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Archive for May, 2008
Movie Madness: Brave Writer goes to the movies
Last year Brave Writer teens hung out with each other and with Jon and me while we watched six classic films together. What a great time we had! The conversation is wildly fun, stimulating, helps kids get a handle on analysis and they do it all while writing. After all, our discussions are conducted online in discussion forums. To participate, your kids will be writing their questions, thoughts, insights and clever jokes to each other and to us. Read more here!
During the year we tend to focus on books (you know, literature). But when the summer comes, we love to break out the DVD player and enjoy films. Movies are a vital part of the Brave Writer lifestyle. Film is its own art form, contains many of the elements found in a novel, but conquers them in the span of about two hours. Additionally, film is rapidly becoming its own subject in a well-rounded education. Even when I was in college, I took a “history of film” course while attending university in France. It’s still one of the ones I remember vividly.
So if you want a way to keep your kids involved in writing and talking, thinking and analyzing, movies are the way to go! This summer’s list is a great blend of classic films (some well-known to your kids and some brand new).
Not only do we discuss the films themselves, but we delve into the historical settings for each movie, address cinematic elements, acting, the cultural allusions and metaphors that derive from these stories and address the reason these films in particular are considered some of the great ones!
And let me just add: Jon (my husband) is hilarious (and a lit professor)! He makes teens feel so good about themselves, keeps them laughing, finds such creative ways to suck them in and make them want to participate. If you haven’t ever had a teen take one of Jon’s classes, now is a great time to get their feet wet. Then they may be all warmed up to take his dynamite Literary Analysis class in the fall.
Why summer classes are a great idea
Well first of all, they’re great especially for those who aren’t in summer! Anyone who is below the equator ought to consider taking our summer classes as they are cheaper and come right at the time that you are full swing into the school year.
For the rest of us, though, the Brave Writer summer schedule is really helpful in keeping kids engaged in writing without the pressure of other subjects competing for their attention. Remember how math always gets done, but writing tends to be skipped? Flip the script! Put writing first this summer and let math take a holiday.
We offer a variety of options. If you have a student who can’t get past the doldrums with writing, Write For Fun is the ideal class. It puts writing into an entirely new context. Students play with words they way they might toy with Legos or their Live Journal templates. They have creative freedom, but also new processes for stimulating that engagement with language. It’s a three week burst of writing activity that kids enjoy, rather than dread. So if you didn’t finish the year on a high, this is your chance.
Kidswrite Intermediate is designed to help students make the transition from personal experience and creative writing to academic writing. Most schools expect kids to move effortlessly from one style to the next… from writing about what they did over the summer or how the alien got into the cafeteria, to essays about the death penalty or Romeo and Juliet without any formal instruction. They also assume that the skills learned in the earlier grades are not necessarily applicable to the academic formats and therefore never address or explain how those skills can be translated into powerful writing!
Kidswrite Intermediate is designed to teach kids how to apply the creative, thoughtful, experience driven writing of their younger years to the academic formats (like the essay or research paper). Those skills have a role, have a place in academic writing. They create the voice, power and passion in the writing. The summer is a great time for a teen to work at his or her own pace, learning how to make that transition before the school year starts up again.
With all classes in the summer, our due dates are more flexible to accommodate travel plans. So if you have any questions, please feel free to email me and we’ll work it out so your kids can participate.
So I encourage you to take advantage of summer classes also, because the competition for slots is much less intense! Our fall schedule (which will start in August) is usually loaded and sometimes difficult to get your kids in the classes you want.
Register Today!
Images by Brave Writer moms Allison, Sarah, and Angela
Another Writer Praises The Writer’s Jungle
Dear Julie–
I just had to share with you this vision I had not too long ago. It began when I could not find a writing curriculum for my intermediate-grade daughters that satisfied me. Everything I looked at either looked dry as dust or else was very intense or else looked overwhelming to use. I found several methods and curriculums that excited me, but none of them put me at ease deep down. I agonized for nearly three years, which is truly pathetic, because, you see, I am like you in that I am a writing teacher, homeschooling mother, and writer (when I can fit it in these days). I am trained to teaching writing and literature to secondary students, and so I’ve felt all this time like something was wrong with me.
It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out how to teach elementary students how to write! But, you see, it is a very difficult decision, because it seems like there are a hundred different ways to tame the writing monster; plus, I don’t know much about elementary-level learning (at least I didn’t when I started–I’ve learned a lot since then). I could see the value in all of them, and they also all disagreed with each other in some way philosophically. On top of that, I could sense that all of them lacked Something. I didn’t know what. Needless to say, I’ve been basically paralyzed, and thus, for the past three years, I’ve pretended to teach my kids writing. We’ve done a little of this, a smattering of that, but all in all relatively little has been accomplished. Now I am so glad I waited, so that I didn’t ruin them. It isn’t too late! Oh, sorry, I digress…
Anyway, then my vision came to me, when I started to look for a program on creative writing. I couldn’t find any that took the kids out of a workbook or canned exercises, which I detest. What I wanted, I realized, was a creative writing curriculum that taught kids to write like a writer does–like I do when I sit down to create a new story. I don’t use a workbook or textbook. I use a writing notebook and my computer with some good books by real writers for support (I, too, like Writing Down the Bones!). I brainstorm notes and start to imagine characters. I start to write and wonder where it’s going to take me. Sometimes I have no idea what I’m going to write until I actually write it. In short, I would put all workbook curriculums to shame, because the way I create cannot be confined to a workbook or to “step-by-step” lessons.
