Oh, dear. I always know I’ve been away from my blog too long when WordPress auto-logs me out. Then I have to remember the login and password…oh, le sigh.
How’ve you been, anyway?? Me, I’ve been so busy lately! So much is changing. The biggest thing is that I start school on Tuesday. Yikes! I mean yay! I mean yayikes!! I’m very excited and nervous. I haven’t been in school in a long, long time. I graduated college over a decade ago. Plus, I went to a college that had no tests or grades. (Instead we received written evaluations from our professors for our coursework, and we had to write self-evaluations as well.) That adds a whole ’nother level of yikes-ness to my upcoming venture, since tests and grades will be an integral part of my teacher certification program.
Starting school changes everything about my schedule, from work to band practice and shows to exercise and more. My weekly workouts with my friend Nicole are about to become a lot more sporadic, which makes me sad. On the other hand, I just switched gyms, to 24-Hour Fitness — so now, theoretically, I can work out late-night or early in the morning, if I’m not trying to cram in just a little more sleep. Fine-Fifteen is going to keep practicing weekly, but I expect we won’t play many shows till summer. That will also be an adjustment, but I’m just glad my band mates are willing to stick it out with me till then.
I’ve been teaching an online workshop for the past couple of weeks, to an online writers’ group. It has been such a cool experience — there are people from all over the world among the participants, and they’ve been asking great, intelligent questions. And just the other day, I realized this is a genuine, bona fide teaching experience. I’ve given the same workshop before, in person, to my RWA chapter. That was great, but challenging, trying to fit all the info into a one-hour talk. The online format is so much more conducive to presenting the material in a measured way, which I hope enhances people’s understanding and absorption of it.
Anyway, this was a great experience to have right before starting the cert. program, because it has definitely gotten me excited to learn about being a good teacher.
My friend Gary emailed earlier to say he thinks it’ll be cool when I’m a creative writing teacher. (I have such nice friends.) I emailed back to say I agree — except I’ll go so far as to say it will be a dream come true. My mom taught a poetry-writing workshop when I was in elementary school. I took it, along with maybe 5 or 10 of my friends. I absolutely loved it. And it was one of my earliest memories/experiences that made me want to teach writing, too.
Of course, I’m getting certified to teach high-school English. I don’t think there’s a designated certification for creative writing teachers. But creative writing is my strength and my background. It’s the subject in which I got my degree. So I’m hoping things will come together and I’ll get to teach that subject as well as English, or as a part of an English course.
At the very least, I plan to have my future students do 10 minutes of free writing at the beginning of class, at least once a week. Preferably every day. But I know class time is precious, and we may not have time for that. But I’ve read so much about the benefits of just that brief period of free writing, in terms of focus, concentration, improved writing skills, greater self-confidence and -understanding, and more.
Enuf about that, my friends. I’m also posting to let y’all know that I probably won’t post much for the next several months, which I expect to be extremely jam-packed with work and school! And I’m also training for a half-marathon — the Zooma, an all-women’s race in April. Woo-hoo! But I’ll check in here as often as possible, and I hope you will too.
Love, Catherine
