I have always enjoyed writing. As a child and a teenager I wrote stories. I wrote for the school's literary magazine, for assignments and for myself. In college I had to write often and prolifically. As a teacher, I had almost stopped writing. At first I wrote lessons, then I wrote grants, and then nothing. It's not that all creative juice was drained, it was that teaching is exhausting and coupled with parenting is potentially deadly.
Two years ago, I was given a teaching assignment that was a challenge. Writing I. At first I dreaded it, but as the year went on I really began to love it. I felt my students transformed from being afraid of a piece of blank paper to empowered authors. Not all of them liked it and not all of them bloomed quite as much. We wrote everyday on random topics. I wrote with them. We shared our stories, we edited them and we were proud of them.
This is a forum for me to share some of those stories. Almost all were written in 10 minutes or less. A few I continued over 2-3 10 minute sessions. None are polished and some aren't even finished. It was very freeing for my students and for me to just write. Once I finish typing up these stories, maybe I'll take the time to write some more.
