Today I had the opportunity to be one of the chaperones my school sent to the Young Author’s Conference. The students who go participate in a number of short seminar-like sessions presented by writers from every imaginable discipline: authors, poets, songwriters, screenwriters, journalists, musicians -- you name it, they’ve got it. Sixteen fourth and fifth graders from my school attended, each chosen by their teachers because of their writing ability and interest. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would have loved to have done as a kid that age, and as far as academic field trips go I can’t think of any others I’d rather chaperone. I’ve done it twice before, and really wanted to this year since I’ll be switching to 3rd grade soon and this would really be my last chance to go. Stephanie, one of our fourth grade teachers, co-chaperoned with me, which worked out perfectly since the group we were taking was pretty evenly split between our two grades.
The Young Authors Conference has been held for 24 years now, so the organizers and volunteers in charge of it all had everything running smoothly. Once we were off the bus we were directed into one of the nearby buildings and then into a theater where the keynote speaker, Young Adult author Geoff Herbach, would be kicking off the conference. As we found our seats, the group that I can only assume is the official Young Authors Conference house band (because they’ve performed every year I’ve attended), Cyril Paul and the Calypso Monarchs, was onstage playing their way through the sunniest moments of the Bob Marley catalog, which inevitably led to a conga line of at least sixty middle schoolers bouncing up and down the aisles. I got a look at the face of the girl leading the line as it passed our row, and she looked completely overwhelmed by the position she’d found herself in.
Geoff Herbach had a great keynote speech. I’d bought one of his books, STUPID FAST, a few years ago when it had first come out and enjoyed it a lot, so I was excited to hear from him when I connected his name back to that title. He had a crowd of over one thousand kids to engage, and kept them with him the whole time. He told us about the formative events of his early life, how he found his way to his writing origins, and described some of the ways he came up with characters, which perfectly tied into the overall conference theme.
One of the beautiful things about the YAC is that for the most part, chaperones can more or less go where we want when it comes to the sessions. The students need tickets, but chaperones can pretty much just sidle into the room and crash. I saw Herbach was offering sessions throughout the day, and since his topic of developing characters based around specific details is something I’m working with in my own revisions right now, that seemed like a good place to start. The session was just as engaging as the keynote speech and more entertaining for me, since I got to see how he made the process fun for the kids and got them thinking. Listening to the questions they asked and the ideas they offered, it was easy to see the kids in the session were all amazingly intelligent and creative. While I tried to disappear into my observer role I felt as if I had an asterisk floating over my head, waiting for one of the adults in the room to ask me what I taught and thinking that if I answered “math,” I’d get reactions ranging from “Huh. How’d you end up at a writing conference?” all the way to “What?! Math! You’re one of THOSE?! You don’t belong here! Get the hell out!!!” At which point I’d defensively sputter my way through an explanation: “No... but... really, it’s okay... I’ve taught writing... and I’m... you know... I write... myself... so... it’s okay... I can connect... I’ve written... books... no, not published, but... look... here, see, this is... you know, Twitter... I have an agent and everything... it’s really okay, just let me stay... I promise I’ll be quiet!” Or something along those lines. Luckily for everyone involved it never reached that point.
Being a creative writing professor as well as an author, Herbach had a lot of ideas about developing character, so I frantically typed away on my iPhone to get down as many as I could. The kids in the session were as entertaining as he was, although by the end their ideas devolved into being less about developing solid characters and instead trying to out-ridiculous each other, which is how we wound up hearing descriptions of Satan-worshiping co-op workers, zombie apocalypse survivors, and Josh, the pantsless, non-food-eating wonder who had a wide variety of video-game specific weaponry stashed away in his underpants. You could tell Herbach had spent time in the classroom, because he managed to fight uphill past the goofy and still got his points across.
After that first session, I stopped in the room next door to say a quick hello to a different author I know who was presenting, David LaRochelle. David taught at my school long ago, way back before I was there, but has been around as a guest author and artist in residence many times. He was someone I had occasionally checked in with for advice when my play being produced, and we’ve always been able to talk writing when our paths crossed. He asked if I had anything going on with writing or any news to share. I was very happy that I did, and that we had a couple minutes to talk about it.
Our lunch session was next. By the time I found the gym, Stephanie had already collected most of our group. The bleachers were filled with kids carrying field trip specific lunches full of way more food than they could possibly eat in their allotted twenty minutes. The Calypso Monarchs were set up to enhance our field house dining experience, and a lot of the kids bounced and swayed in place as they ate and shared food with their friends. Of course since we were at a young authors conference, there was also no small number of kids who had brought books to read during their idle moments.
When we finished eating we took our turn at a sizable book fair set up on the other side of the field house, courtesy of The Red Balloon, a well-known children’s book store in St. Paul. I picked up Herbach’s new book FAT BOY VS. THE CHEERLEADERS as well as a couple others that looked interesting. One was from a local author, Jane St. Anthony. I planned on attending her session next, and thought it would be a rare opportunity to know I was going read her book but listen to her talk about her process before I did.
Her group was smaller, younger, and far more sedate. She gave the kids some good general advice and walked them through her character development strategies a step at a time: “It’s so easy to write lazy; Don’t write longer, write deeper; The goal of artist is to reach somebody, so how will you connect?” She gave the kids plenty of chances to share their ideas, and since so many of the attendees were doubtlessly the some of the best and the brightest their respective schools had to offer, they were all more than happy to share. It was fascinating to sit in on a discussion with kids ranging from 4th grade to 8th: The younger kids were more unfiltered in their ideas, enthusiastic to share and sometimes awkwardly searching for words they couldn’t quite reach but knew would be perfect to express what they were thinking. The older kids were more thoughtful and articulate and self-aware, with traces of ‘little kid’ still showing around their edges. I overheard one girl read through her writing assignment after the kids broke into small groups to share. Even though I didn’t know her I felt a lot of teacher pride as she tried so hard to incorporate some ambitious vocabulary and figurative language into her work, even if it was just beyond her capability but still so much more than I would have expected from someone her age.
I ducked out a few minutes early to avoid what was going to be a very crowded post-session hallway and spent some time wandering, taking in the academic atmosphere of the college: so many posters and signs, bulletin boards, the sound of copy machines around every corner, quiet nooks with big comfortable chairs that seemed so randomly placed and would have been filled with students studying or having conversations had school been in session. It made me flash back a moment and remember how much I had loved college.
I did attend a third session about character development but didn’t stay very long since I wanted to make sure the students we’d brought would be able to find me as our group reassembled at the end of the day. Stephanie arrived at the meet-up only a few minutes after I had, and well before the students. We talked a little about some of the sessions we attended, which were really more for our own interest than anything else because, as it happens, Stephanie is also a math teacher. Which spirals back to a question that I seem to get several times each year: Why don’t I teach writing?
The easy answer is that I’m assigned to a teaching position, so I do what I’m told. And to be frank, I’ve got some game when it comes to teaching math, so I get the job done. But I have to admit that occasionally I wonder what it would be like to work with kids who share a passion for writing, even if those kids would be so very few of students I’d have. For now though, it will have to be enough for me that I could have one more day at the Young Authors Conference, and enjoy the feeling of being surrounded by so many people who share my interest in something that's usually so solitary.
I have to say though: More than once during the day, the thought popped up in the back of my mind that maybe, just maybe someday, it would be really cool to go back there again and present....
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