Feb 10, 20219 min read

Time to Talk About Feelings!

Wow! This week I have spent a lot of time exploring feelings, emotions and how to use them within my writing. I think this is important to be comfortable using because it is a great tool to get students thinking about topics they can write about. Feelings create and make a story feel real to the reader and make it personable to the writer. I found this week, exploring emotions through writing, easy due to the amount of journaling I do. My first writer's journal entry, I talked about how the only time I feel relaxed and that my mind is settled is when I am journaling. I find this process therapeutic and it helps me get all the information and thoughts in my head in a concrete format. I am super excited to share what I have done with my notebook this week and the two books I had the opportunity to read.

Mango, Abuela, and Me written by Meg Medina and illustrated by Angela Dominguez is a beautiful book describing the experiences of language barriers between family members. In an interview done with Concetta Gleason, Medina states how the story, Mango, Abuela, and Me was inspired by her own experiences with her abuelas from her childhood. She was born in Virginia, but her parents emigrated from Cuba. This book won the Pura Belpré Award, which is an award that celebrates authors and illustrators in children’s literature who reflect Latino cultural heritage.

The two questions that stuck out to me in this interview with Meg Medina were her responses to “Why is reading important to you?” and “Why is writing important to you?”. Medina states that, “reading gives me an escape to another time and place where I can walk around inside the mind and heart of someone else. It gives me a quiet place where I can connect with experiences--Those that are far from my own and also with experiences that feel familiar from my own life”. Even though her dominant language is not Spanish, she loves to read in Spanish, , she feels a sense of joy being able to connect two worlds. Her response to why writing is important to her is eloquent:

It is like breathing to me. I don’t know how to live without writing. It’s how I find peace inside myself and how I figure out a path forward. In writing for young people specifically, I use it as a safe place to wonder about the questions that were left unanswered for me as a child. My characters help me walk back in time to reexamine things that were hard or confusing so that I can make sense of them now.

Wow! This quote is powerful! I love the way she talks about her characters being a way for her to reflect on her childhood wonders. I am definitely going to use this in the classroom. For example, asking my future students something they wonder about and it can be anything from do dogs dream to why am I scared of the dark. I believe this opens up an interesting opportunity for students to be vulnerable in their writing and dive deep into a question they have about the world around them. To read more of the interview click here.

Here are two video interview with Meg Medina and Angela Dominguez where they talk about memorable childhood experiences that molded their writing and drawing, Meg’s approach to depicting authentic family experiences within her illustrations, and why they think it is important for kids to feel represented in literature.

http://www.judynewmanatscholastic.com/blog/2020/09/author-interview-video-mango-abuela-me/

I found a Writing Activity on Peter Larson’s Teaching Portfolio that would be perfect for students to explore emotions they may feel if they were in Mia’s shoes. By allowing students to place themselves in Mia’s Abuela’s shoes, they gain a whole new perspective on how it feels to be in a new place and not speak the dominant language.

I think pairing this lesson with Dreamers by Yuyi Morales would expand this lesson to show multiple stories and perspectives of a similar experience where a character in a story is in a new environment where their first language is not the dominant one in a culture.

Dreamers tells a story of a young mother and her baby son packing up their belongings and traveling from Mexico to a new life in America. They became immigrants. There were many new things that they did not know or were not able to understand. They did not know English and were afraid to speak. Until one day, they came across a library. “Books became our language. Books became our home. Books became our lives” (Morales, 23). They learned how to make their voices heard, through books. Their new life finally became a world of opportunity, instead of fear.

With the pairing of these two books, I believe that students will be able to create writing pieces that deeply explore the emotion behind being in a new place and feeling a lack of community due to the environmental, cultural, and linguistic barriers.

Happy Like Soccer written by Maribeth Boelts and illustrated by Lauren Castillo follows Sierra, a young girl who has a passion for soccer. Nothing makes her happy like soccer, but a part of her is always disconnected from the game, wishing her Auntie was able to see her play and cheer her on like the other people on her team. Every game she would scan the sidelines hoping, but knowing deep down that her Auntie would be at work because her games overlapped with her schedule. This book brought up a lot of feelings for me personally. I have played sports all my life, from soccer to swimming to volleyball and my parents have always been there to cheer me on. Even in middle school when I played basketball one year and was benched the whole season because I only made the team because I was fast but had no actual skills to play the sport. But, knowing my parents were there to support me made all the difference. Reading this book put me in a whole other perspective of how other people may not have had the same experience with sports like I did. It was never a big deal if my Dad could not make it to one game because he had to work late, because I knew he would make the next one. Other people, like Sierra, never had the chance for their parents or guardians to see them play once.

