I decided to do some writing with my kids. Our homeschooling
group’s newspaper had a deadline coming up, they had both said they were
interested in writing for it and I needed to write my next column, so I thought
of it all as a harmonic convergence of writing and that we could do all of it
together.
I also saw it as a chance to work with each of them on writing
and have them actually produce something and experience writing on a deadline,
and from all this I would get some nugget of wisdom and write my column from
that.
The positive thing that has come out of all of this is writing
with my older sons (or rather them dictating to me and me figuring out how to
give feedback and them reworking and editing and me seeing the final product
develop) and, as an added bonus, it made me realize just how proud I am of them.
It is clear that they are both very talented at writing; it comes to them
organically.
My younger son worked on another installment of a fictional
series he began two years ago. He has such a grasp of language and tells such an
engaging story that I must admit I am jealous, as I couldn’t write fiction to
save my life. My older son worked on a report on seeing Emmanuel Jal speak at
UMass Amherst and related information on the Sudanese Civil War. I am amazed at
the way he can effectively organize his thoughts, distilling information down to
its most potent form, engaging people and providing readers with the most
important, moving facts of a situation.
Some may say that they write because I write or I share some
secret with them, like the kid in high school who did so well on those physics
projects and just happened to have a dad who was an engineer. But the truth of
the matter is that they do this in spite of me, not because of me (or because of
my wife either, who has a love of writing and great talent there as well.)
Exhibit A proving this point: I didn’t discuss this project with my wife. I
didn’t because I had a feeling she would make me think twice about doing it. And
it would have been good advice.
It’s kind of like if Mussolini came to you and said he wanted to
see if he could lead a project with the train workers to make the trains run
more efficiently: You’d think it best if it just didn’t happen – better for the
workers and better for Mussolini as well. That is to say – and this project
reminded me of this – I am awful at “teaching.” And I am awful at it because
when I “teach” it is all about me.
I’m sure some people teach and it is not about them and there is
probably a school somewhere where they teach and it is not about the school but
about the students and there are probably other bureaucracies...
Nathanael Schildbach lives and learns in western
Massachusetts with his wife, three sons, dog, cat, racing pigeons that keep
breeding and many ducks. Email him at
natehampton@gmail.com.
