Hands

A couple weeks ago I went with a few colleagues to The Literacy Promise, a conference in SLC.  Most of the sessions were enjoyable, but one that I went to stood out to me.  Those of you who teach English should know who Penny Kittle is.  If not, repent immediately and go purchase, read, annotate, and devour a couple of her books.

Her session addresses using writer’s notebooks in the classroom.  A short lesson in revision struck a chord with me, and I’ve decided to share it with you.  By the way, if any of you in the area get a chance to attend The Literacy Promise (held every two years), it is worth the cost.  Get your administrators to spring for the registration in April 0f 2014.

Anyway, as my friend Nacho says, “Anywhays…”…

Penny started before her session by graciously chatting with me about a few teachery writing-type things.  And she signed my book.  I am such a geek!

This particular segment started as she passed out a copy of Sarah Kay’s poem “Hands,” which we then watched the author perform via YouTube.  Check her other stuff out as well.

We were asked to annotate the poem as we read it through the second time.  We traced our hands—not to make Thanksgiving turkeys, mind you, but to give connect us to our past.  We brainstormed any connections we had to our “Hands” annotations, as well as any other images, stories, etc. that came from our hands.  We, in five minutes, circled words and phrases, jotted noted, drew diagrams, vomited our ideas onto paper.

She then gave us an additional five to choose one point from the mess before us and start writing an anecdote about it.

We stopped mid-idea.

And then we had to revise what we had barely eked out of our pens as quickly as we could (two minutes).

Then we turned and talked to a neighbor, not about our stories, although it was what came naturally, but about what we revised, how we revised.  Here I go flashing my geekdom, but I rather enjoyed that little chat with my pal Cassie.  In those two minutes, I saw my revision process as I never had before.  I was systematic; there was a method to my clichéd madness.

Now, I’m not going to go in depth with my geeky revelations, but I thought I might share that process with the few that have ventured this far.  I tried this activity with my 9^th graders…and it worked.  Of course, I extended their time.  And the best part by far was the conversation generated by them about their processes.  Whole-class discussion was mediocre, but what occurred between braced faces and zits was almost magic.  Almost.

So I guess I’ll share my product-somewhat revised, even though it’s not what you’re looking for:

 

                When Amy and I were first engaged she would always gush to her girlfriends how much she loved holding my hands.  She’d yank me over and showcase my palms and knuckles like I was some kind of livestock.  Some might have been offended, but I didn’t mind.

Until then I had never really thought about my thick, gnarly, knuckle-popped sausage-finger hands: the hands that couldn’t type quickly without inserting invented letters into words; hands that couldn’t quite coordinate themselves to play the piano with any semblance of finesse; hands that didn’t have much mechanical dexterity other than a death grip of a vice.

My hands, the chunks of flesh that survived pocketknives and scout camp, electric shocks, and even meat slicers; the hooks of flesh madeover with scars and burns, scratches and stings, paper cuts too infinite to count, the knuckles bent and bruised and bloody and busted (and probably broken at one point or another)—are no big deal.

They’re just my hands.

Just my hands—smeared with ink and nervous sweat as they fumble to keep other smaller, more delicate hands close and safe from monsters under the bed, and first days of school and overly obnoxious barking neighbor dogs.

But when the human stock show closed, and we walked away, my fingers interlaced with hers, I knew my hands, though not too pretty to look at, just needed to be good enough.

I might turn it into a poem.  Whaddya think?