Teaching Writing to High School Students, Frank McCourt Style

I just finished reading Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man. McCourt not only has wonderful stories to tell, but he is able to do so without using all the similes and metaphors that other authors often overuse.

The last section of the book is titled “Coming Alive in Room 205.” These last 75 pages chronicle McCourt’s years teaching creative writing at the famed Stuyvesant High School. I strongly recommend that high school writing teachers read this part of the book, even if that is the only part that is consumed. More than anything, it presents the author’s unconventional philosophical approach to teaching writing. It was also helpful to me as I gather my own material for future stories. McCourt especially helps writers to see the rich sources of material that are around them every day.

The Mosaic, Segmented, or Braided Essay

Recently I attended another session at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. This session was on writing a mosaic essay. As I understand it, the mosaic essay is also known as a segmented essay or braided essay. These names for essay types were all foreign to me, yet I realized that this is the style I had already chosen for the memoir writing that I plan to do. I had been calling my writing thematic essays, not realizing there were other names used for the format.

Mosaic or segmented essays are made up of different sections, or segments, that are separated by white space and that have no clearly written transitions between the sections. The sections do not have to appear in chronological order.

Braided essays are separate essays that are woven together.

The thematic essays that I am writing are a combination of all of these. I am basically taking one theme at a time from my life and writing everything I can think of that fits into that theme. There will be many random thoughts for each theme that I will weave together. Some possible essay titles I have are

• Of Mice and Men
• The Northern Lights Have Seen Strange Sights
• I’ve Got Dibbies on Sleeping with Daddy
• No More Ice Cream
• We Named It Norway because It Was So Far Away
• They Never Said, “I Love You.”
• Mom Was a Race Car Driver
• Restricted Clientele

______________________

Here are some ideas for incorporating mosaic, segmented, and/or braided essays into the lessons of teachers of writing.

• Choose a topic that intrigues, inspires or interests you. (When I attended the Lighthouse Writers Workshop we first listened to a short lecture on the art form of mosaics. Then we each chose a mosaic that we liked from the exhibition in a gallery and related it in some way to our lives or experiences that we had each had.)
• Select five to 10 keywords and/or concepts that come to mind when you think about the topic.
• Write one or two paragraphs about each keyword and/or concept, without worrying about how all the keywords and paragraphs relate to each other.
• Edit each paragraph as a stand-alone, as if each paragraph were a mini essay.
• When you've finished revising, decide if you'd like to order them for the most logical flow of ideas, or if you'd like to order them according to tone, or subject matter.
• Decide if you want to leave the paragraphs disjointed or if you want to weave them together with connecting sentences or paragraphs.

Using Old Photos as a Basis for Writing

My older brother has been working for years on our genealogy, recording his findings on ancestry.com. Recently, he discovered and posted some wonderful photos of family members that I had never seen before. Many of them are of my parents when they were very young. Seeing these photos is really stirring up my imagination. I want to fill in all the blanks about what they were like, both individually and as a couple, when they were that young. The things that I do know about might eventually make their way into a memoir that I write. What I don’t know, but wonder about, may show up in a novel, inspired in part by the pictures.

I love the photo shown here of my mother holding a muskie that she caught, probably in northern Wisconsin around 1940. The story goes that one of these fish was so big that they had to shoot it to get it into the boat. I remember that Mom would say if they saw a muskie coming after the lure, they weren't sure if they should let it bite or reel the lure in fast. I can't imagine taking the fish off the hook. This story and photo give a peek at what an adventuresome woman my mother was.

Using similar old photos could be the beginning of a writing assignment for students. If favorite family photos are not available, there are many websites that have old pictures that could be used. Do a search on “historical digital collections” and you will find all kinds of possibilities. Let students choose the photos that most inspire them. Who are the people? What are their personalities? In what ways to they interact with one another? Where is the photo taken? What are the artifacts in the photo? How do they play into whatever story is created? Can a story line be imagined?