School project

This week, my son Jonathan was required to write a five paragraph essay about an ancestor of his, someone further back than grandparent.  Tim and I both got a little excited and started describing some of the weirdos the boy is descended from.  After hearing a few options, Jonathan decided to write about my great grandfather, his ancestor who went into the resort business in the 1920s.  He chose to write about this man first, because it's cool to be descended from the guy who owned the place everyone wanted to visit in the 1920s and 30s -- at least everyone who lived in Hick County.  And second, because Tim was going to be out of town when the report was due, so Jonathan decided he'd better write about someone on Mom's side so she could help him.

Honestly.

On Monday night, I had him read about 20 pages of stories written by my grandfather on what it was like to be a kid growing up at a lakeside resort.  My grandpa describes roaming the halls of the hotel, crawling under the floor of the dance hall, watching bats fly out from under its roof late at night, and learning to swim and dive.  There is a story in Grandpa's memoirs about how Uncle Bun earned a whopping $25 on the 4th of July by pulling on a gasoline-soaked suit, climbing up to the high dive, and then being lit by a match and diving, flaming, into the pool below.  He writes about the pet bear that performed tricks for the guests until it grew too big and dangerous and had to be put down.  The old resort had what they called a toboggan slide -- attach your sled to the tracks at the top, swoop down to the bottom, and find yourself cruising out over the lake.  The stories are fascinating.

But Monday night, Jonathan was in tears.  "There aren't any facts in here.  How can I write an essay about any of this?"

Tuesday night I dug up a history of the second resort my great grandfather purchased, written by another distant relative.  The history contained facts:  names, dates, quotes from advertisements in local newspapers.  A 1932 ad invited the locals to "Swim in drinking water!  Gents 25 cents, ladies 10 cents".  The history also included information about renovations to the park and pools.  My great grandfather installed an amazing sand filtration system, one of a kind, allowing him to brag back in the 1930s that his pools were so clean, you could "see the bottom from almost anywhere".  Under the older system, pool water had been cleaned and changed only once per week.  (Yuck!)

Tuesday night, Jonathan was in tears.  "This is too much!  How can I put this into an essay?"

Wednesday night, we talked about outlining, and giving each paragraph its own topic.  He needed to write five paragraphs.  That was only five topics!  "What five things would you like to write about?  How do you think it should start?  How should it end?  And then what sorts of things can go in the middle?"

Wednesday night, Jonathan was in tears.  "I don't know.  I don't know what to write about."

The assignment instructions specifically said that parents could help with research and pre-writing.  But not the actual writing.  We spent a long time pre-writing.  I coaxed and coddled and pulled from his mind possible paragraph topics.  "What resort did he buy first? Why did he buy it?  Don't you think that would make an interesting paragraph?"  (Hint hint hint.)  I pulled out all the articles again, and marked in pink pen some of the things that he could put into the essay, a small arrow and a few lines here and there around the masses of his enthusiastic yellow highlighting marks.

I had him reread the assignment instructions for some inspiration.  The instructions said he should follow the guidelines for writers he had been learning about in school.  "What guidelines have you learned?"

"Um... Each paragraph should have five sentences?"

So after we came up with topics, we brainstormed five things he could say under each topic.  Five sentences each.  And then finally, finally, he sat down on his own and wrote with pencil and paper a first draft.  Even after we had talked about each item for each sentence, it took him over an hour to craft those twenty-five sentences.  Twenty-five perfect sentences.

When he was finished, I read the essay through with him, and it was very good.  I made a few suggestions -- parents could help with editing, the assignment sheet said.  This afternoon he typed it up, hunting for letters on my keyboard with a pair of index fingers and a concerned squint in his forehead.  In total, he spent well over the three hours the assignment sheet had suggested that students devote to the project.

And I learned a lot more than he did.

I learned again about my great-grandfather, and his resorts.  But mostly I learned that writing is Hard.  HARD!  Even when you have all the facts and all the stories, it is Hard to organize that into paragraphs, and still hard to organize that into sentences, and still hard to organize that into words.

And I think that Jonathan really really needs another five paragraph essay assignment again very very soon.  Because now that we have spent all this time talking about organizing information into topics and paragraphs and sentences, he needs to practice that over and over again, and learn how to pre-write on his own, and learn not to be afraid of blank paper and Facts and Stories.  How will he learn these things if he does not get to practice?

And how in the world do his friends learn this stuff, the ones with parents who can't help their children with their school work?  This project was so different from anything he had been doing (worksheets... multiple choice reading comprehension... short fiction writing), that he needed one-on-one tutoring.  Is that what it takes to learn to write?

Or did I help too much?  Should I not have been moved by his tears?  Should I just have left him in flames at the top of the diving board, to find his own way into the pool?  After all, he only had to jump.

But I don't know.  I worried that if his hair got too singed this first time, he would be less inclined to jump the next time.  And then how would he ever learn the thrill of jumping?