I can stand up to and stare down a raving mad coal miner who's got fifty pounds on me. But a room full of gregarious giggling grade 7's, well, that's a little frightening. And then multiply that by three and you're looking at nine years of nightmares for me. Michelle had me in as her special guest speaker for her schoolkids today.
Actually I'm exaggerating- it wasn't scary, it was fun. Though I honestly don't know how my wife can do that every day. Crazy.
I spoke on the art and elements of storytelling, and I read them my Yeti story I blogged about last week. (The mp3 of my reading at the Gathering is online, if you're interested.) I also read this old poem, they liked the line about the poo crapping. I even assigned homework! Michelle said I could, but when I mentioned how we could mark them next week after Thanksgiving she stopped me and said, "No, YOU can mark them next week. All ninety of them. Have fun!" I basically said they could write a story about anything they wanted, so long as they could identify the conflict in it. I showed them some of Travis Hanson's artwork to inspire them a bit, and let them go. I look forward to marking them!
And, uh, if you see my autograph for sale on eBay, well, I tried to explain I wasn't actually a famous writer, but . . .
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