I have been hosting a monthly writing workshop at a community center for unhoused folks in the Twin Cities for the last few months. It’s a drop-in style workshop because that suits the nature of this group the best. The idea of creating sessions that all work independently of one another can be intimidating to many writing workshop leaders. How do you continue to build lessons? How do you make sure everyone is on the same page if they don’t attend regularly? How do you keep the lessons exciting for some, but paced accessibly for others? I feel like its a refreshing throwback to my early days of leading Writer’s Resist freebie workshops in Northeast Minneapolis nearly ten years ago.
The goal shifts. It becomes less about “teaching” something, and more about providing a space where everyone can explore at their own pace. The purpose is to simply generate and the focus is less about skill-building, though there is plenty of opportunity to pepper a bit of that in.
It does require quite a bit of trial and error and willingness to see some activities or prompts fall flat. Its a good place to practice humility as a facilitator.
I recently brought in one of my favorite writing exercises: the Where I Am From poem. The activity is based on a poem written by George Ella Lyon, which you can read here1. Since the composition of the original, thousands of people have used it as a prompt to write their own versions. In fact, there are a plethora of lesson plans online with MadLibs style fill-in-the-blank worksheets that encourage writers to try their hand. I love that it narrows in on specific, juicy, visceral details—and encourages us to do the same.
The gentlemen that joined that workshop lit up like Christmas trees with this one. They dug into the details and writing with a verve I’d not seen before, and they shared their drafts with aplomb.
“Sarah, can you please bring more exercises like this one?” One man asked after we adjourned. “We like writing about ourselves like this.”
A week later, I was in the elementary school where I work part-time as a paraprofessional. The fourth graders I was working with were writing Where I Am From poems. As I sat nudging them through the worksheet, trying to stifle a smile at some of their innocently hilarious answers to the prompts, I thought about the synchronicity in this experience.
The kids, for the most part, loved them. They loved sharing their creations with me; they jostled for my attention like ten year olds do. They drew self portraits and their teacher hung them all over the school.
They had no shame about sharing every detail of who they were. Their likes and dislikes, desires and fears, what they were proud of and wanted to work on were proudly displayed. They hadn’t reached a stage in their lives where this sharing felt vulnerable or dangerous.
I’ve been down with a nasty cold for the last week, likely shared with me by one of those fourth graders, and exacerbated by my inability to slow down. When I finally forced myself to sit in one place and not work, I absently picked up the prompting worksheet I took to the community center.
My group at the unhoused community center had no problem writing about themselves. The kids answered the prompts easily and guilelessly. I wondered if there the was a connection between populations whose voices are generally not listened to, or best-case scenario, filtered out. They have so much to say.
I should write one of these.
I struggled. HARD. First of all, everything I wrote felt like it was about someone else, not me. I had to really dig in and ask myself—if this really me, or is this the story I’ve been told about me? Is this me or is this the stories from my family, stories that may have very little to do with the person I am now? What is ME and what is what I think I should be from? What if what I’m from is far more complex, rooted far beyond my grandparent’s backyards? I wrote and rewrote and rewrote that poem. I’m still not sure if it’s accurate.
I wondered why, in this era when we plaster ourselves all over the internet in various ways—social media reels, profile photos, newsletters and blogs, always with a concern for the algorithm and the number of opens—we still have to peel back the onion on who we actually are. Or is it just me?
Here’s an early draft, one that will keep evolving as I keep digging. My lovelies, my supportive paid subscribers, you get a first peek.
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