Coloring classrooms

I just left my Advanced Exposition classroom after 50 minutes of creating "life maps." For those of you reading this who are unfamiliar with life maps, this is a topic generating exercise in which you make a “map” of your life with various icons depicting important people, places, events and things in your life; Ray Bradbury writes of something similar in The Zen of Writing (his was a “neighborhood” map; he maintains every idea he has ever had for his writing can be traced back to some neighborhood adventure he had when he was 8-10). I have used this exercise, or variations thereof, in my writing classes since I discovered it. I also tied it in to the reading for the day as it had talked about making discoveries through your writing, and I discovered how important the “prairie” was to my life when I did mine as an example.

There was some groaning and “I can’t draw!” at the beginning, but I assured them that the drawer was the only one who had to understand the significance of the icon—so what if you can’t tell that “Fluffy” is a dog, cat or gerbil. However, once the markers were set to paper, the tone changed and There was a flurry of “How do you draw X?” and “How do you draw Y?” as well as much laughter, bonding, and discovery. Some minds went blank for a while, and then the stories became even wilder.

The students had a blast if noise is any indication of their enthusiasm. It helped that the classroom has been reconfigured so there is a table in the middle (although the table is not big enough for 15 students and drawing paper). Some of the quieter students worked by their computers. The maps are now displayed on the walls with blue painters’ tape (so as not to ruin the recently painted walls), and the walls are more cheerful and less sterile now there is a bit of color on them.

I told my students the first day this would be nothing like their ENG 101 class; I think they are convinced.