Community News Burgeoning Fifth Grade Novelists Create Charity with Words Feverishly writing on the whiteboard in her fifth grade classroom, BB&N teacher Louisa Connaughton is slightly overwhelmed by the growing list of charities being suggested by her students. The desks are abuzz with chatter about the most deserving causes to support. Connaughton pauses, succinctly claps her hands a few times, and the students echo her claps before silence falls on the sun-dappled room. “The publishing cost of our books is about $8 each,” Connaughton says. “Last year students decided to sell each book for $20, so what was the profit margin? Yes, about $12. So we’ll need to decide how much we want to charge and where the money should go.” This may sound like a math lesson, but in fact Connaughton is speaking to her 20 students about their novel writing project, specifically the published book that will mark the end of a long journey. The class is fervently engaged in choosing a charity to which to donate the proceeds, and lost in the debate to the casual observer is just how much work has gone into the project to get to this point. Now in her fourth year at BB&N, Connaughton initiated the novel writing idea three years ago, and with the help of fifth grade teacher Gabby Mbeki, she has been refining it ever since. The impetus came from National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an online collaborative project that encourages adults and kids alike to write at length in a creative vein. The goal stated on the NaNoWriMo website is for participants to start writing on November 1st and complete a 50,000-word novel by November 30th, but using the website as a rough curriculum and deadline guide, Connaughton has modified the experience for her students with a goal of 5,000 words. “Kids come into fifth grade as competent writers,” says Connaughton. “But their stamina is not there, so this is a great introduction into a long-term project.” The topic of each story is completely up to the students, an essential point as it allows them space to make the project their own, as opposed to writing on assignment. “One of the best parts was finding out that you could write about whatever you want,” recalls Alisa Ishii ’23. “You could just kind of let your brain go crazy.” The process begins in October when Connaughton asks each student to start developing a character around which to base a story. “This allows them a chance to think about the narrative structure of good writing; crafting a beginning, middle, and end, and what we call a ‘plot roller coaster.’”
PICTURED: x 1 x Fifth grade student book covers x 2 x Clockwise from left: Alex Sandell, Tait Oberg, Katie Worthington, Madera Lipson, Alisa Ishii, and Caroline White x 3 x Fifth grade teacher Louisa Connaughton looks over a list of potential charities. 6
Over the course of two months, the students refine and write their stories, turning in final drafts just before Thanksgiving break. December is spent editing the novels, a crucial part of the project which Connaughton and Mbeki have worked hard to turn into a collaborative, peer-based process. “Peer-to-peer critique is a really important part of this,” says Connaughton. “Throughout the entire project students are giving feedback to each other. Each student reads an entire story of somebody else’s. They edit them and work with each other to improve their writing.”
This approach encourages students to look critically and carefully at writing, and in addition to honing their grammar and style skills, it also opens up the assignment to a more collaborative feel. Connaughton recalls one student who arrived at school wide eyed after having edited a story the night before. “Angie’s story is sooo good!” he raved to Connaughton. She still beams at the memory—that sort of excitement and positive energy is a teacher’s nirvana. If 5,000 words seem a bit much for ten-and eleven-year-olds, the students might agree…at least initially. “They are a little daunted at first,” Connaughton acknowledges. “But every year I’m surprised by the overwhelming sense of excitement that quickly prevails…even kids who might not be the strongest writers get really involved. You mean I can write about whatever I want?!’ they say.” One boy who continuously and vociferously professed his distaste for writing shocked Connaughton in his embrace of the idea. “He discovered to even his own surprise, I think, that he really enjoyed the project,” she recalls. “So much so that he was the first to reach 3,000 words.” The word count is a fun measuring stick, and a useful device for goal setting and motivation, but Connaughton is quick to rein in unruly or overly ambitious stories. “There is still a quality over quantity equation in the end. We try to keep the process moving slowly and on track so that kids aren’t just writing to reach a word count, but are really thinking about each piece of their stories as they go.” Of course, writing a novel improves your writing, but the value of the project to her students has been manifold and is evident to Connaughton in a number of ways. “One benefit of having students write so much about a topic they are genuinely invested in is that any later writing assignments that are more academic in nature seem easy by comparison and much less scary.” Another benefit is that the students really become part of a writing community. On the NaNoWriMo website, users are able to catalog their progress and get inspiration and feedback from other students. “Famous writers (Dave Eggers, John Green, Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Lethem, Lois Lowry, to name a handful) often blog on the site with inspirational messages,” says Connaughton. “It really makes students feel like they are part of something bigger than just a school assignment.” In editing the stories, Connaughton and Mbeki have also found a hidden bonus to the project. “It really helps us to diagnose shortcomings and issues that students are having with writing,” Connaughton says. “Then we know what to focus on in our next mini-lesson in the classroom.” And with the hard work completed, the final step is one of the most fun: choosing the charity that will receive the proceeds of the book sales. As Connaughton takes suggestions from her burgeoning novelists, the list on the whiteboard continues to grow. Never mind writing a 5,000-word novel in one month. “The hardest part of this might be choosing a charity,” comments one boy. It’s a great problem to have, and a win-win scenario for everyone involved. This year the Make-a-Wish organization prevailed in the class vote as the selected charity.
BB&N Welcomes Cecily Craighill as Director of Alumni/ae Programs For those wondering whom to thank for the unseasonably mild winter, look no further than BB&N’s new director of alumni/ae programs, Cecily Craighill. Having spent the past decades in southern climes, Cecily laughingly takes credit for bringing the early spring with her as she settles in at BB&N. Cecily is a graduate of Davidson College, and received her master’s degree from Saint John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. Having spent seven years in alumni/ae relations at the Wharton Business School, then managing Wake Forest University’s regional D.C. alumni/ae office, and most recently working as the director of alumni/ae relations at Emory University’s law school, Cecily looks forward to a new chapter with BB&N. “I want to ensure that our alumni/ae have rewarding experiences in their interactions with the School and with each other,” she says. “There is a great community here at BB&N, and there are unique benefits that come with being part of it…it’s not a scenario you find everywhere.” In addition to supporting the local alumni/ae community, Cecily hopes to further the School’s already active engagement in other cities such as Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New York City, and San Francisco. “Our alums have been uniformly so warm and welcoming, and fantastically interesting,” she notes. “I’m really looking forward to getting to know them and hear their stories.” 7