerves.”
I laughed.
Their stories are sometimes sad.
“My mom died of cancer two years ago. I was swinging in a swing beneath the limbs of the tree in my front yard when my grandma walked out and put her arms around me and told me she was gone.”
I cried.
Their stories are sometimes heroic.
“I came to the United States from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit our island. I try to take care of my mom and do good in school.”
I smiled and raised my fist in the air and yelled out, “Yes!” even though no one was around.
I love to write my small moment for my students.
Since I have so many immigrant students in my classroom, I’m writing my story about being an immigrant in Mali in West Africa from 1997 - 2000.
“Another one of my memories of Mali is of the kindness of the people there,” I wrote today. “Mali is a very poor country, so people don’t have many things. But the things they do have, they share. Whenever I visited my friends, they always asked me to sit in their bamboo chair, and it was the only chair they had. I want to be kind like them.”
Later in the day, one of my students from Honduras walked up beside me and said, “Mr. Barton, you are.”
“What?” I asked. “What’cha mean?”
“You’re kind. Like your friends in Mali. Thank you.”
Ah, students.
Ah, stories.
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