LESSONS FROM THIRD GRADE: visiting the classroom

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting my friend Claudia Balint's third grade class at the Osceola Magnet School here in my home town of Vero Beach. There are few places an obscure writer like me can go and be listened to with awe, but Miss Balint's class is one of them. Claudia had prompted the class to prepare some questions for me, so I got to answer a nice series of rather astute queries, including "Are you lonely when you write?" and "Do you have a favorite among your books?" I gather she had also identified questions that could not be asked, a list that I presume included things like "If you're a published author, why haven't my parents ever heard of you?" and "When are you going to grow up and get a real job?"

Claudia has been having the kids write frequently in what she's named their Creativity Books, the same kind of lined composition books, complete with stiff cardboard covers printed in mottled black and white, that I remember from my own time as a kid. She's taught them some basic forms, including haiku, and provides them with prompts that meet them where they are, like "What is the hardest classroom rule for you to follow?" The class is a diverse bunch of smart little live wires, and the writing they shared from their books was fresh and smart: sometimes sad, sometimes funny, always authentic and always brimming with energy.

As I drove home, I felt a little abashed. The students in Claudia's class are doing more of their own personal writing, more regularly and more happily, than I've done most months this year. And they're learning math, science, and the location of, say, Tunisia too, none of which I have actually yet mastered. Admittedly, they have Miss Balint to prompt them. But I'm 55...shouldn't I have outgrown the need for adult and external motivators by now?

My goal for this summer is to recapture both the regularity and the joy of my writing. In the meantime, thanks to Miss Balint and all of her third-graders for a lesson much needed.