HEIDI REBECCA CELESTE KRAAY
  • Home
  • About
  • Plays
  • Print+
  • Gallery
  • Notes
  • Contact
  • Work w/Me

 Notes: A Little Blog Page

Dear Young Writers

1/6/2016

0 Comments

 
The other day I found this rough writing from a March 2014 notebook, when I was drafting the intro to The Cabin's Writers in the Schools Cambia Anthology for that year. I love my WITS writers, and because they are so important to me, sometimes get a bit nervous preparing for a new 12 week session with them.

As I started a new playwriting residency at Trail Wind Elementary this week, these thank yous were a needed reminder. Yes for me as a teaching writer - and even more for me as a writer, a person, a being on earth.

Dear Young Writers,

Thank you for showing me the way to the moon.
How many meters it may be. How many footsteps. Banana peels.

Thank you for finding the smell of the color red
And the difference between watermelon and firetruck.
Or red like a journey through Berlin. 

You put hearts and fingernails on lines of paper. 
Even when you knew before we met, before that first day I walked in your classroom of 25,
You knew how much you hated writing.
You knew it was the last thing you could consider fun.
It wasn't something you felt like doing.

But you picked up your pencil. 
One word at a time, one sentence, one page, you put down your story.
Your fantasy world. Your forgotten memory. 
You brought it to me with both hands, shrugging and grinning and whispering.
You shared it like it was the best story ever written, because I asked you to share it that way.
That takes courage. 

It takes kind generosity to offer yourself up - and not only on the page.
Because I ask you to get up and dance writing. And find the music in writing.
And discover your classroom all over again, as though you haven't already been there all year,
Avoiding the walls.

When I watch you discover this space you already know,
Something locked within me breaks open, and I remember 
The cherished gratitude that exists in the room.
Because of that trust you exhibit. 

So. Thank you. 

If you learned a tenth of what I did visiting your classroom, watching you learn,
Then I know my hope for this world and this new generation of creative people
Is well placed.
It is an honor to work with each and every one of you.
Thank you for your work.


These students teach me a ton every year, every day I work with them. They remind me of the joy of writing, the fun silliness of creating, and also of the hardship and frustrating pain of it. They teach me all those traits can exist together in one thing and that's okay. Most of all, they show me how to be a beginner again and again and again - something I hope to never forget. 

I'm sure grateful to you, my young friends in art.
Picture
4th Grade playwrights reading their work at Trail Wind Elementary in 2015. Photo Laura Mei Roghaar.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Like what I'm posting? You can leave me a tip!
    $1, $10, $100, whatevs :)
    Donate

    Heidi Kraay

    Process notes on a work in progress (me). This mostly contains raw rough content pulled out of practice notebooks. Occasional posts also invite you into the way I work, with intermittent notes on the hows and whys on the whats I make. Less often you may also find prompts and processes I've brought to workshops, as well as surveys that help me gather material for projects. Similar earlier posts from years ago can be found on:

    ​50 Shades of Kraay

    Thanks for reading!​

    Archives

    January 2025
    April 2024
    March 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015

    Categories

    All
    Process Notes
    Raw/Rough/'Ritings
    Surveys
    Workshops

    RSS Feed

Sign up for my mailing list for (mostly) quarterly updates:
Connect with me:
Copyright Heidi Kraay © 2010-2023
  • Home
  • About
  • Plays
  • Print+
  • Gallery
  • Notes
  • Contact
  • Work w/Me