Just don't give up . . .

One of my great joys this year has been leading two Enrichment Groups at Bardwell Elementary School on Mondays ---one for 6 third graders from Brian's class and one for 5 fourth graders from Erik's class.  We have done everything from writing a short story to submit to a Scholastic Book competition to learning about web search engines and internet research to studying endangered animals and historical people, places, and events.   It has been a real thrill for me to watch young minds expand over the year.

To wrap up the year, the kids in both groups really wanted to take an educational field trip somewhere.  Not being an official teacher of the school, getting transportation and approval to take the kids out of the building was a challenge, so I decided to bring the field trip to them instead.  So today, children's author and illustrater, Kevin Luthardt, came and did a two hour workshop for the 11 children I have been working with all year.  He talked about the process of writing a picture book from idea to publishing, and he shared some of his own story of becoming a writer (he even pulled out a big stack of rejection letters that he got before publishing his first book).  He taught the kids how to draw a cartoon elephant and then asked each of them to start a story by using the "story board" process.

All of the kids did a great job, but there are a couple in the group that I see brimming with potential to be writers or artists or both.  I can only pray that they are going to have some strong people in their lives encouraging them them not to give up . . . because sometimes all it takes is a couple of rejection letters or comments and potential never becomes anything more than that.