Flashback: The Forgotten Dance

In writers group the other night, we got into conversation about our own poetry. For a little while I insisted to the group that this poem had been posted on my blog, way back in the beginning- when I first got started. I even tried to find it in the archives of my blog using the mobile app on my phone.

As the evening went on, and the more I started to reflect, the more I became sure I was mistaken. I wrote this poem during the 2010 Invitational Summer Institute (ISI) of the National Writing Project (NWP) at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU). I can't believe it was five years ago! I was knee deep in the journey toward my doctorate. The poem reflects the sacrifice to my creativity I felt while teaching full time, putting in countless hours of studying and producing a massive volume of academic writing, and being a mom and wife. Little did I know at the time it would become an artifact in my dissertation three years later.

NWP changed my life in so many ways, as a teacher, as a writer, as a person. It led me to one of my dearest friends who I later partnered with to begin the writing group I have since come to hold so dear. It led me to the labor of love that was my dissertation. It continues to be a part of the work I do today and inspires me as an educator. Participation in the ISI that year not only informed my teaching, but brought out a side of me that was dormant and waiting to be awakened. This was the beginning of my awakening. As promised to my beloved writing group sisters, here is

The Forgotten Dance

I've lost my artist's pen
It may be buried
Under my lesson plans,
My curriculum maps, my students' work

I think it may be hidden 
Beneath the textbooks,
The journal articles, the sticky notes

I've lost my artist's pen
I may have washed it
Away with the sheets,
The clothes, the rest of the laundry

I think I caught a glimpse of it
In the drawer with my creative license,
My Crayola colors, my Origami paper

I've lost my artist's pen
I may have spotted it
Up high on a shelf
With my photos,
My journals, my poetry

It calls to me in my dreams
It stares at me from the shelf
It begs of me

Remember me
Hold me
Dance with me

Keepin' on Writin' on

I can't seem to figure it out. I don't know when it happened, or why. I remember as a child in school always liking to write. Book reports, stories, science reports, poems, a few of them even survived the selling, packing up, and moving from our family home in New York when I started high school. But I don't actually remember when I decided I wanted to write. It seemed like a part of my post graduate school journey, as this is the period in my life when I spent the most time reflecting and writing. In 2010 I took a wonderful seminar-sized class around a conference table with 7 or 8 of my doctoral cohort members. It was a critical literacies course, and we did a lot of reading and writing about the development and sponsors of our own literacy (Brandt, 2009).

This book, one of the grad school reads that had the most profound effect on me, led us through a series of discussions that really got me thinking. One of the first assignments by our professor was to write an autobiographical account of how we remember developing literacy (I am going to dig it out and include at least part of it in a future post). We were asked to reflect on our earliest memories and experiences with reading and writing. I recalled so many small details leading back to an early love of writing, and choices I seemed to have made subconsciously to support my development and later teaching of this craft. That same semester I applied to and later attended the Invitational Summer Institute (ISI) of the National Writing Project (NWP). What a snowball effect that had! I went on to develop amazing professional relationships and friendships through the NWP. I have since presented numerous times as a fellow and teacher consultant for the NWP, facilitated the ISI, and conducted my dissertation on the phenomenon of the ISI. Today, I have an amazing circle of friends, fellow writers and writing teachers, all as a result of my love of writing.    

A big part of my recent commitment has been finishing up graduate school and being able to enjoy my down time as real down time. Sure I have papers to grade and lesson plans to prepare, but I have finally learned to create a balance between work and home. I have found ways to maximize time while I am at work, and to impose boundaries because it is true that a teacher's work is never done. If we do not cut ourselves off at some point, we would never leave school. That is neither fair, nor healthy. 

As my winter break comes to a close, I feel like I am gradually coming down off a high. I wrote more in the past two weeks than I have since summertime. And I love it. And it makes me feel good. Not having to work allowed me to relax, and my writing to flow. As soon as one piece was finished, another one started to develop in my mind. Sometimes the new one did not even wait for the previous one to finish. I hope to keep up my daily commitment to writing. I want to be able to write professionally, and my blogging has helped me to start building writing stamina and to make it a priority to write. I have some ideas for big projects and some research in the wings, but writing it here reminds me what my goals are. Not resolutions, but goals. I cannot remember who said it, but someone said if you write your goals down your more likely to work at them and achieve them.

So I am going to try and keep at it. I am going to try and keep a balance between work and home. I am going to try and write daily, even if it does not result in a completed piece. I will write, because writing makes me happy, and I deserve to be happy. Don't we all?