River Brown

This week I’m directing the Writing Workshop at SJSU for students in grades 4-6th.  The students get to cycle through three workshops a day, led by three superb writing teachers. Me?  I handle emergencies, monitor the recess and lunch in the courtyard, hand out the t-shirts, and answer parent emails.  I see that everyone signs in and out.  My real work was in the planning and dreaming stage, back in, oh, February.

This program is a new addition to SJAWP’s Creative Writing Camp and the Teen Writing Institute (see http://www.sjawp.org )  and, while I felt passionate about the need for workshop instruction for upper elementary students, I had no evidence that it would fly.  So, even though I am not teaching, it is a special joy to sit in the classrooms and vicariously participate.  Just to see it happening is a treat.  Perhaps by midweek I will be able to assist with conferring.  Hopefully these 44 students will come back next summer with their friends — and they’ll stay on into the Teen Institute.

I see on FB and hear from talking with teachers, that some schools are starting next week. Omigosh!  Mine starts after I get back from the road trip to Ashland, Oregon to see my sister and pick up my mother who has been summering there.

I seem to be planted in this work for SJAWP and unable to plan much, think about, or worry about school starting.  I think my brain is still on rest.  Or I’m just jealously guarding what is left of my summer, until I get that mini-vacation, road trip.  I have worked all summer.

The next four days of Writing Workshop are my main reality, then I can focus elsewhere.  Then there will be changes to my thought patterns.  I have noticed the daylight and the weather shifting.  We are past the peak of summer in the slide to fall.  I know, I know, summer’s leaving.

And it’s Tuesday in some places by now.