10 Lessons Learned from the #SOL17 Challenge (Part 2)

(This is Part 2 of Lessons Learned from the Slice of Life Challenge.  I posted Part 1 yesterday.  This challenge has been a powerfully profound writing experience for me.  Thank you to the incredibly innovative teachers who envisioned this project and had the persistence to continue making it a reality year-after-year.)

Lesson 6: Writing is Art
Too often we think of writing as a science,
    Sentences constructed with subjects and predicates.
    Capitals at the beginning, punctuation at the end.
A collection of nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs,
Combined to fit in perfect, neat packages.
     Well, to hell with that!
 Writing is an art,
     Art that is beautifully subjective.
     And the best artists break the “rules.”
I want to read art that is:
     Memorable,
     Thought-provoking,
     Shocking,
     Soul-crushing,
     Heart-breaking,
     Heart-pounding,
     Joyful,
     Scary,
     Creative,
     Enlightening.
Show me a teacher who values those qualities in writing,
And I’ll see a classroom of students writing like warriors.
 
Lesson 7:  Choice is a Fundamental Principle of Writing
In this challenge, every day was a new possibility.
No one told me to write--
     About this topic,
     In this genre,
   For this audience,
   For this purpose. 
I was the decision-maker.
Some days I relished in endless possibilities.
Other days I just wanted someone to tell me what to write.
    But I know—choice is my job as a writer.
    And that doesn’t mean choice is the easy way out.
Abundant choices provided some of my biggest challenges.
 
Lesson 8:  I Didn’t Need a Rubric to Assess my Writing
I would have felt constrained if:
    There was a narrow rubric hovering over my posts,
    There were components I had to include in each piece,
    I had to tell my story “across multiple pages,”
    Points were taken off for not including “linking words”. 
In an effort to raise the standards of child writing,
In what ways do the standards restrict child voices?
If standards were applied to my posts,
    So many posts would have been silenced.
And, I would have never made it 31 days,
    If each piece was judged by an outside, sterile, objective rubric.
I think it’s time for us to rethink our practice of using rubrics
    To respond to student writing.
    Rubrics don’t measure anything worth measuring.
 
Lesson 9:  Writers Need Communities
What a gift it was to have the warm embrace of a writing community,
    To have fellow writers offer encouragement,
    To have fellow writers nudge me forward,
    To have fellow writers excited about a published post.
    To have a fellow writer say, “I see you.”
Writing is lonely.
For hours it’s the writer, the screen, and a collection of jumbled thoughts.
    So, when those thoughts coalesced,
    It’s was a gift to have the community respond.
 
Lesson 10:  When We Write Meaningfully, Our Lives Bleed onto the Page
Ernest Hemingway said, “There’s nothing to writing.
      All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
This month I saw blood across many blogs:
      Husbands who passed away too soon,
      Children growing up too fast,
      Retirements soon approaching,
      Worries about losing identity,
      Fears about a country many no longer recognize,
      Joys about joyfully exhausting work,
      Hope about what tomorrow brings,
      Happiness in a life well-lived.
We write because we have something to say.
And in a world where many feel like their voices are tempered,
     This slice of life challenge let’s writers roar.