“I hope we get YOU!”
These words stopped me in my tracks, my mouth hanging open while I tried to figure out how to respond. Those words also revealed that everyone in the room knew exactly what was happening: I was in minute 17 of a 20-minute job interview and my hiring committee was a bunch of teenagers.
I mean, of course *I* knew the deal, I just wasn’t sure what the kids had been told. Apparently, it was some variation of, “See if you want this crazy old lady to be your creative writing teacher.” It was hugely gratifying to have one of them blurt out her endorsement, of course, but it was also so awkward that I almost hoped the actual hiring manager, the lady behind me taking furious notes, hadn’t heard. And I definitely hoped she didn’t see me slip my little plant a crisp five-dollar bill, hahaha just kidding! Five bucks gets you nothing these days—teenagers don’t roll out of bed for less than twenty and it’s all Venmo.
Okay, but in all seriousness, when I found out my third and final interview for this after-school, two-days/3-hours-a-week job was going to be with actual students, I am fairly certain I chuckled with delight. I like to Do the Work: I like to be in the room, sleeves rolled up, getting something done. And I really love facilitating learning. So a hiring committee of teenagers was pretty much a dream come true and I am pretty certain two of those three students had almost as much fun as I did. The third one…up in the air, possibly because he was also a plant, this one sent to play the role of Difficult Student, Reasons Unclear. But .666 isn’t just the devil’s number—it is also a Hall of Fame batting average so I’m calling it a win.
[Side bar: who was the ONE shitheel who didn’t think Derek Jeter belongs in the HoF? There are some hard decisions in life; THAT is not one of them. And don't give me this "no one should get in on the first ballot" nonsense--you either belong or you don't, meatballs. Jeter belongs.]
I gotta hand it to them: these kids were awesome pretend students. I took them through an exercise designed to combat Blank Page Syndrome and generate an idea for a story. First, I asked them to generate a list of doors by completing the phrase “This is a door to _______.” We did this as a semi-collaborative activity to get the ball rolling; they got into it pretty quickly and here’s a little bit of what they came up with.
A door to the robotics lab.
A door to the lion’s cage at the zoo.
A door to the museum of natural history.
A door to the girl’s bathroom on the 5th floor.
A door to the deep.
A door to the heart.
A door to the clouds.
A door to the sex museum.
A door to Newt’s house.
After they had each generated a bunch of doors, I tried and failed to convince the one kid that it’s the Museum of Sex, not the sex museum, and refrained from asking who the heck “Newt” is. Then we set about brainstorming all the things that could be on either side of those doors.
My two favorites were these:
A door to the deep: on one side is a feeling.
I asked what kind of a feeling, and she told me it was a confused feeling. I asked what color the feeling was, and she told me it was gray, and that there was a black box in the center of the space, wrapped with a red ribbon. Um, okay, yeah, I am IN on this story!
My other favorite was the door to the lion’s cage: on one side of it could be people; on the other side could be lions, dead people, or both. We discussed whether there could also be live people on the lion’s side and it turned into a Schrodinger’s cat situation, plus the kid argued that if the people weren’t already dead they were probably about to be, so he went with just dead people.
(The door to the sex museum was presented as a daring transgression; there is no better way to squash a would-be transgression than by taking it seriously: “Okay, so what’s on the inside of the door?” Accept any answer with a straight face, probe delicately for more specifics (“What kind of people? How big is the room? Is it day or night?”) then ask about the outside, and then the kid is doing the work of the assignment, even if he’s using the word “naked” a lot, and that’s all that really matters. (Though for real, kid: it is the Museum of Sex, not the sex museum.))
Next, each kid picked one door/scenario and wrote the first line of a story about it. They got super into this and their first lines were awesome—I didn’t write them down, of course, but they were great. Then they switched and wrote the first lines of each other’s stories, the door to the deep girl writing the first lines to stories set in the sex museum and the robotics lab, etc., and then they read them back, to much hilarity and enthusiasm: I didn’t write those lines down, either, but it’s really cool to see how different people can construct different stories from the same starting point. [Refrain from making a bitter, angry joke about politics here.]
The official hiring manager let us go for 30 minutes, instead of the planned 20, and then took the hiring committee to another room for a debrief. She came back and told me the door to the deep girl loved the session, of course, she’s the one who tried to offer me the job at minute 17, but the robotics kid was the real win: he doesn’t like writing at all but kept saying, “That was so fun!”
I’m sure there are a million factors that could influence whether or not I get to be a creative writing teacher for three hours a week, so I’m not sweating the job offer either way. The thing is, the thing I want to remember, was just how fun those 30 minutes were. At one point, the girl with the door to the deep giggled nervously and I asked her why.
“You’re just so excited about everything we say,” she told me, and we laughed because I was so excited...and they were too.
I loved their ideas, I loved getting them excited about their ideas, and most of all I loved that long-remembered feeling of opening a door to someone and saying, “Come with me. This is going to be awesome,” and then introducing them to the unlimited potential and power of their own minds. Those kids did the heavy lifting tonight and it was a privilege and a pleasure to see them in action.
These words stopped me in my tracks, my mouth hanging open while I tried to figure out how to respond. Those words also revealed that everyone in the room knew exactly what was happening: I was in minute 17 of a 20-minute job interview and my hiring committee was a bunch of teenagers.
