Phase 2 – art, travel, impacting the world

Hooray! Writing is over! Conference that I was planning for 200 people has been run! All courses I’ve been helping to moderate are finished as of this afternoon. We’re free to not only plan our next trip in January but to also think about what we’re doing learningwise.

The first thing we did was go to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa yesterday. It’s great going to a museum in the middle of the week. You can actually see the works without ducking around a crowd. One of Madison’s friends accompanied us and we all got audioguides, which are incredibly helpful if you’re not knowledgeable about art in all its different forms (and who is?!). One of our goals was to see the Voice of Fire painting that caused such an uproar when it was purchased for $1.7 million. The girls also wanted to see anything by Warhol (and were happy to find three Warhol pieces) and other “pop art”. I wanted to see the exhibit of photographer Gabor Szilasi’s images of Budapest, Montreal, and rural Quebec, which elicited from the girls  both some giggles and some surprised exclamatons as they recognized places they know. A very knowledgeable guard gave us some other suggestions, which lead us to discover the fascinating video installation, “Play Dead: Real Time” by Douglas Gordon. We would’ve walked right by the room housing this exhibit if he hadn’t been there.

Today, we began once again, working on our travel plans. First, our itinerary: Barcelona to Jerusalem to Mumbai to some place as yet undecided. Madison is very keen on some place in Africa, but we haven’t been able to figure out where yet. We have 10 days to fill. We welcome all reasonable suggestions (reasonable meaning they stay within our limited budget and security parameters). Also looking for a reasonable apartment for our stay in Barcelona. I can’t believe we’re leaving in about 5 weeks and we still have such huge holes in our plan. I’m usually way more organized than this, but I keep reminding myself it’ll work out (breath, breath). It’s really my focus for the next few weeks (along with the holidays, family visits, and still some work).

I heard one of my favorite teachers, Carolyn Thompson from New Orleans, speak the other day at our conference about how she has turned the teaching of her US Government course inside out (my words) with technology and Web 2.0. Instead of focusing on the list of content factoids that are usually emphasized, she addresses essential questions like “What does citizenship mean? How can you, as a single citizen, have impact on your world?” Her students each select an issue that they want to address and learn about the operations of government through an exploration of their issue. She challenges the current role of school, defining as its purpose  the development of young adults who understand their role as citizens and use this understanding to change the world. I’m going to be trying some of her ideas with Madison. Since Madison has no class with which to collaborate, we’ll have to just depend on the world. I guess if she’s in Everywhere School by definition the world is her class.

Ok, off to plan, plan, plan. Any ideas and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Almost Finished

I realize that my Everywhere School experience has become my writing a 50,000 word novel experience, but that’s only temporary. We’re almost finished. Madison and I are inching towards that finish line which comes to an abrupt stop at midnight, November 30. It almost feels like a marathon – not that I’ve ever run a marathon, but I think I can imagine what it’s like. Start with 26 miles ahead of you but just worry about 1 mile at a time. That’s what we’ve been doing each day – just worrying about 1667 words a day. My assumption was that when I reached certain milestones (so appropriate in the marathon analogy), the end would look so enticingly near that the last half or quarter of the “race” would sail by.

I’m not getting that feeling. I have another 11,667 words to go and it feels like I have a whole marathon left to run. I am struggling with boring characters, a confusing storyline (or lack of one) and sheer word production exhaustion. I’m not sure if having the November 30 deadline is good or bad, but I am sure that if it weren’t for the deadline, I’d take a break and that break would most likely never end. The deadline is what’s making it happen for me. After somehow coming up with close to 40,000 words I refuse to quit now.

In terms of this project, I’m happy to have reached the age I have (on the cusp of being old – a senager), because when in need I pull from either a past experience I’ve had or  I’ve stolen experiences from people I’ve met along the way. I’m not sure if Madison can do the same (Of course, it may be why her story is covering weeks and mine is covering lifetimes.) I’m trying to only borrow from people I haven’t seen in many decades so, rest easy. I doubt if anyone I know today would find themselves in my words. Not that anyone I know will ever read my words.

And so, this is a final thought today. What the h@#$ am I going to do with these 50,000 words (oh yes, I will get there!) once December 1 rolls around? Most likely, never look at them again. Maybe even hit the Delete button on my computer. I’m not sure if it even matters. I am sure I will have gained volumes of writing experience and understanding of the process,  much more than I expected. And it’s made me want to write more, not less. I can’t wait to try it again.

Okay, more novel writing and other thoughts on learning

We’ve passed the 25,000 word mark and are almost at  30,000 words. My story is complicated, confusing, and I’m thinking rather boring, even though conceptually it’s interesting. The only way I can think of ending it is to follow a line of thinking that doesn’t philosophically feel right to me, but otherwise puts too much importance on the decisions others make for us before we’re even old enough to understand or change it. Madison and I have discussed this a bit and has had some suggestions.

I’m glad she’s going through this writing process with me because I clearaly do not have all the answers, and she’s had some good ideas. Last night, at about twenty minutes past midnight (I know, not a good bedtime, but we’re having extensive repair work in the house and we’re sort of camping out rather than neatly tucked away in separate rooms), I commented that I find myself needing more details in my story and yet having trouble knowing what is enough vs. too much. She said she had no details, but I pointed out that if she’s written almost 30,000 words and only a week has passed in her story, than she must have tons of detail. She got so excited describing how she was writing that I had to remind her to keep her voice down because it was so late. I haven’t seen her get that excited about anything she’s done in school for years.

