1.

It’s Saturday afternoon and I stop at my mall for a fresh pair of black stockings, after all, we will be dining in a “tent” and it’s September and it’s cool.  I have left Tuvia to fend for himself for the evening but he understands why this is special to me.  I take my time in a life-afirming shower and  carefully prepare: outfit selection, makeup, hair freshly quaffed at Salon Elyse’s and I am in my car and off to the “ball”.  

I am driving on an almost empty Thurway, across the bumpy, lumpy Tappan Zee Bridge and through the toll booth in minutes.  The Saw Mill Parkway is always empty and tonight is no exception. Empty.  I’m off the road and waiting at the first Pleasantville traffic light and the town feels different, prepared for something special.  

At every parking area there are attendants for this EVENT? Yes, I enter a lot and a charming young woman asks to see my ticket and she gestures that the parking lot, our usual lot is at my disposal. She glances at my official ticket and smiles.  ”Registration in the lobby.” 

I am out of the car with my camera tucked neatly in my bag.  I have my iPhone and iPad for company if I need them. 

I enter the main doors of the Burns and as I extend my card and offer my name the woman who I have been emailing with, Kim, smiles and extends her hand.  ”I have a surprise for you, Bonnie. Come with me.”

She escorts me to the small theater down the hall.  I know it well.  We have seen wonderfully funky films in there.  Inside there are a few early guests and  down in front of the stage a group of men congregating. Steve Apkon, Director of the Burns, is engaged in conversation but  Kim walks on.  I’m having a bit of trouble moving in my heels and  wishing for my sandals back in the closet.  She motions to Steve and he waves me on. 

“Bonnie, welcome.  I’m so glad I checked my email this morning and found your brother’s note.  I clicked over to your blog post and read your piece about Schindler’s List and thought how perfect.  I sent it on to Steven and he insisted we make the time for this meeting. So good you arrived early.  

“Bonnie, so good to meet you.”  

He is shorter than I imagined.  His wife probably never wears  very high heels. Why was I thinking about this?  Steven Spielberg was shaking my hand and connecting with me through my words. Do I look like a smiling idiot?

“You realize that this will not be a night to talk about why we are “joined at the hip” but with a bit on maneuvering Steve has made it possible for you to join us at our table for dinner but most of my time tonight will be spent schoomzing. This is an amazing operation and I want to support it, but here’s my email address. Let’s keep talking. By the way, we will be joined by others who share our passion for movies.  You have probably seen their work. Meet, Ron Howard, Eng Lee, Paul Schrader and John Sayles…

” If you’d like to drive over with us to dinner we have room in Steve’s SUV….

2.
It’s 5:00 PM and I am dressed for dinner in a tent.  The party begins at 5:30 and I am not someone who ever arrives fashionably late. In fact the roads are so empty that I drive below the speed limit and I still arrive early.

Downtown Pleasantville is deserted, ready for an EVENT.  At every possible parking area there’s a well dressed attendant poised to welcome guests.  You can smell the coming evening.

I select the lot across from the theater that we use often.  I roll my window down and a young girl asks to see my ticket. ”  Oh great a blue ticket,  you will be joining the group upstairs after you register. ”

I walk across the street slowly, carefully in my heels and I am warmly greeted, given my dinner ticket: table #54 and ushered to the familiar spot upstairs where we’ve been for past receptions.  I’m not the first but it’s quiet up there.  I check my phone for emails and take a seat on a bench.  Outside there’s a fully stocked bar and a bar tender looks so pathetically lonely that I get up and join him after all, I’m really dressed for winter.  Raphael is very happy for the company and I am practicing cocktail party small talk.

I keep checking my watch but time seems to be frozen and we are up there until 7:30.  I’m starting to wonder just what I was thinking?  In the course of the next hour I do meet an interesting woman looking for someone like me and there’s conversation now. Most people are here in groups but there’s no sign of Steven.

Finally at 7:15,  someone announces that we are heading out to dinner in the Event tent.  I get moving quickly to the bathroom downstairs and on my way, the door of the smaller theater opens and Steven Spielberg with the director of the Burns are exiting with another group of donors, followed by a glittering array of VIPs: Janet Maslin, Ron Howard, John Sayles, Eng Lee, and Paul Schrader.  If I were a different person, I would have jumped on this opportunity to make my move, to stick my hand out and start talking.  I don’t. It’s not me. I don’t’ remove the camera from my bag for a photo op. I don’t’.  This is not what I had in mind.

I head for the bathroom instead and then join the crowd as we make our way to the tent for the show.

