Saturday, May 25, 2013

By Sam Decker
Published: March 12, 2009

Amy Reece's quiet fifth- and sixth-grade classroom hums with energy. "He's writing a fantasy," she whispers, pointing at one of the 11- and 12-year-old novelists. Her finger takes aim again: "He's writing the story of World War III; those girls are writing about young girls their own age; she's writing about an ice skater who hates skating but loves tennis. Everyone's writing very different stories."

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Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School students in various stages of engagement as they workshop each other's novels: Cyrus Kennedy.
Photos by Ralph Stewart

Ms. Reece's Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School class is the first group to take part in her yearlong novel writing project, which began in November and will culminate when the students bind and illustrate their books at the end of the year. In June, the novels will be placed in the school's library, available for anyone to check out.

The students progress at a rate of about a chapter a week. They are given class time to work on their books, and on Friday afternoons they conduct workshops, discussing each other's new material in groups of twos and threes. Each student is also paired with an adult editor - a family member, a teacher, a school staff member - who gives feedback and support.

Sarah Chickering just wrote a scene in which the protagonist's father dies. "It was very dramatic. Like very, very dramatic," says the author, who enjoys writing because - "You get to just make up something that's yours. You'll read a really good book that you love so much - and now you can make your own."

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Isabelle Crawford

The students are writing their stories on Google Docs, a web-based word processing application that allows them to access and share their novels with each other from any computer connected to the Internet.

It was Patrick Phillips, whose job at the Charter School is to facilitate learning through technology, who recognized the application's value to the project at the beginning of the year.

"They can write anywhere and share anything with anyone," says Mr. Phillips.

Four months into the project and the students are deep into their novels.

"Kauai," by Elie Jordi, begins, "I was stranded on a lonely Island with only a damp map and a pocketknife and knew nothing of survival." Elie explains that his story is about "a family who goes on a Christmas vacation and they rent a sailboat and capsize. A tour boat rescues the parents but the kid swims in to try to get some help...It's pretty cool." Glancing away from his computer screen, Elie adds, "I actually went to Kauai, and I took a lot of notes. It was fun."

The first few lines of "Bodkin Story," a fantasy by Cassius Paquet-Huff, are gripping and encyclopedic: "As I was laying in my yurt, I thought of the upcoming competition to kill the Iron Boar. I've heard stories that its hide is hard to steal and as thick as a malboro's temper. (Bestiary note: a malboro is a large carnivorous plant that wanders the subterranean forests of the Rujjuo Forests.)"

Cassius pauses briefly to note, "It's hard to explain."

"A Bird by Any Other Name," by Bella Maidoff, also begins forebodingly: "I shiver in my twin bed. I can't help thinking about the swamp. Just 40 steps from our back door the murky water lays. I decide no one will notice." Her novel, she says, smiling, is about "a girl whose mother died from skin cancer when she was six and her father's kind of depressed."

Other titles include Morgan Taylor's "The Adventures of Bluekaminika A.K.A CoolBlue," about an unusual high school student who meets her twin sister named Gingivitis, and Liam Cosgrove's "World War III," not to be confused with another student's novel, "World War IV."

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Kristine Hopkins enjoys the process.
Photos by Ralph Stewart

Ms. Reece is writing her own novel along with the students. Entitled "Haven's Home," it's a young adult book about a girl growing up in the foster care system who runs away with her horse into the Missouri wilderness. Ms. Reece began the book in October in a writing class led by West Tisbury mystery writer Cynthia Riggs. It provided the inspiration for the project. Currently, she is working with an agent to publish the novel.

"I think [the students] are inspired by the fact that I'm writing too," says Ms. Reece. "I've always felt that whatever I teach I have to be passionate about in order to inspire passion in the kids... We can talk together about what the problems are and what's fun."

Her students, she says, have proved to be invaluable editors. "The first feedback I got from one kid was, 'Something's got to happen' - because I was just describing and describing. I think that they like that I'm not pretending to be an expert. I'm just on the journey with them."

Ms. Reece motivates her students by reading them classic works of literature and holding mini-lessons in which she addresses specific problems that arise, such as writing dialogue, describing a setting, and grammar.

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As teacher Amy Reece looks on, Liam Cosgrove lets his creative juices flow.

Eleven- and twelve-year-olds, Ms. Reece says, is her ideal age group. "They're young enough to not have all of the prejudices against themselves, all that self-doubt, and yet they're old enough to be brilliant. They have really complex thoughts. They have complex stories and ideas."

In April, the students will submit chapters of their novels to the online magazine, "The Vineyard Voice" (vineyardvoice.org), published and edited by Mr. Phillips. He explains, "On the website there's a form where kids can drop in their excerpts and then we'll send them a note saying we've received their novels and we'll get back to them. The idea is to take them through the process of editing to the notion of, 'You're a published author.' They'll get a professionally focused published piece with a URL that's available to anyone in the world."