June 9, 2008 Scribe: Zenaida Samjurjo
One of my pet peeves is not being present. I don’t enjoy being absent—although that was not always the case, as my former College classmates form back in the day, Abi and Janice know. I arrived to the classroom a little flustered, feeling the humidity and my heart beating violently as I realized I was a “tad” late. Early in the morning we were welcomed by Ellen. As she announced the visit of the Dean of Arts and Science Dr. Oregano, I mean Dr. Orengo, her excited could not be contained. At least I could tell how grateful she was for his full support to the institute. Among the things discussed during our morning talk was the tele-conference on Wednesday.
Angela followed the morning announcements with her scribal piece from Friday. I must say that I felt as though I were there. Especially exciting was her reading about Jocelyn’s presentation last Friday. I sort of resented the fact that I wasn’t here for that…pero esos son mis rollos! People laughed and reminisced on Friday’s class for a while.
Maria shared that she was hooked online for 6 hours writing and responding on the NWP site and Ellen noticed that we have not had any entries in Spanish so far on the site. Maybe the more we move along the more our language will start shifting to Spanish more and more…who knows.
As we continued to review the week I noticed on how the group is starting to look like a well oiled machine. Things are starting to get in to motion. Now we keep time, we have a plan, and the group seems aligned.
The group went back and forth on Jocelyn’s workshop. The group got excited and it was contagious. What really made the group “rowdy” was the “Plaza project”. As people spoke, they got excited. Ari made the connection between oral history and writing and how people get excited when they get to share their own history. Janice found it very empowering since this was a great balance between literature and writing. This “plaza project” seems to be a very exciting future project that I know we will get done. What got people excited about Jocelyn’s workshop was that she started having the group recall about what the group remembers about language and learning in your schooling. Another thing emphasized was that importance was placed on asking questions when you conduct interviews. This presented an excellent connection between writing and grammar.
Right after Melissa presented us with the funding opportunities for the “plaza project” Jennifer presented her article review. She was our first book talk so it served as an excellent example of what is expected from the rest of us when we present our books to the class. The article served also as a conversational piece on how we teach poetry to our students. Maria commented on how she does not enjoy reading or writing poetry while Ari and Janice commented on how they teach poetry in their class. One touching experience, at least for me it was, was Janice’s “story” about a special education student who wrote a poem that touched her. At that moment I experienced how present Janice was in that experience. We all felt her joy with her student’s creation.
We had the visit of Dr. Orengo as we got ready for Ariana’s presentation. He spoke to us about the many accomplishments of the College of Arts and Sciences. We were all very grateful that he had given such support to the institute.
With such good news and happy to be part of this institute, we all paid close attention to Ariana’s presentation about the origins of our names titled “My Name”. After reading Sandra Cisneros’ My Name we shared about how we felt about our names. Aida Marie was the first to share how she felt that her name sounded like an old lady’s name so she definitely felt identified with the short story. We then had time to get to work on the internet and search on the history of our names. I felt the excitement as some people wrote or pounded away at the computer keys searching for answers. Then it time for the author’s chair.
For the first time ever, hands flew to the air as Ariana asked for volunteers. Aida was the first to share her story and transmitted passion, HER story. Hector followed…Janice, Angela, and even I had my 3 minutes of glory on the throne. A LOT of first timers in the seat!!!! We all had exciting stories to tell about our names besides likes and dislikes…warriors, free butterflies, and Greek gods were just the beginning. Much fun as well as much involvement.
Peter and die frau die frau, Maria and her miracles, and Roslyn con su “caballo manso”. We found out that Marie was Marie de nadie. Even Ellen took her turn to the chair. Cedrick learned about being a warrior while Melissa was a honey bee. And we all know how Jennifer will make it big and famous as her tocayas on the headlines. Ariana became the holy one while Tito was the prodigal son. It was all about the energy and creating safe spaces to share our names’ origins.
After lunch, the afternoon turned into writing time before Ellen spoke to the group about experimental writing. We then had our turn to focus on our experimental writing piece stemming from our memoir piece. We could either do that or look our fruit, vegetable or object. As the afternoon winded down some left to see Mayra’s thesis defense at 2:30 p.m. while others like decided to stay in the class and get some work done. Silence over took the class, it was cool to have that time just for writing and hear the clicks of keyboards as soon of my colleagues typed away in silence…in their own histories, in their own experiences.