Camran's Sister

The Indiana Writers Center’s annual summer program, "Building a Rainbow," is in full swing. I love driving down to St. Florian’s Youth Development Camp on Monday and Wednesday mornings, knowing I’m about to spend a couple of hours with a bunch of extraordinary kids—not to mention the firefighters who founded the summer camp and spend a whole lot of their off-time planning, fundraising and then actually being with the kids all day every day for six weeks.

I especially love sitting down with a kid who seems to be struggling for words and talking with him, asking him questions until something magic happens and, suddenly ,there's a torrent of them and he can’t write fast enough to get them down. This happened one day last week with a kind, thoughtful boy named Camran. He’s new to the camp this year (some attend from the time they’re six until they graduate from high school) and was feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all. He couldn’t think of anything interesting to write, he told me, because he didn’t have an interesting life. After a few questions, he revealed that he’d lived with his sister in fifteen different houses since he was a baby.

“That sounds pretty darn interesting to me,” I said. “And your sister sounds amazing. Tell me about her.”

His face lit up in a huge smile and there came that torrent of words. Here they are.

My sister, Crystal, was always there for me. She chose to take care of me. She didn’t have to take care of me. She dropped out of college to take care of me. She made sure we had somewhere to stay every night. She made sure I ate before she ate. We lived in a couple different houses. We stayed with Andrea, who had a daughter. We played with her all the time. She made the kids happy. We stayed with a girl named Neisha. She had a big TV. She bought me a turtle. I named him Johnny Rico. Mama Buder let us stay with her a little bit. Then we moved to Mama JB’s when I was in kindergarten and we stayed there till I was seven. Mama JB had a daughter who had kids and the kids would always play with us. We played with their dogs, Bruce and Princess, too. Then my sister got a job at the police department. We got our own apartment. She also works part time at Warren High School and at the fireworks store in the summer. She is taking classes at college now.

My sister has black hair down to her shoulders. Her favorite shoes are Jordans. She likes to go hat shopping for baseball hats and other hats that look really cool. She likes jerseys, too. But she doesn’t get them for her, she gets them for me. My sister has a kind heart.

Well. That made my day.

And all over the room the same kind of thing was happening.  The success of our program is directly related to the number of instructors, interns and volunteers available to sit down one-on-one with kids and coax out their stories. Our interns are college students, many of whom are education majors who will soon have their own classrooms. One of our requirements for them is that they write the prompts we ask the kids to write and share them with the group.

Writing teachers should write what they ask their students to write, we believe. For the joy of it, but also to remember how intimidating the blank page can be.

The interns learn as much as the kids do—about teaching and life. As one intern so eloquently put it at the end of last year’s program:

"These children with their bold, simple statements, wild imaginations, and truthful declarations are truly inspiring creatures. Through their honest eyes and even more honest words I became inspired to be a better writer, a better educator, a better person. I allowed their fun personalities to affect my life for the better. I laughed along with them at their comic stories; my heart wept for them with each tear they cried while writing a meaningful piece; I read their words, full of desire to know more, to know every detail possible. I learned being sad and admitting to it is okay and I learned being happy five minutes later is a matter of pure strength. I now understand writing is better when laughing and joking and that no matter how loud or quiet the room, a child’s written voice will always be voluminous.”

 We are all writers, we tell the kids. We’re a community of writers. Writers need each other.

Which is true. I know I need them. Nothing makes me feel more right in the world than working with young writers who are just learning that they have stories to tell and discovering the power of words in the telling.

And by the way, our program still isn’t fully funded. If you’d like to help us meet the cost of this important work with young people, click here. We’d really appreciate it.

Three Hovering Angels

Every summer I teach writing to children at the St. Florian Center Leadership Development Camp for Youth. It is an amazing program, founded and coordinated by amazing (mostly) African American firefighters who care deeply about kids--and do something about it. I've been teaching writing to people of all ages for nearly forty years and one of the things I love most about it is how, now and then, I get totally blown away by something written by an absolute novice. This happened Monday with the St. Florian kids.

The funny thing was, we were disorganized that morning, mixed up about what the kids had and hadn't already done. Turned out, at least some of them had done everything we had in mind to do with them. On the spur of the moment, I'd grabbed a bunch of art postcards and taken them with me--just in case. So we handed them out to the kids in a random manner and put them to work. Here's some writing that came from the exercise, my favorite being "Hovering Angels" by Janai. She wrote this on her own, with no help from anyone. It makes the hair on my neck stand up.

I wish I could be her hovering angel in real life, take care of her and keep her gorgeous voice strong and safe. I wish I could be a hovering angel for them all.

“Three Hovering Angels” (artist unknown)
By Janai

Angel, angel, that’s what I am. A sweet darling in air floating mode. I am sweet as a baby. Innocent. I’m also not innocent sometimes. I have a gold wing and a black wing. The gold is for strong and black is weak. I’m strong. I have a void in my life. My daddy took it. I don’t try to fill the void. I work around it. My life is a triangle. I’m in the center. The first tip is for my god, the second tip is for my daddy, the third is my mom. It hurts in the center because you have to keep from turning. But when I look in the mirror I feel strong again.

Vincent VanGogh’s “Olive Orchard”
By Mar’Kayla

There once was swavey trees going with the wind, with blue and orange ground and yellow, some blue and some red skies. The trees look like big and leafy hula dancers. The grass looks like hay. Suddenly the bright and shiny sun started to rise. A small bird came past with a blast. All you could see were baby birds chirping. If I went to Olive Orchard then I would lay on the grass going up on the trees or build me a fort made out of the grass, sticks and tree branches. I may even build me lots of homes for either pets or for people to look around.

Marc Chagall’s “Paris through the Window”
By Hope

Once upon a time there was a cat and he was yellow. He’s looking at the flying people. There is a boy and he is on a cat flying up in the air. He saw people on the ground. There’s two boys with two faces and they’re on the news. It told about what happened to the people on the ground by the Eiffel Tower. The can remembered something from when he was a baby. It was a train. He was dizzy. He’s like Humpty Dumpty on a wall. If I went in that place I would be flying on a kite and I would be a cat, too.

Savadore Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory”
By Jordan J

I’m a man, a flat clock man, with flat clocks around me and with a flat ocean and flat mountains around me and, well, everything is flat in this city. There is a tree that’s not flat. Would you look at that! I’m a flat clock man dancing. I’m dancing like Michael Jackson with gold and silver and shiny white teeth. I’m dancing to their beat.

Paul Klee’s “Actor’s Mask”
By Nia

Once upon a time there was a girl that had a volcano on her head. Her name was Voltina. She went to the park and when she was there she saw her friends and got mad at them. So her volcano erupted. There was lava everywhere, so the park was closed.
Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali’s “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory”
By Elijah

Orange earrings shooting across the air, if anyone saw it they have to prepare. Tree cut into halfs, time clocks to make children laugh and laugh. Time is going faster by heat, faster than anyone can ever beat. Dead fish in the water, people see it and never bother. Little blocks to step and not fall, mountains big and tall. Trees drowning in water, there they go, farther and farther.