She’s already had some suggestions about what our next big project could be.

I still struggle with “am I covering enough of a variety of topics (i.e, enough math) and am I being too laissez-faire in my approach. I can probably answer the first one by re-visiting my goals for this year: allow her to become a passionate confident learner, excited about new ideas, engaged in what she’s doing, able to generate her own learning ideas and goals. We seem to be moving in that direction (not there yet).

But I’m not sure about the second one – it’s a hard balance and work has been full-time plus this month (that’s why I write at midnight!) Defining my role in this “adventure” is challenging. Coach, teacher, mom, co-learner, resource person?  Do I need to be “teacher”? And, on top of it all, one of those 5 (the Mom role) interferes somewhat with the other three (but can’t change that).

I guess I just want so much out of what is really a very short time – one year – before Madison returns to the school routine.

Writing, writing, writing, writing, writing

I’ve been terribly delinquent, but it’s not because I’m ignoring this intentionally. Madison and I have just been very busy writing our novels for National Novel Writing Month. Writing a 50,000 word novel in a 30-day month sounds a bit overwhelming, but, in truth, it’s just plain hard! Maybe if I had nothing else to do, that would be easier, but Madison has been devoting a lot of her efforts to her novel and she agrees that it’s hard. It’s hard because: a) it’s a lot of story to write, b) we sometimes forget details about our characters because we didn’t prepare character outlines before that we could refer back to (next year we will), c) for me, I think parts of my story are interesting, but too much of it is getting boring, even to me, d) I don’t think I have enough story to make it to 50,000 words. Madison and I have discussed the value of dialogue to grow our word count (is it padding? is it trivial? is it contributing to the story or just to the word count?) We’ve talked about types of novels (Madison’s is more linear, mine totally all over the place, although I envision a way to bring everything together, if it works. I’m glad we’re doing this together so we can discuss the process – we’ve come to realize many of the same things as we work about organization, characters, structure, etc. Our biggest (worst?, must overwhelming?) realization is that we need to write 1670 words EVERY DAY. As soon as we catch up (I often fall behind) I realize that in another hour or a few minutes  (I usually finish late at night), I’ll need to come up with ANOTHER 1670 words. It’s like a race that never seems to end. Clearly, I’m a sprinter – I’d be a lousy marathon runner.

My mother recently asked if that’s all Madison’s doing at home. I said “You mean, is she only writing a 50000 word novel? I think, if it is, that’s pretty impressive. That’s what novelists spend their time doing.” But the truth is, I’ve been trying to give her some other things to do, but not much. I, on the other hand, have been swamped workwise, our house is being repaired due to water damage (a month of work throughout the house, everything is sealed or covered. It’s like living in a construction site.), and I have to travel to two conferences this month, where I’m either presenting or managing the event. From looking at the NaNoWriMo forums I see everyone is busy. Maybe I should make Madison busier in addition to her novel writing, but isn’t the point of her being home to learn and be creative, not to be stressed?

You see my struggle with this.

So, while I’m grabbing some blog writing time, I’ll also add that we’ve booked our tickets for January: Barcelona – Tel Aviv – Mumbai-London (and, or, somewhere else to go from there, we’re still deciding). How I’m going to continue working during that time, I’m not sure. Looking for apartments with internet access to stay in for Barcelona, have that for Israel and Mumbai, too. But if I can manage all the work I have this month in my construction site along with novel-writing, I think anything else will be easy!

Opportunities

Our last day in Chile it rained. This was our first day of rainy weather and perhaps it was a sign that it was time for us to leave. Or perhaps it was just rain. I firmly believe we can’t let the weather dictate our mood when traveling (although when I’m home I’m happy to use weather as an excuse for not getting things done) and, anyway, I had my trusty umbrella to protect at least a couple of us so I was ready to face the elements.

We decided this would be an ideal time to visit one of the many museums we had put on our to-see list. The one Madison selected was a combined archaeology/visual arts museum, which seemed like an odd partnership. But, it turned out to be an intriguing combination, placing ancient handcrafted items side-by-side with sculptures and other art objects created by various Latin American artists. This gave the visitor the chance to think about both art and utility and the overlap between the two.

One of the art displays was of photographic diptychs and triptychs, and Madison and I spent some time discussing why the artist had placed certain pictures together, what we each understood of the “story” or idea being expressed. The ideas were, of course, subject to more than one interpretation and lots of discussion. Some ideas were obvious, some rather subtle.

All through the trip, Madison was experimenting with her camera, looking not only for new ways to see scenes and subjects, but also different ways to use settings to highlight objects or create a different mood. Now that we’re home, we spent a good part of the afternoon creating a triptych from our photos and thinking of how this can be used to convey an idea. Madison will not only assemble some triptychs, but also name them and write something about what idea she is trying to convey. I’ve asked that she try to make some that are more “abstract” (rather than “doors” or “faces”) – some that have more of a story.

We’ve discovered that printing these images affects the colors, etc, (a whole other area we need to learn about) but she will also print a few so we can display them and discuss them some more. I’m hoping she’ll put a few of them on her blog soon.

Strange how much our experiences touch on art. I never expected this.