Notebooks

I have snippets of stories everywhere.

I don’t mean the myriad tales of my life tucked away in my head. Yes, there are lots of stories there, many of which have yet to be told.

I mean written-down snippets – long and short pieces. Some at home in a journal. Some here in this blog. Some in notebooks at school.

And those notebooks served me well yesterday.

Grade 6 Personal narrative unit.

We were doing a lesson on elaboration and adding scenes. I looked over the narratives I’d been modeling for the class. They’d been thoroughly revised and didn’t really have what I needed, so I culled through my old writer’s notebooks at school and found the just right piece. It was a narrative I’d written in 2015 and had an ideal place for me to elaborate on a scene and another where I could add a scene.

Sometimes, teaching feels like performance art and yesterday I was at the top of my game. I pulled out that notebook. With my students seated in the carpeted area, I stretched my hands out to grab my invisible steering wheel and I rehearsed the story of my drive to the emergency vet. My hands shook. My body was tense. My voice quiet.

When they went back to their seats, they were at the top of their games, too.