![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"I'm teaching myself Hebrew"
Oct. 23rd, 2023 03:07 pmThe teacher I used to work with in Holyoke asked me back to give a talk on writing to her high school-aged students, who are working on personal narratives. These are all kids for whom regular high school hasn't worked out, but they are still fighting for an education and a future, and the teachers at this program are 100 percent dedicated to helping them with that.
This happened in front of the building housing the program. This is these kids' daily life.
We talked about what makes writing hard, and how you have to strive to write in a way that your readers will understand and feel what you're sharing--even if your reader is only your future self. It's too easy to be cryptic or use a sort of shorthand that speaks to you in the moment but not later. And of course if your audience is going to include people other than yourself, you have to work even harder. Learning what you need to improve is good--but we also need reassurance and praise for what we're doing.
( the writing exercise I did with them )
Afterward, I answered questions and the talk drifted to (among other things) languages. I think I maybe went overboard talking about how learning languages made me positively high, but it led to a touching conversation on my way out with a student who confided that he'd started teaching himself Hebrew.
"Oh wow, Hebrew!" I said. "How did you choose that? Is it part of your heritage?"
"No. It's because of ... You know. The news. I thought of doing Arabic, too, but the letters seemed too hard."
I felt so much love for that kid in that moment. What a profound response to what's going on. What an instinct for healing.
So take heart, everyone. You can be a kid growing up in a neighborhood where stray bullets kill babies, and yet you're teaching yourself language to Tikkun Olam the hell out of our broken world.
This happened in front of the building housing the program. This is these kids' daily life.
We talked about what makes writing hard, and how you have to strive to write in a way that your readers will understand and feel what you're sharing--even if your reader is only your future self. It's too easy to be cryptic or use a sort of shorthand that speaks to you in the moment but not later. And of course if your audience is going to include people other than yourself, you have to work even harder. Learning what you need to improve is good--but we also need reassurance and praise for what we're doing.
( the writing exercise I did with them )
Afterward, I answered questions and the talk drifted to (among other things) languages. I think I maybe went overboard talking about how learning languages made me positively high, but it led to a touching conversation on my way out with a student who confided that he'd started teaching himself Hebrew.
"Oh wow, Hebrew!" I said. "How did you choose that? Is it part of your heritage?"
"No. It's because of ... You know. The news. I thought of doing Arabic, too, but the letters seemed too hard."
I felt so much love for that kid in that moment. What a profound response to what's going on. What an instinct for healing.
So take heart, everyone. You can be a kid growing up in a neighborhood where stray bullets kill babies, and yet you're teaching yourself language to Tikkun Olam the hell out of our broken world.