We are in the same tent. An enormous tent that is warm, that has  a real floor and bathrooms nearby.  A tent, if you want to call it that, that comfortably holds 500+ guests.  A tent with huge screens so that even if you are sitting at table 54 you can see everything.  According to the guy sitting next to me, Steven and the rest of the VIPS are dining in the center at table #20 and as we talk he grabs my hand and races me over to meet Steven and I am excited. Just as I am ready for my turn, a hugh bodyguard appears and blocks my view. “Dinner time! Please return to your seat now.”  I  argue a bit but there was no way I would be getting through him.

And I see the light!

I will not be living my fantasy. After all the point of this evening is to make money for a worthy organization and sadly, it’s a two-tiered event.  The big donors had been downstairs with the VIPS and the larger group with the “smaller donations” had been invited to the upstairs party with me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s  a very classy event but not really what I had in mind.  I didn’t need the drinks or the dinner or the show.  I was hoping for a bit of a conversation with a hero of mine.

But good things did happen as I prepared for this night.  I rewrote an older story about my connection with Steven Spielberg and Schindler’s List, with a new audience in mind: Steven.  And as I rode home across the TZ Bridge I was starting to work on the seeds of a new digital piece that would take my words off the new page to yet another home.

So what do I have to do to get my work to Steven Spielberg?

On Saturday night I will be dining with Steven Spielberg.

No, not just the two of us, or four of us. But everyone in a large room, (actually in a tent), will be present at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York for its annual fundraiser and this year Steven is the honored guest.

I have to confess that I did spend the summer debating with myself about spending the money for a seat at this affair and finally when it was put up or shut up time, I had to write the check for a seat at a table somewhere in that room because Steven and I are joined at the hip and here’s why:

A Circle of Tears

Bonnie Kaplan

I was and will always be an 8^th grade English teacher in my heart of hearts. Even though I’ve taught grades 7-12 and an array of electives for 30 years, I hope I’m remembered for my work with 14- year- olds. I loved the way that they bounced, like magical jumping beans, into my room each day and kept on bouncing with an honest spirit, spontaneous, authentic.

I was bouncing with them, into their writing, reading, and sharing as a community of learners and as we got closer to the spring and the annual Holocaust unit, I wanted their bouncing to take on an even deeper dimension.

Christmas Day 1993,  I was on line on a very long line to see Schindler’s List, and much to my frustration and pleasant surprise, I didn’t get in on my first try.  But I was persistent and did get a seat in another sold-out show the next afternoon.  I sat for 3 1/2 hours watching a movie in black and white and crying often.  Steven Spielberg moved up dramatically on my list of heroes.

When we returned to school after winter break, I shared my movie experience with my 8^th graders and a number of them, deeply moved, came to me after class wondering and hoping that I would take them to see it.  I hesitated.  It was hard enough to sit through it the first time. As a Jew, I grew up with holocaust family stories of loss and as I sat in that audience, listening to a chorus of whimpers, I  walked in the shoes of the dead.

But as a teacher, how could I say no to students who wanted that critical experience.  I opened an informal invitation to their whole class and 12 kids met me outside the same theater for a Sunday matinee.  As we sat waiting, Michael asked if it would be correct to get some popcorn. I left the decision up to him, but he didn’t move.  No one moved for the next three and 1/2 hours, not even to go to the bathroom.

I watched them; they watched me.  We cried together.  As the movie ended we moved next door for coffee; no one ate or drank anything, but we all needed this period of transition before parents arrived for pickup.

When we were back in class on Monday, my movie band began to share their experience and soon they were all urging me to begin the Holocaust unit earlier than I had originally planned for it.   My movie group  filled our  classroom conversations with lots of empathetic connections and I promised them that I would show the film to future 8^th graders when it was out on video.

The following year, I had my own copy of the film,and even though it would probably fill a week of class time I didn’t hesitate to build it into my unit plan and reserve the VCR from the library for an entire week.  It was a challenge for me to watch it twice a day, but the responses from the kids were filled with the honesty I loved about them.  We ended the week, the unit, and moved to spring and to the final work of 8^th grade.

Just before Memorial Day weekend. my principal stopped by to see me. He looked concerned. “Did you show Schindler’s List to your 8^th graders recently?”

“Yes, about a month ago as part of our Holocaust unit. The kids were very moved.”

“Did you have parents sign consent forms?”

“No,” I still didn’t know where this was going.

“Mrs. Roberts called about it.  Did you know that the movie has an R rating?”

“I would figure that.” Duh! I kept to myself.

“Jack, come on, it’s the Holocaust, and Schindler’s List was Best Picture of the Year, Steven Spielberg Best Director, etc, etc.”

