Practicing Vulnerability with Memoirs

I’m starting my blog just as I did each year in my classroom, with vulnerability.  While teaching high school English, I began each school year with a memoir unit.  I wanted to build my students’ confidence in writing from the get-go.  In addition, I used this unit as an opportunity to get to know them as individuals.  We tackled the elements of narrative writing, while looking at examples from authors, like Sandra Cisneros, Eudora Welty, and Annie Dillard.  I read them the children’s book, Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, by Mem Fox to make the point about just how special memories are to all of us, and as a class we went on an “Authentic Dig”, after reading an excerpt from The Authentic Dig by Sarah Ban Breathnach, through our memories to extract the ones that stuck out and held special meaning to us.  

Before I ever read one piece of writing from my students, I shared my own memoir with them.  I wanted to give them a piece of myself from day one to help build their trust.  This was always an intense moment of vulnerability for me.  My heart would race and I would feel the nerves that I know so many of them felt throughout the school year as I asked them to speak in front of the class. Without telling them it was my memoir, I began reading: 

 

Walking Down the Driveway at Woods Opossum Run Road

I liked every day when I lived in Ohio. Even though this time only lasted until I was four and a half, I still have many memories about this part of my life mainly because these were the most significant moments that I got to spend with my grandmother. 

When my parents had to work, they took me to stay with my grandmother, “Ma” I called her, because that was the name that she picked out for herself when I was born. Ma lived on a farm in Ohio with Pa, my grandfather, which had many acres of land surrounding it.  This land included a run that cut through the back part of the property, Woods Opossum Run.  Coincidentally, the road that Ma and Pa lived on was called Woods Opossum Run Road.  In order to get to Ma and Pa’s house, you had to travel down a long gravel driveway from the road.  I used to get so excited every time my mom or dad’s car would turn onto the driveway!

This driveway, the driveway that made the car bump as you could hear the tires crunching over all the tiny grey rocks that made up the path to my favorite place in the world, was the same driveway that Pa walked every morning to get the paper, and was the same driveway that Ma and I walked down every day I spent with her to get the mail.  

Walking down the driveway to get the mail was something I always looked forward to doing while I was at Woods Opossum Run Road.  At age four, this simple, routine event in my day always seemed like an exciting adventure. 

The driveway was split in half all the way from the garage at the back of the house to the road by a line of grass mixed with weeds and dandelions.  Dandelions were my favorite flower when I was this age.  Ma told me to pick them and make a wish as I blew all of the pieces off the top.  I always knew, without a doubt that the wish was sure to come true.  When you got to the middle point in the driveway, the left side of it seemed to be just a little higher than the right.  This is why I always walked on the left side while going out towards the mailbox.  I wrapped all of my fingers on my right hand around Ma’s left pointer finger and she swayed my hand back and forth with hers as we walked.  

When we got to the halfway point, where my side got higher, Ma sang, “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road.” On the way back in from getting the mail, I stayed on her left side, but this meant that I had to take the “low road”.  So when we got back to the mid-point in the driveway where one side was slightly higher than the other, I sang, “You take the high road and I’ll take the low road.”

As we walked back in, I constantly looked at the ground searching for pretty rocks. The rocks all looked mostly the same though.  They were very ordinary, consisting of colors of grey, white, and granite, but occasionally, I found one that looked “special,” mostly because it had more black specks on it which made it look sparkly in the sun.  

However, one day while Ma and I were walking back from getting the mail, I found the most special rock I could have ever imagined.  It seemed magical to my four-year-old mind.  That day, I walked upon a shiny, smooth, opaque, purple (which was my favorite color) rock. It was so perfect and smooth, and it almost seemed like glass, but it was rounded like a pebble.  Inside of it were layers and designs that looked like crystals or cracked ice.  On one side of it, there was what looked like fossils or imprints of firefly wings.  

Still, to this day, I do not know exactly what kind of rock that I found that day on my adventurous walk to get the mail, but I will always treasure it.  I no longer show the rock off to people when they come to visit or brag about it to my friends, but it occupies its own special place in my jewelry box where I can find it when I am wanting to remember the days I spent at Ma and Pa’s house.  

Ma and Pa’s house at Woods Opossum Run Road is a special place where I experienced many of my fondest childhood memories.  I learned that wishes, if wished correctly on the right dandelion, could in fact come true, especially if Ma had anything to do with it. I also learned that no matter how unlikely the odds of finding something special in a sea of ordinary, it can happen.  With persistence if you keep looking for that special “something,” you’ll find it.

 

After reading this to my students, I would then ask them to critique my memoir based upon what we had already learned about narrative writing.  I left grammar mistakes in my writing intentionally so that they could point them out and identify where commas were missing or phrasing was off.  After picking apart my piece of writing, I would then pull out my special, purple rock from my pocket and say, “So, here is my rock!” They would stare at me for a few moments then eventually one student would always say, “This is YOUR memoir!” Then I would walk around the room showing off my pretty rock to all of my students. 

I loved reading the final products of my memoir unit.  Memories from my students of homemade backyard football fields, catching a guitar pick at a Taylor Swift concert, and fixing things that are broken will always stay with me. 

I challenge you to be vulnerable with your students.  It could be the most rewarding experience in your classroom.  

I would love to hear your memoir unit ideas! If you are an English teacher, feel free to use my memoir as an example with your students. If you do, let me know how it goes!