Tonight our middle school hosted a writing event for families called "OMS Writes". Original, right? It's a part of the Our Community Writes initiative around here. Anyway, on each grade level team (of which I am on the Achievers), the social studies and English teachers were to create a writing lesson that appealed to families and somehow tied in writing and history, preferably recording family history.
There's a piece by Sandra Cisneros in The House on Mango Street that inspired our event tonight. It's called "My Name", and it's written it from the point of view of a little girl talking about her love/hate relationship with her ethnic name. I thought--Perfect! Everyone has a story about her name, or about a name meaningful to him. So even though we ended up not using that particular piece, it inspired our presentation.
So, yes, I planned the whole thing. It was my idea. I told the social studies teacher what he would be covering, and then I stayed up late last night putting together a PowerPoint presentation. I spent a good part of today tweaking it. We used humorous quotes and examples.
Mostly, I'm shocked at the number of parents (who are presumably my age or older) who couldn't tell me the importance of names in Romeo and Juliet, The Neverending Story, or Rumpelstiltskin. Really?
But, I think they really enjoyed writing about names close to them and sharing their writings with their children. I'm also proud to note that the social studies teacher did some writing. It was a pleasant surprise. :)
Time for sleeping. Or recovering from the whirlwind responsibilities from that last four days (remember the tea party?).
Cheers.
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