Healing Through Writing and MGRP

My writing has always been a space where I could go when I needed to explore the parts of myself and the world that were broken but where I hoped to find healing. Sometimes, the pain is just so raw, the bandage so full of blood that inspection only causes leaks.

So much depends upon a red bandage.

In my Dramatic Writing classes, we are creating multi-genre research projects (MGRPs). I have written about them here before, but this year is a little different. To restate the concept of MGRPs, they are holistic collections of writing about a single topic in different genres and perspectives, with pieces created through research. They contain note pages, bibliographies, and a dear reader letter. The recent gun violence in our state, coupled with protests at the school (a post on this to come), has really shifted my focus. I started a personal MGRP two years ago to explore why teachers leave the classroom. I wanted to provide students with an example that reflected where I was in my professional life.

I picked up my research log this year and looked at it again. I explored different lenses of my intersectionality and looked through the pieces of me that contained different reasons for wanting to leave. The gun violence in schools has actually usurped the homophobia that I experience as a top reason for even considering my flight. I think the biggest reason for this is that I can keep young people, especially in my classroom, relatively safe from hatred. I cannot do the same with bullets.

While I was working yesterday, I was able to incorporate some of my recent trauma into my writing, along with new research I added to my log. I modeled for students how to choose a genre to write in, pull information from their research, choose a perspective to write from, and then create a new piece of writing.

This email, which I want to write about in a post all its own when I'm ready to, became part of the perspective I was writing from. I had received this a couple days before sitting down to write live with students.

While I have cried several times, about both the incident and the student's email, writing about it in the MGRP helped me to begin to heal. For a little more context about the email, a student was found to have a gun. It was reported to be a BB gun by our administration, but two of the adults who arrived on the scene first claimed that it was a 9mm. This happened at our school. Our school. The student who reported it, the one who emailed me this heartbreaking letter hours later, was previously homeschooled her whole life. Her mother was so concerned about letting her do her senior year of high school in person, but she wanted her to have that senior experience. According to J.D. Vance, she is just getting her "facts of life." 

A student asked me how to write a monologue, so I quickly found some research about the way that gun violence in schools is causing teachers to leave the profession. The two sources I used were 6 years apart. The 2018 article cited a Gallup poll that said 22% of teachers were considering leaving the classroom for this reason. A more recent article stated that the percentage has grown to 57%. More than half of teachers are considering leaving their profession because of gun violence in schools.

I created my monologue in about 5 minutes. I am not a playwright; I just play one in the classroom. I have never published for the stage, but neither have my students. Yet. This kind of modeling can help students see what is possible with their research and personal experiences. I am attempting to teach them how to write from a different perspective to better highlight their lived experiences.

Here is my ugly draft:

Why I Left (the monologue)

MR. SMITH stands at the front of his high school. He is wearing a button-down shirt tucked into khaki pants, holding a leather satchel bag. Running after him, as he exits is his principal, a balding man with nearly invisible eyebrows.

PRINCIPAL:

Where are you going, Smith? It’s the middle of the day?

SMITH:

(mutters)

You don’t even care about us.

PRINCIPAL:

Excuse me?

SMITH:

(louder)

You don’t even care about us. You didn’t tell us about the gun. At all. No soft lockdown, no communication, just an email. Do you know what it is like to process your trauma in live-time in front of your students? Do you know what it feels like to get an email from a student you love at night who is APOLOGIZING to you for missing your class because they had to report the gun during 3rd period? Of course you don’t. How could you? Reading that email broke me. I cried once when I left the building, and I cred a second time when I checked my phone. APOLOGIZING? We should be apologizing to her, and the next day you don’t even say anything. No communication. No message. Just silence. Just the weight of all that is happening on our shoulders, on our kids shoulders, on their families shoulders. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to send my kid to high school - thank God she is just in elementary school. They have lock down drills too, but this is different. There was a gun in OUR school. So yeah, I’m furious. I’m done.I quit. I’m leaving. Why wouldn’t I? I had a moment yesterday when my door was open and a child, maybe 3 or 4 ran by laughing. It was Ms. Jones’s kid. My students stopped, and we all heard the laughter and we just stopped. Do you know what one of my students said? Of course you don’t, but I’ll tell you. One of my students said, “Why would you bring a child to a place this unsafe?” It was her snap response, she wasn’t thinking. The layers to this…nah, you wouldn’t understand.

