Oversharing in Writing Workshop

Many ELA teachers write alongside their students, but do you write like a “teacher” or a “person”? Do you write to model for and teach techniques to your students, or do you write to explore an experience, uncover a truth?

Of course, being a teacher is bound up with who we are. A teacher is a person (despite what some of our students may believe), but when you reflect on your own writing in class, is their one voice speaks louder in your work? What I noticed in my writing with students is that  my “person” voice is stronger, and some of my journal content made me wonder: Am I oversharing?

My husband has always cautioned me about oversharing with my students. I tell students about my absent-minded episodes like putting the blueberries in the cabinet instead of the fridge or wearing two different colored boots to school. I tell them stories about my mother who has sort of broken up with me. I tell them about my ten siblings and how I grew up sleeping on the floor. Outside of the classroom, I am actually quite private, but the students make it easy for me to be vulnerable, for me to be a teacher and be Sarah, and so I write as absent-minded, sensitive Sarah. That said, my husband is right about a lot of things, and so I thought I would reflect on my sharing here, and then open up the conversation to see how you balance and blend your teacher-writer selves.

I brought my school journal home this summer so that I could do some, well, journaling.  I spent some time looking through my entries. Most days in our eighth grade writing class, we would begin with a “compose for five” or five minutes of writing about anything. I would offer suggestions or pictures for inspiration, but most students came to class with a lot to say and needed, appreciated this time to say it in their journals. I did, too. Sometimes, after composing, we’d share in partners or small groups and then go back to writing to see if we could develop an idea further. Looking through my writing journal now, I am delighted by some of my poems and stories,  but other entries make me wonder if I overshared.

A Couple Examples

On the advice of Sarah Kay, we started the year with a list: “Ten Things I Love.” I wrote “sleeping in on a cloudy, rainy day” and “a fresh cup of coffee.” These were pretty harmless, but I also wrote that I love my husband’s blue eyes.  Back in August, we shared these lists in small groups, and I recall the girls responding with “awe’s” and the boys rolling their eyes, but they also leaned in and began to ask questions about my marriage. They were curious.

On another page, I found an entry about my bully. I wrote a short piece about my bully at the bus stop, the place she most often tormented me.  I talked about how I always thought of just the right comeback after the fact, and even when she did “come back” the next day, I fell silent, again. There was one student, let’s call her Lourdes, who had a lot of questions about my bully, and she shared with me (and the class) a story about how her bully had really made her feel bad about herself. Some students comforted Lourdes and me, but others were disappointed that I did not fight back. Looking back, I remember feeling hurt by some of the students’ comments.

A Longer Example

Here is a short personal narrative that I wrote the second month of school, “Pearls in the Palm.” I took this “compose for five” through the writing process, using it to model narrative techniques, drafting, conferencing,revising, editing, and publishing. Students had a lot to say about this piece (and you may, too), but what I remember well are comments from students such as “I feel like I know you better,” ” I didn’t know writing can be about this stuff,” and students gave me some nice compliments about the ending. Reading it now, I am sure my husband would be mortified that I brought this personal experience into the classroom. Is is an example of oversharing?

I move my hand to my mouth and cough. When I pull my hand away, I see three pearls resting in my palm. Shock. Confusion. What is this?  I wonder feeling dazed. Upon a closer look, I realize that those “pearls” are my teeth.

I feel around my mouth with my tongue. My teeth feel loose, and in the gaps, I feel the groves of my roots. Another tooth falls away from my gums, and I can feel it resting in the pocket between my gums and my jaw. I spit it out careful not to touch another tooth.

I am panicking. My heart is racing; my hands are shaking, and then I wake up.

I jump out of bed and run into the bathroom. Exhale. I have all my teeth. And as my heart rate calms and my hand steady, I wonder why I keep having this dream. I look at the visage staring back at me in the mirror. Something about my eyes makes me realize that my father is behind my dreams, that my father is speaking to me.

