by
I teach writing to high school
students. But I don’t see myself as a high school teacher. My job, as I see it,
is to mentor young people as they come of age.
I’m an Advisor at Jefferson County
Open School in Lakewood, Colorado. I’m the English teacher. But the
kids in my classroom are looking for more than English. They’re looking for
meaning. They’re looking for something real.
Right now I’m teaching The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
I use the text to teach the kids to read. I use the ideas in the book to teach
them to think. And the story Pollan tells about food...I use that as a guide
for our own educational adventures in the food chain. Like Pollan does in the
book, we visit farms. Food markets. I bought the kids McDonalds then drove them
to a feedlot with a 100,000 head of cattle that filled our nostrils with the
stench of feces and urine. The poop was piled twenty feet high by tractors. The
cows were covered in it up to their spines. Our lungs were singed from the
ammonia.
I had the kids eat the burgers and
take it all in.
Later in the semester I had the
students interview their oldest living relatives. Out of that interview, the
students brought traditional recipes to class, and we prepared meals together.
This week we’re discussing the ethics
of eating. I have them justify it: their choice to eat, which is to say their
choice to kill. I do this because I want them to be on solid moral ground. I do
this because I want their bodies to be well.
Why? Because I’m their English
teacher. It’s my job.
I also facilitate a writers’ group.
Because I believe kids need mentors (more than just me), I partner with Lighthouse
Writers Workshop, a Denver based community, to bring local authors
into my classroom.
We meet at lunch every Wednesday, the
writers’ group. This is a very committed group of writers (some students have
graduated and still participate in the group via email from college). They take
their writing seriously and provide one another with thoughtful, constructive
feedback.
Once a month, we have a guest author.
The guest author actually reads the week’s submission and critiques it, along
with the rest of us. Imagine being seventeen years old and having your story
critiqued by a published author.
After the critique session, we invite
any interested student in the school to a craft talk with the author. After
which, the kids get an opportunity to interact more openly. They get to ask
questions about the writing process. About inspiration. About how to get
published.
What’s really happening is that
relationships are being developed. This is the secret to education. They can
pass any law they want at the state or at the federal level. They can mandate
testing. Or they can sell our schools to corporate enterprises. None of that
will fix the problem we have with education in America.
Because the answer is this: teaching
is about relationships. Kids need mentors. It’s that simple. They learn from
the people they trust.
What happens in this guest author
program is magical. Kids begin to see themselves as writers. They develop
authentic relationships with authors in the community. They have consultants.
At my school, every student completes
a Career Exploration Passage. It’s one of six rites of passages each student
undertakes to graduate from high school. In the Career Exploration Passage, as
the title indicates, students explore a career. The project involves an
internship, research, consultants, a series of interviews, a resume. And
eventually the student maps out a path to his or her chosen field.
The beauty of the curriculum at the
Open School is that the students I work with get to consult with actual
professionals. They get to interview our guest authors and develop
relationships that will last long after high school is over.
To make all this work I went to our
school’s Parent Teacher Student Organization (PTSO) and
asked for $50 a month to bring local authors into the classroom. The parents on
PTSO generously supported the program, and they also asked me to consider ways
to raise money to pay for it.
It was a reasonable request on their
part, responsible even, but I had to think about it. What could I do to help
support my own program?
Meanwhile, I went to Lighthouse
Writers Workshop and told them what our PTSO was willing to do.
Lighthouse generously matched my school’s contribution.
So we had $100 a month to bring local
authors into the school. Not much. But money communicates value. By paying
authors what we can, we let them know that we value their profession. Their
work. Moreover, writers are hungry, and, so far, the guest authors have been
grateful for the gig.
This week we’re hosting Caleb Seeling,
the publisher at Conundrum
Press. Caleb also writes graphic novels.
Then it finally came to me a few weeks
ago: how to raise money for the program. I had a book release pending for my
literary thriller Patriarch Run.
It occurred to me that I could donate the April proceeds to PTSO and, in that
way, raise money to support the guest author program at the Open School.
Which is what we’re doing. It’s a good
book. It’s a good cause. And we’d welcome your support.
If you’d like to know more about our
amazing school (there have been many books written about it), let me know. And
if you’d like to learn more about me or my stories, you could drop me a line
about that, too.
Thank you for finding me,
Benjamin Dancer
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
Twitter: @BenjaminDancer1
About:
Benjamin is an Advisor at Jefferson County Open School where he has
made a career out of mentoring young people as they come of age. He wrote the
novels PATRIARCH RUN, IN SIGHT OF THE SUN and FIDELITY. He also writes about
parenting and education.
Patriarch Run is a thoughtful and
character driven literary thriller. Think of it as Jason Bourne meets Good Will
Hunting.
