Let boys be boys when it comes to writing

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November 5, 2009

John Edmondson

During one particularly listless afternoon in my sixth-grade year, I remember giving my buddy Dennis the signal—two quick taps of my left foot in the space between our metal desks bolted to the floor.

Like a choreographed maneuver in a Flying Angels air show, we lifted our desk tops at precisely the same second, dipped our heads, then filled the classroom with the sounds only two 11-year-olds pretending to be sick could make.

So much for Mrs. Crane's stupefying lesson on improper fractions, which only brought out the impropriety of two terminally bored preadolescent boys.

I thought about this incident during a free-reading period recently when I looked up from my desk to see Spencer, one of my sixth-grade students, leap from his chair and strike a pose that was equal parts Richard Simmons and Ninja Warrior. Then to the delight of his classmates, Spencer whooped and hollered as he jabbed lefts and rights into the air.

Spencer cannot live on "Wimpy Kid" adventures alone.

I calmly asked this bright, high-energy kid to calm down, and that was the end of it. No defiance, no back talk—just a young boy who couldn't resist the urge to get his freak on.

Last year as a fifth-grader, Spencer was forced to conform to the no-nonsense structure his teachers established in their classrooms. He had no outlet for the typical nitwit tendencies that always lurk just below the surface in many boys his age. Spencer hated school, and he especially hated to write.

But once Spencer learned how to choose his own writing topics and tap into his natural ability to tell a story, writing no longer became a dreaded chore. He found a vehicle to appropriately display his developed sense of humor.

In an early writing piece this year, Spencer recounts a family night out at a local restaurant. Preoccupied with a video game and his efforts to "keep mozzarella-stick grease from clogging the controls," Spencer is distracted by his sister's off-the-charts laughter. Soon a tsunami of giggles and guffaws inundates the rest of his family. Except his mother.

"'That's so rude!' My mom's voice rang in our heads."

Now check out Spencer's dry comedic ending: "The only time during the ride home when my mom wasn't yelling at us was when my dad complained how his macaroni wasn't as good as he expected."

In a current personal narrative, Spencer begins with, "Swing, miss. Swing, miss...I'm taking tennis lessons because I STINK. Some people are born into tennis, but I wasn't born anywhere near tennis. Well, it depends. Is Lawrence General Hospital near tennis?"

Not exactly five-paragraph essay fare. And that's a good thing. There will be plenty of time, once Spencer gains more confidence as a writer, to teach him the formula that impresses standardized test evaluators. But for now, Spencer and this classmates will continue to write about what interests them, and learn the craft secrets that help to inform and amuse their readers.

But Spencer, next Halloween, leave the hot dog hat on your head. Don't take it off and chase your pals around the classroom with it. In seventh grade, you won't have an arrested 11-year-old boy for a teacher.

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John Edmondson is a teacher in Hampstead. His column appears every other week in the Derry News.