*****

My dad died last year. His girlfriend found him, and the coroner said that he had been dead for a few days. You see, my father lived alone. When I say “lived,” I mean lived his life alone — not just that he was the only person in his condo. He like life that way: alone. However, some say that living alone is not really the best thing for a human being, and I think it was not really the best thing for my dad. Dad was so focused on ideas that he often neglected his health and that meant his teeth. He’d drink Mountain Dew and eat Marie Calendar’s frozen dinners. He’d get so caught up in ideas that he often did not shower or brush his teeth for days at a time. By the time he was seventy, he only had a few teeth remaining. The ones that had fallen out, I found by his beside after he died.

For days at a time, we would not hear from Dad. It was typical, really. Sometimes the only way I knew he was alive was when I’d get a call from the hospital saying he was in the emergency room. My dad developed a heart condition, and when he didn’t take his medicine, his lungs would fill up with fluid making it difficult for him to breathe, so he’d often call 9-1-1 in a panic. The hospital fixed him up, but he always went back to living the same way. He was an idea man, and his ideas killed him.

About a year before he died, I discovered he was living like one of those people you see on TV — stacks of paper and books and trash everywhere. With the help of my ten siblings, we convinced him (actually threatened him) to live with me and my husband. The other siblings did not really want him to live with them, and we had a spare room. My dad said he’d stay with us until he found another apartment, but we wanted him to live in an assisted living community, which is a place where nurses and other care givers check in on him to make sure he is eating, keeping things neat, and taking his medication. After a few months living together, which I really enjoyed because we had lots of great conversations about life over breakfast, he moved into an assisted living apartment, but it did  not last long.

One day I received a letter in the mail saying he moved out and that he was going back into the condo. He felt like the assisted living place was a prison with old people, and he said that he was not “old.”

A month later, my dad died alone in his condo. He died where he wanted, in a room beside his canoe and among his designs of cars and trucks he never saw built no less driving down the street.  He died as Skippy.

*****

I stared at the mirror. “What?” I shouted.”What are you saying, Dad? What do you want from me because you didn’t want much from me when you were alive.”

My eyes became red, and the tears made my vision a bit distorted. I saw a young Sarah in the mirror. Her eyes were looking for advice from her father.  “You’re okay. You are your father’s daughter, but you are not your father’s choices. Just be,” I whispered to myself.

My sisters always said that I was the most like my dad because I had all these ideas in my head, because I could get lost in my imagination.  I guess I am — like my dad. And while that scares me a little bit, I think it is what make me his daughter but also Sarah and just  human.

I opened up the floss, pulled out a long string, and began working the waxy string in between my teeth, gently into my gums. I brushed, and then I rinsed with fluoride.  I smiled at my pearly white teeth and turned off the light.

Why Share

So what do you think? Have you shared stories like this with your students, and by “this” I mean personal, painful, vulnerable?

Coincidentally, I have an entry in my journal about oversharing; it’s about oversharing on the web, e.g., don’t brag, avoid TMI, think about the reader, avoid being cryptic, post smart, and not to post or write anything you wouldn’t want your grandma to see. If I apply these guidelines to writing in the classroom, I think I broke the TMI rule (and the grandmother one, too).

But writing in the classroom is not the same as writing on the web. In the classroom, I guess I write more like Sarah than a teacher. I do believe that in the writing classroom teachers have to be writers, and my writing is and sort of has to be, for me, personal. That just seems “ethical” to me because it gets us closer to what it means to be human.

Writing has helped me witness my life, and when I share my writing, others witness my life, too. Is that the job of a teacher? Well, yes. I ask students to trust me with their lives, their stories. I ask students to let me bear witness to their lives. In some instances, I am the only one who reads, witnesses their written lives. It is my privilege, and I feel like they want to reciprocate.

What do you think about this? Did you keep a journal this school year? Did you write more like a “teacher” or as your self?  How do you navigate this question of oversharing? What kinds of writing and sharing experiences seem most central and important in your classroom?