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Sports Stories

5/31/2011

One of the best writing students I’ve ever had was an athlete, a young woman basketball player who was heading off for a career as a high school coach. I told her a quick path to publication might be to write about basketball—there always seems to be a demand for sports stories.

“Basketball stories are all the same,” she said. “Buzzer-beating shot wins the game.”

I said—Well, then, don’t write that story! Write about what it’s like to be a basketball player—the endless practices, the rivalries and relationships between the players, the intricate tangle of conflicts and desires that exists in the locker room and on the court….

I’m thinking back on this because I just finished reading George Dohrman’s Play Their Hearts Out, one of the best books I’ve ever read on sports—certainly the most disturbing. Dohrman spent eight years following a team of young basketball players, and the stories of these young men are heart-breaking and tragic and occasionally—incredibly, rising up through the corruption—inspiring. Always we have lives revealed through action.

Dohrman’s book just misses the mark of greatness, I think, because it lacks a strong narrative voice—it’s more a work of journalism (very high quality journalism) than a work of art. I often found myself wondering where the narrator was in certain scenes, and wondering too how complicit Dohrman was in the corruption he describes. (As an observer, does a reporter have a responsibility to step in and help out a kid in trouble? Or at least just address his or her complicity?)

Still, it’s totally worth reading… And it points to maybe the biggest task a young writer—any writer—faces: recognizing the incredible richness of the material that exists in this world—all the stories that surround all of us….

Buy Play Their Hearts Out….

George Dorhman’s website….

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A Few Words from the Classroon Inside

5/14/2011

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In my teaching I start from the position that everyone has a story to tell—you, me, everyone. I work with the objective of getting students to discover the existence their voice and to acknowledge the validity of their personal history, to get them to reflect on their lives and see their experience as a source of creativity. Sometimes that's the hardest part of a class, getting students to buy into the idea that they are really are people with imagination and creativity.

But sometimes the students are already there—that’s certainly true of JH, one of my students at the prison where I teach. Here’s her literacy narrative, written a few weeks ago in class as a quick draft:

Before I was sentenced to 43 months in this federal prison camp, I spent 10 months researching prison life and finding out what, if any, opportunities I’d have available. I knew that I wanted to make the very best out of this terrible situation. For years, I’ve spent many hours alone writing about my life and my experiences and the thoughts and feelings I had as results. I’ve covered page after page trying to break down my perception of life and love and dreams and fears and all of the not-so-interesting points in between. I knew in my heart that somehow, once I got to where I was going, to do whatever amount of time I had to do, I would find an inspiration or a motivation of some shape or form that would spark up my writing again.

You see, when I put my life into words, it seems a bit more interesting, to me at least. These memories I’ve made and the impressions I’ve left…The stories I’ve heard and the trials I’ve overcome—all of what makes my life mine…I like the way words fall together on paper and make it all seem worthwhile—more so than if it all just sat in the back of my mind or heavy on my heart.

The day I was informed of the creative writing classes that were being offered from Texas A&M here at FPC Bryan, a bell rang in my head letting me know that this class was for me! I signed up for the very first creative writing class and waited patiently for the other inmates to do the same so we could get it started. When the class finally began, there were 12 or 15 of us participating. All of us different from one another. Different ages, shapes, and sizes. Different colors, different personalities. Each of us had out own stories to tell. True or not, they were all entertaining. We laughed, we cried, we even had what we claimed as “Angry Fridays.” But best of all, what we all had in common and got the chance to express was that we were creative and we had words to share.

Now I’m in Dr. White’s second class, non-fiction life stories. The only difference in this one is that all of our writing is based on facts—the true blue history of you! Not always easy. However the passion is of another level. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to get out of the housing unit I’m assigned to and spend 2 hours a night expressing myself. I love to write, and I love Dr. White’s class.

The National Endowment for the Arts has changed lives by making these classes possible, and is deserving of everyone’s support.

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Walt Whitman's Birthday

5/13/2011

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I drove to Conroe yesterday—drove through the much needed downpour of rain, thunder and lightning sublime!—for the annual Walt Whitman Birthday Celebration (Walt's birthday is of course the 31st, but this is Texas—we can celebrate it whenever we want). It's a great event: Lone Star College brings in Whitman experts for an afternoon lecture/discussion—this year, CK Williams—and then, in the evening, writers gather at a pub to read Whitman poems.

I read “An Old Man’s Thought of School”

An old man’s thought of School;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot.
Now only do I know you!
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass!

And these I see—these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning—these young lives,
Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships—immortal ships!
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the Soul’s voyage.

Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a Public School?
Ah more—infinitely more;

(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and mortar—these dead floors, windows, rails—you call the church?
Why this is not the church at all—the Church is living, ever living Souls.”)

And you, America,
Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
The lights and shadows of your future—good or evil?
To girlhood, boyhood look—the Teacher and the School.

Drove home under clear night skies with a bit of moon up there—also sublime.

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A Successful Semester

5/8/2011

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I had a job interview last year that went weird quite unexpectedly.

It was a phone interview, and the email confirmation said that the search committee would call between 8:00 am and 10:00 am CST. (“AM”—that’s the morning, right?) So I got up in the morning and got my job materials all ready to reference, and I waited…and waited. No call at 8:01 am, not at 8:30 am…9:00, 9:25, 10:00…no call at all! At 11:00 I sent them a polite email: “Perhaps you lost my phone number”…Still no call. In mid-afternoon I called the school and got voice mail.

Late afternoon I went to my class at the prison, and when I got out, just before 8:00 pm, I got into my car and headed home. As I was driving through the gate, at just after 8:00 pm, my phone rang. Yeah, right.

But all that’s background, and only moderately weird. They were mixed up about the time. Very mixed up. Or crazy. I guess it happens.

So I pulled over in front of the prison and talked to the two members of the committee. They asked basic interview questions—about my dissertation, about how I teach composition, about my writing, about my work at Callaloo.

Then one of the interviewers asked, “So, tell me, how do you know when your students are learning?”

I talked about assessment, about the rubric I put together for creative writing…I don’t know, I talked about…learning things.

When I finished the other interviewer asked something or other, and I answered.

Then the earlier one asked, “I want to go back to my previous question. How do you know when your students are learning? I mean, how do you really know?”

I was parked in front of a prison in the dark. Cars were going down the street. Headlights flashing in my eyes. This is the weird part. Much of my writing is based on the idea that people are very mysterious—that you never know what’s going on with another individual, you never know what’s going on in their mind or in their heart. Never! Yet here was that question challenging that idea—I was being asked how I knew something perhaps essentially unknowable. I found that really…weird. I had a strange image of hanging around a dorm room with a bunch of stoners: “Dude, how do you REALLY know if somebody knows something? I mean, REALLY?”

I started to say something—then I stopped, and started to say something else. Then I was silent for a second. Then at last I was honest: “Uh…I guess I don’t know.”

I didn’t get the job, of course. (A sad loss for that department, since I’m a damn good English teacher).

But—after I gave it some thought over the next few days, I had an esprit de l’escalier moment, and I figured out what I should have answered.

How do I know when my students are learning?

I know when I see them change.

I know when I see them think.

I know when I see them put into practice the concepts we’ve covered over the course of the semester.

I know when ideas become action.

The Young Scholars I taught this semester at A&M reached this level over the past couple of weeks. It was remarkable to watch—and fun, and moving. They led discussions, they gave presentations, they turned in outstanding writing. They changed. They learned—we all did.

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Ordinary Horrors

Sports Stories

A Few Words from the Classroon Inside

Walt Whitman's Birthday

A Successful Semester

Lowell Mick White

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