SHOW--NOT TELL

Show, Not Tell      

Lately I have been thinking about my life—the to-the-brim fullness of my life.  I am a writing teacher.  I teach teachers how to teach writing.  I spend my days, pleasantly and gratefully, supporting teachers as they look for ways to teach various kinds of writing to their students.  I visit classrooms to model or view lessons and I celebrate writing ventures complete.  I show teachers ways to elaborate within a narrative, develop units of study in various modes of writing or discuss the writing stages as students develop pieces going through the writing cycle.  We look at student work and discuss conferencing and mini-lesson possibilities.  We examine mentor texts.  I live a happy and full professional life.  And, as full and as happy as this life is—something is missing.    An empty place exists in the fullness of this profession that I love.
  
 I teach writing.  And I don’t write anymore.  I tell but I don’t show.  And, as I move through my busy and full days, I am missing my own written word more and more.    An emptiness exists that comes from focusing on others and their words while not focusing on myself and my words, stemming possibly, from  fear that I don’t have the words in me anymore and/or guilt from asking teachers to do something that I have not been doing myself
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Thus, for me, the Slice of Life Challenge.  I am carving out a slice of my life by creating space for me to write.   March is a month of five-day-a-week workshops.  It is a time that I go into a school early in the morning and go back-to-back from classroom to classroom, group of teachers to the next.  When I started this venture, a wise friend told me to work with teachers three to four days a week and use the other days to plan and write.   

Good idea…but advice not heeded—not my reality for now.    I am living the back-to back schedule and really don’t have extra time.  And I know that can be an excuse or I can look at this time as an opportunity.  Like the woman who desperately needs to exercise and can’t fit it into her schedule, herein lies my hope.   When she does, she wonders how she ever lived without it.  Even when her schedule is full to the brim.  The space became hers as she took it back.  That is what I want by creating a space for me to write, even when logistically, I wonder where will it all fit in.

 So for today, and for the next 31 days, I am taking a space back for me.  I am claiming a slice of my life for me—t o write.  A slice of my life to reach in and find the words that are me.  A time for showing…not telling.  For a few minutes a day my words won’t be about how to support others in their writing ventures (something that I hold dear), but how to support me in mine (something that write now is of essence).  I am a writing teacher.  And I write.