Since I know that this is how many writers incubate their work, I knew I wasn’t crazy. So, I thought, “Well, I’m going to create my own creative writing program for my kids, and then I’m going to sell it to other moms, so that they can teach THEIR kids how to write like a writer, too. It will make the writing experience much more authentic and meaningful for kids than following those canned curricula will.” After that, I began playing with the idea in the back of my mind, waiting for a chance to really think it through and plan how I would do it. In the meantime, I kept looking for a writing curriculum for “non-creative writing”–you know, the kind you have to learn in school so that you can succeed in college. As if it is a wholly different process somehow from creative writing. As if it isn’t even creative. Can you see how confused I’ve been, how brainwashed I was by my own education?
I already knew about Brave Writer, but I had not bought the program because something on the website deterred me–I’m not exactly sure what, now. Finally, I was desperate. I had looked at everything. I had found a program I thought was “it,” so I bought that. Then I found another program that seemed to be more “it,” so I bought that. Then I found ANOTHER program I thought was even MORE “it,” so I bought that. And something inside of me was still desperate, so I decided to look at Brave Writer for real and found a used copy of The Writer’s Jungle to purchase.
YEAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!! You canNOT imagine my relief. I had only gotten through the first chapter before I realized that you just saved me MONTHS of work in creating my own program–and you did it a hundred times better than I could. This is just what I have been looking for! I was so excited about the first chapter that I read the entire book (1st edition) in just a few days. I just finished it last night (in the bathtub!) and shut it with an even bigger sigh of relief. I have a couple of my own ideas here and there, but you have written it in such a way that I can bring in my own ideas without doing injustice to the big picture of the program.
I do Latin-classical education with my kids, and so eventually I may do the progymnasmata (the classical model of writing instruction) with my kids–but now, after reading your program, I feel at ease to wait until high school. But who knows–maybe I’ll buy your high school program and use it instead. For now, I am simply basking in the fact that I don’t have to look anymore. Besides, I didn’t really want to write my own program. I want to write novels and articles and other things like that. So, thank you for writing this program. I will tell everyone I can about it. How strange it is that we think we must learn everything from educators before we launch into the world. It does make so much more sense to learn a subject by a professional in that subject–art from artists, history from historians, and–wonder of wonders–writing from writers.
God bless–
Cheri Blomquist, your new fan
Thanks so much Cheri for sending your enthusiasm to all of our Brave Writer moms! The Writer’s Jungle is a great summer read as you take it one chapter at a time and slowly absorb the philosophy in preparation for fall. We still offer the special price package for a complete year of the Boomerang and Arrow (our language arts subscription programs) with the WJ if you’d like a jump on next year.
Summer Class Schedule and Registration
We’ve got our Summer Class Schedule all set to go with immediate registration already open.
We’re offering three classes and one “One Thing Workshop” (all listed on the same page).
For junior high and high school:
- Kidswrite Intermediate (KWI): June 16 – July 25 (Six weeks)
- Write For Fun (WFF): June 9 – June 27 (Three weeks) Sign up now! It starts soon!
- Movie Madness (MM): June 16 – August 1 (Seven weeks, one week off)
For the whole family:
- One Thing Workshop: Art Appreciation: July 7 – August 1 (One month)
I want to particularly draw your attention to our “Art Appreciation” workshop. It’s brand new!
What makes the art appreciation workshop so special is that it’s a one-of-a-kind online class! Our instructor, Beth Burgess, has led online art discussions for the last seven years with homeschooling mothers. Many of them have gone from a feeling of utter bewilderment when looking at a work of art to becoming passionate art history buffs themselves. Whether your kids are ready for art or you need a summer treat designed just for you, I highly recommend this One Thing Workshop to you. It will be a real treat! Beth Burgess is one of my dear friends, an artist in her own right, has home educated her children, is currently an art student, and a long-term passionate fan of art history.
The Brave Writer Lifestyle includes experiences like art appreciation, nature walks, freewriting, dictation and copywork, Shakespeare study, poetry enjoyment and writing, revision of one writing project per month, grammar study through games and interaction with real literature. Rather than sending you off to invent how to do these all on your own, the Brave Writer team offers short, intensive workshops to help you develop the skills and creative applications for each of these ideas, one thing at a time.
This particular workshop with give you both the experience of enjoying and examining art for yourself, as well as preparing you to create an art rich environment for your kids.
The tuition is $99.00 per family as you, the homeschooling parent, will do the activities with your children at home.
Write For Fun: I wanted to also point out that Write for Fun starts in just over two weeks. It’s one of the most popular classes with our teens. If you need a class that is utterly unlike any writing class your kids have ever taken, join this one. The first week’s assignments have your kids collecting words from magazines, billboards, the Internet, song lyrics and anywhere they can find them, then tagging them to objects and items all over the house. Trust me, they love it! Changes the way they see language and writing forever.
I hope you find a class that works for you!
