Keeping it together

This week I’ve been more grateful than ever for everything that I learned in “Teaching Writing” last semester. I got to teach the first five lessons from my memoir unit to Mrs. B’s class at the junior high, and I used so many tools and techniques from last semester that I kept wondering where I would be had that class not existed. The students are now in the midst of drafting their own personal memoirs, and they’ve also created six-word memoirs as well as “Where I’m from” poems. If we have enough time next week, we will publish it all on a class tumblr and include relevant photos, videos, etc. There is something so satisfactory about seeing students respond to writing assignments with enthusiasm and creativity. At the high school, I used Keirstie Martin’s mentor from last semester (I bet a bunch of you remember it… it was the “love letter” from a toothbrush to a bicycle tire) as a freewriting prompt for another teacher’s class. Some of the letters that the students wrote were hilarious! My favorite was “cutting board to the knife” by an eleventh-grade boy.

Ok, enough gushing. There is something else I want to talk about, and it isn’t nearly as happy.

 I almost cried yesterday when I read the beginnings of a certain eight grade boy’s memoir (we’ll call him “Jake”). He was the first student to walk up and ask that I read what he wrote. It was completely voluntary—I hadn’t even suggested that the students share their drafts yet. So this boy came up and quietly asked that I read what he wrote, and as soon as I took his paper he sat down stared hard at the wall.

“Sometimes I wanted to beat the crap out of my brother,” began the paper. I groaned internally and prepared myself for a paper of shameless brother-bashing. Instead, I was shocked by what came next. The paper continued to explain that the little brother was autistic, and that while Jake used to get frustrated by his younger brother’s disability, he had learned over time to love his brother for who he was and to look out for him at all times.

 This happy surprise was followed by a nasty one: Jake’s paper continued on to describe a scene in which he was left at home alone with his brother, and, while under his care, his little brother had a seizure. It was when I got to the words “it slowly dawned on me that my brother was dying” that I struggled to keep it together. The story was unfinished, so I handed the paper back to Jake, thanked him for sharing and told him that I looked forward to reading the rest. At the time, I couldn’t think of how else to respond. This boy is only in eighth grade and he has been through events that are more traumatic than anything I have ever experienced. I’m impressed that he was willing to share his story and I wonder how often he’s shared it before. I’m also wondering if I responded to it the right way. With the whole class there, I didn’t want to make a fuss or draw any attention to Jake, but I still feel like I should have said something more than I did. How would you respond if a student shared a story like that?