"Everyone should write their life, because the words tell us and, without words, the world does not exist, well, every word you write can change the course of his life, because every word triggers the next. "Thus spoke my admired José Saramago in an old newspaper clipping, and if now repair it and this quote from you is to fellowship, if we accept this relationship with one of the most rewarding experiences I have attempted exercise of teaching.
For a few courses, nearly a decade, I offer my younger students, newcomers to the school, the individual writing project of his "autobiography", a work distributed in twenty chapters, which extends over six or seven months and that they make and write according to my specific instructions. According to a schedule we set in October, I guide them on how they can address every issue, we commented how they interview their parents or other relatives, consultants on how they may look to outside sources to collect data needed or how to be patient to test a draft then comes into its own in the white sheet. Then, in May, when the heat makes these writers beardless meet all the chapters (which were already corrected) and print criteria are unified (or calligraphy, if necessary) and presentation, and make them simply bind at least two copies of the result, that is, what it will be his "first book", which looks and original cover and pages numbered it features a very exclusive dedication.
I would add that, beyond the linguistic benefits that the discipline of writing behavior (from the improvement of spelling vocabulary acquisition), this project serves them to renegotiate an identity and known protagonists of their own discourse, which, no doubt, stimulates interest and increases their involvement in the task almost from the first weeks. And me, who toil each chapter with my corrective lens has helped me and helps me to know them, each one as if to check their supplies on the open book read your concerns and worries, a book often shows the blatant shamelessness their early teens, a single copy book that the future will cherish the fingers of nostalgia. Influenced by the beating
everyday thereafter each group of students each school year, I also sometimes felt tempted to join them in writing, a desire to build solidarity gradually autobiography I wrote when I never age , which allows me to reconcile my current life with the words you write it in the future of memory, because, as warned Saramago, it is doubtful that the world exists without the substantial matter of those words.
This morning, out of class, yet that has become a kind of fondness that I have never allowed, I've always postponed but whose charm do not know if I'll finish giving: the time of this blog tell the rest.