SMITH turns his back, walks to his car, and leaves the PRINCIPAL standing there, staring.

We discussed how the monologue could be written from any invested point of view: a parent of a child whose life was taken, a classmate or peer of a victim, or even the shooter. We discussed why research was necessary but also how creating a character was essential—how we have to consider life up until this exact moment—what issue the speaker is struggling with—and that is where we find the monologue. Insight comes from writing alongside students; it is in these moments of creating with their realities that we find truth worth demonstrating.

For a second example of multi-genre writing, I chose poetry. I let them know how much I despised writing poetry on demand. I explained that it takes moments of firey inspiration, such as being in love or feeling great loss and grief, for me to write poetry on demand. I wanted to show the vulnerability involved with writing something that you know isn't going to be quality and how quality is the sharpening we do to our words after we have attempted to say something. 

I wanted to make this personal, as our commandments for writing are:

- thou shalt always write from the heart

- thou shalt always write real

- thou shalt always write small 

- thou shalt always write before you write

These come from Nelson (2004), and have been the foundation of my writing instruction for my teaching career. This poem would attempt to exemplify all these goals, but I needed some research to support what I was looking for: a teacher leaving the classroom because they were pressured or fired for being queer. 

I found an editorial from Medium.com about a teacher who left the classroom because of the Don't Say Gay laws in states like Florida. While reading, I discovered the Lavender Scare - a topic never covered in high school despite being so closely related to the Red Scare. This source I found came from the National Archives, and it was a great opportunity to showcase how authoritative sources added credibility to both arguments and writing. Additionally, I wanted to show how chasing rabbit holes, or the propensity to chase after an idea on the internet, is such a positive experience for research. In all honesty, I was furious. How is it possible that such a large part of history had been left out? McCarthy hated Communists and homosexuals. It wasn't just a political crusade--the implications for me were earth-shattering. All of this is to say that it quickly found a home in my poem.

I still find writing poetry incredibly challenging, especially live and in front of young people watching you type it line by line over the projector.

Why I Left

Lavender Flowers

I didn’t want to let them down

I know the statistics

Just one supportive adult

Means 50% more make it alive to graduation

“You’re a hero” is something I’ve heard

Every day - teachers are heroes

Then why am I so villainized

For just supporting my students?

“Don’t say gay” is not just a phrase

But a law, and I'm left wondering

If I can’t say what I am, then

How am I supposed to exist?

How can we not speak about the same 

Lives we so easily target?

How can we mean the word “all”

In our mission statements?

How can I continue to stay

When all the state legislature 

wants to do

Is pray the gay away?

While these aren't perfect examples, each sample demonstrated my process for students as I made multi-genre research writing visible. Healing through writing is a secondary gift we can give ourselves. While this post has been in my drafts for several days, and as I return to it nearly a week later, I am still shocked that this is what I am writing about. Reading my own words feels like a dystopian nightmare as both topics are so close to home and should-be-impossible (I don't know the word for this in English). It has been such a journey to get to the point where I feel that I can post this or even come back to finish this post. It is raw and real, and what Nelson called writing from the river. 

Nelson said that we could take our students to the river and show them the flowing water and how the river works. We can stand on the bank and point to it. However, another way is to get into the water with our students so we can stand in the flow and show them what it means firsthand. I don't know what else to say. I have run out of words, like tears, for what it is like to teach in 2024/2025, and I am only 8 weeks into the first semester. I have never felt more love and power from my students. Their dedication to their writing is incredible. I am so proud and excited to be in the river with them. I just want us all to make it home each day. 

Nelson, G. L. (2004). Writing and being: Taking back our lives through the power of language. Inner Ocean Pub.