In an interview conducted by Stacey Shubitz, Boelts reflects on three memories that she experienced that helped shape Happy Like Soccer into the heart-warming book I read! Boelts used to coach soccer in an under-resourced neighborhood with other volunteer coaches. The first memory she recalls is about one girl who would hope and wish that her Mother would be able to come to a game to cheer for her. She would scan the sidelines looking for her Mom, the one person that she truly wanted there, and each game she was devastated by this fact. Another instance is focused around a specific game that Boelts remembers. She talks about how her team would practice on a field that was less than perfect. One game, they were able to talk a small town team into playing a game on their makeshift field rather than having to travel way out of town to a nicer field. This game had one of the biggest turnouts for her soccer team players. There were parents, relatives, teachers, and neighbors that came out to watch and cheer the team on. The sense of community that was present at that game was unmatched. The last memory Boelts describes a mother who would walk miles with her toddler in a stroller to watch her son play. The amount of love that mother had for her son was inspiring.

I note this part of the interview because these experiences Boelts has set up the story line for Happy Like Soccer. The story also has a personal connection to the author because she wrote what she knew, which was growing up in a family with financial difficulties, just like Sierra. Boelts notes that she writes what she likes to read as well, which is realistic fiction. Due to this book being an extremely personal piece for the author, the emotions that are carried throughout the story are not hard to miss or feel. To read more of the interview click here.

I created an inverted triangle to map out my thought process to writing an entry that was inspired from Happy Like Soccer. This method comes from Chapter Three page 65 of Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature, K-6 by Dorfman & Cappelli. I started with the main idea of “Sports” and then narrowed down my thought process to recalling how much it meant to me when my parents, specifically my mom, came to my volleyball games. I never gave this act of love much thought because my parents tried to come to all of my games and tournament matches. This was a nice time to reflect on the meaning of my parents coming to my games which made me really appreciate all the time and energy they took to show their support.

Below are other entries from my writer’s notebook I created throughout the week. I have one self portrait entry, that I will say I am not too pleased with, but I am trying to get better at not starting over. I drew myself with a mask on because I asked my friend what is something I always wear and she said, “that blue mask”, which I thought was funny, so I added that. I also drew myself wearing my favorite purple sweatshirt my grandma bought me and my Adidas track pants. I wear those whenever I am in what I call “comfy mode”. They are some of my favorite pants I had for years and used to be my brothers. I should write an entry about these pants!

I made a hand map to start brainstorming ideas to write about that were emotion oriented. Tracing my hand is always something that makes me self-conscious due to my fingers being misshapen from my arthritis. Anyway, I chose to focus on my happiness finger and write about one of my very close friends, Eva. Below you can see I did another inverted triangle to show my writing thought process, which is helpful when modeling this strategy to your students. I enjoy connecting strategies because it shows students how you can build off strategies and you do not have to stick to just one method. I wrote briefly about how my friendship with Eva developed throughout the years and actually had the opportunity to show her this and she loved it!

I also used my hand map to write about an emotion that I have not had a lot of experience writing about. I used my fear category and chose my fear of the dark. This is a new fear that developed when I was about nineteen. The combination of moving into my first apartment in Boone and not being familiar with the area of where my apartment was located manifested my fear of the dark. I am now twenty-two and have to sleep with a night light. I had a lot of fun writing this actually because I find it quite funny that a fear deemed childish is one of my biggest fears.

Implementing Hand Map Strategy One-on-One

I work with a second grade student at my job where I am a tutor for K-5 students. This student was telling me how excited she was for her first day of gymnastics, something she has expressed interest in for awhile. I decided to try out the hand map to get her thinking about specific events that are tied to an emotion. She selected to write about how she was feeling for her first gymnastics lesson. We brainstormed her sentences on the board together and then she wrote them independently with some teacher support.

Thoughts From This Week

Music has been a big part of my life since I was little. My dad exposed me to all kinds of music from R.E.M to Pearl Jam and hundreds of other artists. My love for finding new music really sparked when I got my own laptop going into the 9th grade. I was able to use spotify to explore artists related to the ones I already listened to. I have been apart of a huge club at Appalachian State University for five years called Appalachian Popular Programing. APP's has seven different clubs within itself that work to bring diverse programming to Appalachian's campus. I am an active member in Club Shows. Club Shows interested my freshman year because this club works on bringing small music acts to campus. This ranges from local bands to people like Saba and Doja Cat. I have also been going to concerts since I finally got permission from my parents when I was 14. Music means the world to me and even to this day I am still finding new artists and genres that I love!

All that being said, music carries a lot of emotional ties for a lot of people. I want to open up a question to my readers and ask you all to write about a song that has a lot of emotional connection to you. Feel free to draw your emotion as well!