Notes from a Writer at Creative Writing Camp

Here are notes from Marcela Descalzi, who is teaching at one of the camp sites in the Montrose area.  Marcela shares about the “reign of kindness” that she and her teaching partner are experiencing in their classroom:

My writing partner Patty and I create community with “our” children. In 3 lightning weeks, we gather in the morning to celebrate writing. On our first day, we had asked the young writers to share values that helped build a community of kindness. Among words like respect, generosity and active listening, we were surprised to hear awareness. Our fourth graders were on a roll.

In our gathering circle of the morning, we share many of our own passions as we play Connections– a game that invites active listening and voicing moments and feelings from our day. It began to rain hard. When it was my turn, I said with a certain amount of enthusiasm, how much I loved the rain. Shortly after, as we introduced the Haiku, rain and thunder washed over our room. Submerged in the energy of rain anecdotes, I shared with them my attempt to capture feelings in a tiny bucket:

Love raindrops whipping

at the window sill

trying to get in

That same afternoon, over the bustle of goodbyes that mark the end our daily time together, one of our young poets dropped a folded paper into my hand. Ella left softly before I could ask her what she needed. I found this:

Rain, rain, rain

sprinkles down so softly

sounds like fingers

softly touching the stained glass windows

watch, watch, watch

the rain trickle down the window

run, run, run

out of the house to feel the rain slip down

my dark brown hair

but rain, rain, rain

what I love about rain

are the fingers it sets on my stained glass window sill.

 From that moment on, as Houston’s summer clouds offered water, many a young voice would herald the rain, just in case the adults in the room forgot to notice gifts of awareness sprinkling through.

A-washed with kindness

 within our community

of young WITS writers.