I mean, of course *I* knew the deal, I just wasn’t sure what the kids had been told. Apparently, it was some variation of, “See if you want this crazy old lady to be your creative writing teacher.” It was hugely gratifying to have one of them blurt out her endorsement, of course, but it was also so awkward that I almost hoped the actual hiring manager, the lady behind me taking furious notes, hadn’t heard. And I definitely hoped she didn’t see me slip my little plant a crisp five-dollar bill, hahaha just kidding! Five bucks gets you nothing these days—teenagers don’t roll out of bed for less than twenty and it’s all Venmo.
Okay, but in all seriousness, when I found out my third and final interview for this after-school, two-days/3-hours-a-week job was going to be with actual students, I am fairly certain I chuckled with delight. I like to Do the Work: I like to be in the room, sleeves rolled up, getting something done. And I really love facilitating learning. So a hiring committee of teenagers was pretty much a dream come true and I am pretty certain two of those three students had almost as much fun as I did. The third one…up in the air, possibly because he was also a plant, this one sent to play the role of Difficult Student, Reasons Unclear. But .666 isn’t just the devil’s number—it is also a Hall of Fame batting average so I’m calling it a win.
[Side bar: who was the ONE shitheel who didn’t think Derek Jeter belongs in the HoF? There are some hard decisions in life; THAT is not one of them. And don't give me this "no one should get in on the first ballot" nonsense--you either belong or you don't, meatballs. Jeter belongs.]
I gotta hand it to them: these kids were awesome pretend students. I took them through an exercise designed to combat Blank Page Syndrome and generate an idea for a story. First, I asked them to generate a list of doors by completing the phrase “This is a door to _______.” We did this as a semi-collaborative activity to get the ball rolling; they got into it pretty quickly and here’s a little bit of what they came up with.
A door to the robotics lab.
A door to the lion’s cage at the zoo.
A door to the museum of natural history.
A door to the girl’s bathroom on the 5th floor.
A door to the deep.
A door to the heart.
A door to the clouds.
A door to the sex museum.
A door to Newt’s house.
After they had each generated a bunch of doors, I tried and failed to convince the one kid that it’s the Museum of Sex, not the sex museum, and refrained from asking who the heck “Newt” is. Then we set about brainstorming all the things that could be on either side of those doors.
My two favorites were these:
A door to the deep: on one side is a feeling.
I asked what kind of a feeling, and she told me it was a confused feeling. I asked what color the feeling was, and she told me it was gray, and that there was a black box in the center of the space, wrapped with a red ribbon. Um, okay, yeah, I am IN on this story!
My other favorite was the door to the lion’s cage: on one side of it could be people; on the other side could be lions, dead people, or both. We discussed whether there could also be live people on the lion’s side and it turned into a Schrodinger’s cat situation, plus the kid argued that if the people weren’t already dead they were probably about to be, so he went with just dead people.
(The door to the sex museum was presented as a daring transgression; there is no better way to squash a would-be transgression than by taking it seriously: “Okay, so what’s on the inside of the door?” Accept any answer with a straight face, probe delicately for more specifics (“What kind of people? How big is the room? Is it day or night?”) then ask about the outside, and then the kid is doing the work of the assignment, even if he’s using the word “naked” a lot, and that’s all that really matters. (Though for real, kid: it is the Museum of Sex, not the sex museum.))
Next, each kid picked one door/scenario and wrote the first line of a story about it. They got super into this and their first lines were awesome—I didn’t write them down, of course, but they were great. Then they switched and wrote the first lines of each other’s stories, the door to the deep girl writing the first lines to stories set in the sex museum and the robotics lab, etc., and then they read them back, to much hilarity and enthusiasm: I didn’t write those lines down, either, but it’s really cool to see how different people can construct different stories from the same starting point. [Refrain from making a bitter, angry joke about politics here.]
The official hiring manager let us go for 30 minutes, instead of the planned 20, and then took the hiring committee to another room for a debrief. She came back and told me the door to the deep girl loved the session, of course, she’s the one who tried to offer me the job at minute 17, but the robotics kid was the real win: he doesn’t like writing at all but kept saying, “That was so fun!”
I’m sure there are a million factors that could influence whether or not I get to be a creative writing teacher for three hours a week, so I’m not sweating the job offer either way. The thing is, the thing I want to remember, was just how fun those 30 minutes were. At one point, the girl with the door to the deep giggled nervously and I asked her why.
“You’re just so excited about everything we say,” she told me, and we laughed because I was so excited...and they were too.
I loved their ideas, I loved getting them excited about their ideas, and most of all I loved that long-remembered feeling of opening a door to someone and saying, “Come with me. This is going to be awesome,” and then introducing them to the unlimited potential and power of their own minds. Those kids did the heavy lifting tonight and it was a privilege and a pleasure to see them in action.
Awesome!!
ReplyDeleteoh, almost forgot! the door to your sister's room, which she's locked, but you can pick it with a bobby pin. love that door. xoxoxoxo
DeleteSo amazing! How beautiful.
ReplyDeletewe all know not every class is going to be a home run, but it's really nice when you're at least getting good at-bats, right? :)
Delete