Notes from a teacher's diary

Not every classroom has neat little desks in tidy little rows and a blackboard

by Sally Cragin

Four years ago, when I returned from Los Angeles -- a city devoted to the image first and the word second -- I visited some old friends at the Fitchburg Art Museum. While I was there, I reacquainted myself with the incredible works of art in the permanent collection. There were many pieces I remembered: a glorious Audubon print, White Heron from the "Elephant portfolio"; Rockwell Kent's impressionistic landscape of Mt. Monadnock; a self-portrait of the museum's enigmatic founder, artist Eleanor Norcross (1854-1923).

I always get wonderful ideas for stories to write in museums, and, though I've enjoyed the occasional "blockbuster exhibition" at the mega-seums, I find I've come to prefer smaller, regional museums with manageable collections. The Farnsworth, in Maine, the Fogg at Harvard, and Fitchburg Art Museum are all repositories of great art and can be visited without getting footsore or soul-weary.

On one visit the museum (where, as children, my brother, Hal, and I took watercolor classes), I got into a conversation with Dr. Peter Timms, the director. Somehow we got on to the topic of writings inspired by art. I had just read a poem by Eavan Boland called Degas's Laundresses, which describes the painter Degas spying on washerwomen for his famous canvases. ("You seam dreams in the folds/Of wash from which freshes/The whiff and reach of fields/Where it bleached and stiffened," wrote Boland tantalizingly.)

We began thinking of other writings inspired by works of art: Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, Browning's My Last Duchess, and it occurred to me that it might be interesting to teach a writing class in which the writers would be inspired by the works of art in front of them.

One of the great strengths of the Fitchburg Art Museum is that Timms is the kind of director who will say, "Sounds great, let's do it." In the fall of 1993, the museum offered the first Creative Writing Workshop. Ever since, I've been teaching twice a year, eight-week classes in the fall and in the spring, for children ages 12 and up. I've also taught occasional workshops for younger children and adults. Once we had an after-school program for Fitchburg High School students, who spoke Spanish or Hmong as a first language. (A challenging group, but everyone responded to Elizabeth Bishop's poem, The Fish, because they had all been fishing one time or another.)

Founder Eleanor Norcross insisted that the museum offer art and education, and last year, the museum installed classrooms for "regular school." Currently, two sixth-grade classes are taught at the museum, and there is a very exciting plan afoot to turn FAM into a magnet school, so stay tuned.

The current class has eight students: five "alumni" from other writing or museum classes, including two boys and six girls (Maya, eight, Alyce, 10, Claudel, 12, Angelina, 12, and David, 13, Heather, 14, Jennifer, 14, and Jenn, 18). Most attend school, some have been home-schooled, and each student is eager to write. It's exciting to have a class where ages range from eight to 18. I think society gets very dependent on "ageism" when it comes to learning abilities. After all, when we have an adult class, the age range can be staggering: one memorable group ranged from age 17 to seventysomething. So why divide the children? Program administrator Marianne Menger and I take the view that any young person who chooses to come to a museum on Friday afternoon and work on stories and poems should be in the class.

The curriculum is always fluid. I think that people who want to write need to read the work of the best writers. Among the authors we read are Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Raymond Carver, Frank O'Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, Shelley, Keats, Thom Gunn, and Fredric Brown. We read poetry, short fiction, even diaries (Barbara Pym), and sometimes cartoons to illustrate dialogue (Jules Feiffer). And, of course, we look at paintings and describe what we see, and what we don't see. I enjoy asking these young writers, "What is happening beyond the frame?" which always elicits ingenious flights of fancy.

On our first day of class this spring, we began with a sample of Latin and moved on to poetry. Why Latin? Well, I spent the first two years telling students that if they really wanted to write there were two classes essential to this ambition: Latin and typing. Last year, I decided to start giving students a taste of Latin, which undergirds our English language and enriches our vocabulary.

There are plenty of Latin phrases that make an interesting word game. Take Ad Astra Per Aspera. What does this mean? Begin by writing down the words that begin with ad (address, advertise, advance, addition). Next write down words that have the astra sound (astronomy, astrology). Do the same with remaining words, and before long, there is a collection of English words derived from Latin roots, and the translation is achieved: "To the stars through hardship." Now each young writer has a goal for the next eight weeks. If they always "reach for the stars" when they write, they're going to come up with good stuff.

The other lesson to this exercise is seeing just how much our English language borrows from Romance languages. Language is not static, and in the next two months of our class, these young writers will play with language to their hearts' content. We have a supply of thesauri, rhyming dictionaries and regular Websters, and the "old hands" know that if I ask them what a word means, and nobody knows, the reference texts are available.

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