Schmoes, Workshops, Britney Spears' Poetic Ouevre, Mod Podge, and a Great Deal of Candy

For our first day of class, Bowling Green treated us to beautiful, though terribly hot, weather. The day served up some fits and starts, as well as bumps (or, rather, boulders) in the road, but, in the end, we learned a lot about each other and about how a writing workshop works.

After a steep trek uphill to Cherry Hall (they're not kidding when they call them the Hilltoppers!), we began the morning by learning more about each other and, of course, coming up with code names for class members, from Boy In Shirt to The Academy to E Dub. After this important work was done, it was time for us to hone our journalistic skills by crafting five interview questions designed not only to avoid the dreaded "yes/no" answer but also to delve deeper into the personalities in play at the classroom. Through the poems each student wrote based on their interviews, we learned of Violet's love of penguins (something she certainly shares with code name Penguin), KB's dream of being an archeologist and translator, and Ka-Pow's love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Boy In Shirt spoke of his love of math and science, and Surge revealed her love of Paper Theater, an ancient but secret VAMPY tradition. E Dub shared her plans to travel to Ireland and J-Weezie shared the secret that though he lives in Lexington, he proudly sports Louisville red. Steve promised to show us pictures of his white lab named Jake, and Noodle let us know that classical music calms him down. Last but not least, The Academy and I shared our mutual love of stochiometry.

After lunch, finished writing and sharing literacy narratives, discussing how we learned to read and write and, most importantly, how we came to our definitions of good writing. As the class' definitions were brilliant and insightful, I'll post them on the blog so that we can remember them when we begin to critique and workshop each others' work.

Next, it was time to learn about the tricks of the trade. We discussed the writing process, focusing on revision -- or, as the class will now forever know it, RE-vision, the act of RE-seeing a text. We worked through a sample poem, seeing how the author worked (and re-worked, and worked, and re-worked, and worked!) to strengthen the language, rhythm, imagery, and tone of a piece.

Then, it was time to set up our blog, titled through class consensus after a vote. The class also voted to blog anonymously, and so chose names from the Greek pantheon as pseudonyms. I, of course, had to stick to the code name I was given this morning: The Boulder.

After a long, eventful, and exciting day of learning about the wonders of writing and the writing workshop, the students took the mercifully downhill walk to their dorms while The Boulder went in search of candy and magical supplies for the evening activity. After meeting their newly-arrived TA (welcome to the class, Nickol!), the students returned to Cherry Hall to see said magical supplies displayed on the floor for the evening's activity: transforming composition books into unique writer's notebooks through the magic of construction paper, colored pencils, crayons, and Mod Podge. The finished products were impressive, and will serve the students well as we delve into our exploration of imagery tomorrow!