It's Mother's Day and though I planned to post on Socratic discussions today, I find that all things considered, I'm still a human being with a full range of emotions and the simple inability to accomplish certain tasks from time to time.

    And so instead of posting on discussions and student involvement, I'm going to post two simple poems, one I wrote for my mother last May, who died on October 9, 2004, and one for my grandmother, Dido, who passed away a year ago on May 9th.

It's a strange feeling to be a woman on Mother's Day, and to have neither any living motherly relatives nor any children of one's own. And yet it's still a chance to celebrate. And to remember. Here's to all of the mothers everywhere, and to the lasting impact that they leave on the world.

It’s a big week for our creative writing class. We submitted our literary magazine to the printing press; check out the cover image to the left. Additionally, our class blog is being featured on Comments4Kids.com this Friday, May 10th. #Comments4Kids, organized by William Chamberlain (@wmchamberlain), is an awesome site that features class sites and blogs from all over the world, encouraging authentic blogging with real, engaged audiences.

As I write this post, my creative writing students are ooohing and ahhing over the blog posts they are discovering on Comments4Kids.com. They’re reading posts from second graders, from fourth graders, from middle school students. They’re reading posts from the States, from England, from New Zealand. They’re sharing in collective amazement and camaraderie.

This is what creative writing class is like: take your worst day, one full of black clouds (both literal and figurative) and watch it transform into sunshine and rainbows (again, today that is literal as well as figurative). 

Most often, I’d be saying that kind of statement with the drippings of sarcasm, but on a day like today, I couldn’t be more genuine. On days like today, that class does nothing short of save me from despair.

That’s what it’s like to walk into our class… Everyone is doing what they love, supporting each other, and creating new worlds with words. The collective hum of creativity bounces off of the walls as we write and type our way into new understandings of ourselves and each other.

Today, the students read and commented on blog posts they found on Comments4Kids.com. This is what they shared about what they’d read:

One student who practices karate and has a black belt was thrilled to read about a younger child who just got her yellow belt. Another student was touched by a little boy’s account of the fear he felt about his first day at school.

A third student was touched by a young environmentalist who wrote about the horrible way that people were treating the earth and all of the things that students could do to help.  The students were amazed by the range of content and by reading about the lives of students all over the world.

At the end of class today, a student talked about all of us all doing something together and I said, “We’re not a cult.”

One of the students said, “Are you sure?”

Before I could respond, two other students answered, their voices in perfect synchronization as they said, “It seems like it to me.” Everyone standing around laughed.

I laughed, too. There are much worse things in the world. If only I’m always so lucky to be surrounded by such inspiring, brilliant people, I will count myself one of the most fortunate people in the world.

Check out our work on BroadwayAurorealis.weebly.com—there are links to each student’s individual blog posts as well as featured posts on the class blog.

We’re also selling literary magazines for $8 (including postage); if you’d like a copy, email me on the contact page or email our class and I can get your address to send you one. The awesome cover image above hints at what an amazing product the students have put together this year.