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Sep. 17th, 2008 01:17 amI'm reading emails and one of them had an advertisement for a course of mine. Should I be worried that this particular half-day event had to be labelled "Not suitable for children"?
Sep. 17th, 2008
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Sep. 17th, 2008 06:52 pmToday my Wednesday class and I went to Floriade. My class learned about how to find out people's stories without being intrusive. Basically, we went to stalls we were interested in and talked about things we cared about (and bought stuff - I have my secret how-to-write-3000-words-in-a-session-without-imploding-my-brain supplies for when I'm through the next month) and were honest about being a writing class and everyone wanted to tell us their life histories. Especially the business part.
Stallholders loved us. I know so much more than I did about cleaning shoes using a special wax product and why I should drink brahmi and where to order this and that and the other and how a divorce led to major success and how quickly a new staff member was learning and why allergies are a major issue in the soap industry because of someone's personal history. I had a nice chat with the lavender farm person from Yackandandah, too - he not only remembered me, he was keen to learn if his product had helped my migraines (the answer was 'yes' so we're both happy). This is why I insisted we only actually ask about things we were interested in.
Because our interest was genuine, the stall owners didn't mind that we were using them for exercises - they talked and talked and talked. Over lunch my class and I talked about how to turn this into fiction and use it in our writing. We talked about ethics, of course, but we also talked about how to work within *everyone's* comfort zones.
After that I taught my students how to find ideas anywhere and they got all inspired and *did* find ideas anywhere and everywhere. The table we were sitting at became an idea for two quite different sorts of writing and we had three different approaches to describing it, for instance.
And then we were all tuckered out and went and watched short films and old TV ads. The ideas thing was still working and the discovering stories about people was still working, though, because on the way to the bus one of my students told me how one of the shorts was particularly useful.
You know, it's a terrible thing, what I do to my students. They're going to be thinking non-stop for the next month and won't be able to report back to me again till then! They've already said "More excursions, please." And they gave me flowers and chutney for Rosh Hashanah. (They used the exercise I set them when I wasn't there to find something and they gifted me with some lovely liliums and an extraordinarily yummy chutney over lunch.)
That was 1/3 of my day. Happiness is students who love learning, I think.
Stallholders loved us. I know so much more than I did about cleaning shoes using a special wax product and why I should drink brahmi and where to order this and that and the other and how a divorce led to major success and how quickly a new staff member was learning and why allergies are a major issue in the soap industry because of someone's personal history. I had a nice chat with the lavender farm person from Yackandandah, too - he not only remembered me, he was keen to learn if his product had helped my migraines (the answer was 'yes' so we're both happy). This is why I insisted we only actually ask about things we were interested in.
Because our interest was genuine, the stall owners didn't mind that we were using them for exercises - they talked and talked and talked. Over lunch my class and I talked about how to turn this into fiction and use it in our writing. We talked about ethics, of course, but we also talked about how to work within *everyone's* comfort zones.
After that I taught my students how to find ideas anywhere and they got all inspired and *did* find ideas anywhere and everywhere. The table we were sitting at became an idea for two quite different sorts of writing and we had three different approaches to describing it, for instance.
And then we were all tuckered out and went and watched short films and old TV ads. The ideas thing was still working and the discovering stories about people was still working, though, because on the way to the bus one of my students told me how one of the shorts was particularly useful.
You know, it's a terrible thing, what I do to my students. They're going to be thinking non-stop for the next month and won't be able to report back to me again till then! They've already said "More excursions, please." And they gave me flowers and chutney for Rosh Hashanah. (They used the exercise I set them when I wasn't there to find something and they gifted me with some lovely liliums and an extraordinarily yummy chutney over lunch.)
That was 1/3 of my day. Happiness is students who love learning, I think.