Billy
discovers that his father might be a traitor, that he was deployed to safeguard the
United States from a cyberattack on its military networks. After that mission,
his father disappeared along with the Chinese technology he was ordered to
steal–a weapon powerful enough to sabotage the digital infrastructure of the
modern age and force the human population into collapse.
Against a backdrop of suspense,
the story explores the archetypal themes of fatherhood, coming of age and self-acceptance
through a set of characters that will leave you changed.
Excerpt
from Patriarch Run:
Rachel never rode
over the summit of the mountain because of the treacherous nature of that
trail. It was against all rational judgement that she found herself on it now.
At tree line the horse climbed over the ridge, stepped out of the spruce forest
and onto the packed scree that made up the trail from there to the tundra. The
mountainside below them gave way completely to granite cliffs.
The trail snaked
along the top.
At the highest
point among the cliffs, with nearly a thousand feet of empty space beneath the
hooves of Old Sam, Rachel spotted two figures several hundred yards in the
distance. She talked to the horse. Said she couldn’t be sure, but it looked to
be a man and a bristlecone pine.
The horse walked on.
“Watch your
step, Old Sam.”
As they closed
the distance, Rachel recognized him and saw that he was untying a rope from the
gnarled tree.
“You couldn’t
have picked a better view.”
Regan had looked
at her once when he first heard the hooves on the scree, then he went back to
his rope. Now he looked up at her face. Looked the horse over. Then he studied
her eyes. She had divined his purpose.
He looked away.
“Yeah, it’ll do.”
The two knew
each other, but had rarely had cause to speak.
“I don’t mean to
meddle, but it seems to me that the rope is ill conceived.”
Regan finished
retying the rope to the tree, tested the knot and asked, “How so?”
“Too much
length, and the wind, along with your own momentum, will lacerate your flesh
against the rock.”
He looked over
the edge. “That occurred to me as you were coming up. I shortened the rope.”
“Not enough
length, and it’ll be slow and painful.”
He studied the
coil of parachute cord on the ground and said with very little inflection. “It
looks about right to me.” Then he walked over to a granite boulder.
“Seems you’ve
thought it through.”
He sat down and
pulled off his right boot. “We’ll see.”
Rachel reached
behind her and took out a water bottle. Drank. She offered the bottle to Regan
with a gesture.
He put out his
lower lip and shook his head almost imperceptibly.
She capped it
and put it back.
“Mind if I ask
you a question?”
“Go ahead.” He
pulled off the other boot.
“Why the rope
and the cliff?”
“Coyotes.”
“I don’t
follow.”
“When I was a
kid, coyotes killed my dog. I heard the fight, but by the time I found her in
the dark, they were already feeding on her guts.” He took off both socks and
stood up. “They pulled her insides out through her anus.” He stepped over to
the precipice and surveyed the valley.
“How old were
you?”
“Six.”
Rachel nodded
her head, which he didn’t see.
“With only the
rope or only the cliff, I’d be left for the coyotes.”
“But this way
it’s only insects and birds.”
He spun to face
her, his widened eyes betraying surprise–or maybe alarm.
“Birds always
eat the eyeballs first,” she continued. “Must be a delicacy to them. The
insects just want a womb for their maggots. A nutrient-rich source to give
their young a good start.”
Regan fidgeted
with the socks in his hands.
“You could’ve
picked a high branch.”
He looked
distracted, as if he was still digesting the other image. “I thought of that.”
He walked over to his boots, unbuttoning his silk shirt.
“Yeah.”
“A bear could
cut the rope.”
“It seems you’ve
thought it through.”
He took off his
shirt, folded it and set it on a rock. “We’ll see.”
Rachel looked
back over the trail. “Well, I best be goin’.”
“OK.”
She turned the
horse, “Those are some fancy clothes.”
“Yeah.” He took
off his belt. “The boots alone cost me eleven hundred dollars, and that was
before tax.”
“I suppose it’s
fitting.”
“It seemed that
way to me, too, down at the house. But after being up here, I don’t think so.”
“How so?”
He wasn’t
looking at her anymore. “I think I’ll be more comfortable without them.”
“What are you
going to do with those eleven hundred dollar boots?”
He carried the
clothes over to the bristlecone tree, put the boots on top of the folded shirt,
the socks inside the boots and the belt around the boots. “Come back and get
’em if you like.”
“Well, I best be
gettin’ along.”
“Ok.”
“You know my
place?”
“I know it.”
“We’ll be
sittin’ down for supper around six. Sirloin and potatoes. If you have a mind
to, you’re welcome to stop by.”
He picked up the
loose end of the parachute cord and started tying a hangman’s noose. “I
appreciate that.”
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