“I know, but why didn’t you let me know you were going to show it?  I don’t like surprises. (pause) You can’t show it again!”

“What?” Never? Jack, we both know this is not about an R rating.”  I was furious but held back. I’m patient, sometimes.

Jack had nothing more to say.

For the next few years it became our running joke.  Every year I would ask if I could show the movie and every year Jack would say no, reminding me that I should have gone through the proper channels the first time.

Finally, when it came out on TV, I got the green light. I sent  parental consent forms home and Jack was prepared to support me when some parents objected. He had created a community committee for controversial  materials.  I knew the committee members and they knew the parents who were fighting against it.  When I was called in to speak in defense of the film, I spoke with passion and educational support.

Jack had stopped blocking me at the door and was now pulling the strings he should have been pulling years before.

Now I was showing the film to three classes each day for the full week and my eyes were redder than ever. I watched my groups watching me.  They knew about the battle I had had to fight to share  this film with them and as the week ended, that last conversation with each group in a Socratic Seminar circle stiffened my resolve to love 8^th graders forever.

As I walked to the library with the VCR, Jack met me at the door.

“I think you’d better let me return that for you.  Some of your students are in the nurse’s office.  You need to see what’s going on.”

“What? Sure.”

I ran to Pat’s office. The receptionist ushered me in.

Six of my kids, boys and girls, were standing together in a circle, hysterical.  Pat with her wide, flabby grandma arms had them all wrapped in an enormous hug. As I joined the circle, we cried together, passing around a box of tissues.

Pat smiled and gently whispered, “ These tears are good. We are crying tears of humanity.”

I have been getting comfortable with the text this week and catching up on the videos. I didn’t realize that there was on an online class experience and I’m sorry I missed it but it seemed to be basic blogging and I have that pretty well mastered, although there’s always something new to learn.

Next week, I hope I’ll be in.

The text introduction describes two kinds of online teachers and clearly the second one is closer to the model for inspiration. It made me think about an online course I’ve been taking for the last three years. I’m learning Hebrew with two other adult students: a woman who travels from city to city Boston-to New York- to Chicago to spend time with her kids and grandkids, who are learning Hebrew in their schools and she wants to keep up. Our other classmate in an emergency room doctor in Brooklyn, NY and our teacher, Rivkah is an Israeli coming to us from Arad Israel. We are on at 9PM and she is up at 4AM but that never seems to show. WE are usually yawning while she is filled with enthusiasm and energy that is always infectious.

I was strongly considering quitting the class when we were on a long break a few months ago. While my partner’s family speaks Hebrew often when they are together, I don’t participate. I do speak more but not more than a sentence or two and I DON”T STUDY MUCH and that irritates me more than anyone else. I just didn’t want to waste my time or the group’s time but when I sent everyone a note about my thoughts and then entered the class a bit late, my teacher had already come to the conclusion that she was not letting me quit. The group was not letting me quit. And of course, I didn’t and I have no regrets.

But connecting this with the text and this course, I didn’t really make the connection to this online learning I’ve been experiencing and as I think about teaching an online course I would say that Rivkah, while she is not a tech person, teaches online the way she teaches off line. The company provides the tech support but sometimes they are unable to fix the issues of headsets and sound echoes but we preserve because of Rivkah and our sense of community. WE are in this together! In fact the class uses the same format as your online videos: Elluminate/Blackboard. I think that’s what forced the connection I should have picked up on right away.

I also watched the Alec Couros video and realized that we follow each other on Twitter, Google + and Facebook. What I loved best about his video is how his personality shows itself on the online space. It was good that I could stop and take notes on his talk because it was more a grab bag of many resources and while I am totally comfortable on online spaces, I remember when I was happy to just use my word processing program. I was a Digital Immigrant, intimidated by the Natives until I learned about digital storytelling and got messy with the tools and then I realized that these definitions were too simplistic.

Recently I downloaded WEsley Fryer’s new ebook:Playing with Media:simple ideas for powerful sharing. In it he shares a revision of Prensky’s Digital Natives and Immigrants. Fryer challenges educators to be Digital Bridges in the classroom and then leverage the power of media to support learning. I’m feeling more like a bridge than an immigrant.

I like how Couros also takes on Prensky’s early labels by sharing David White’s terms: digital visitor vs. resident. On the social networking spaces Couros talks about, you can tell the visitors from the residents. I am a proud resident of Facebook, Twitter and my blog even though I sometimes feel like a visitor but I’m going to say that I’ve planted deep roots and my homes have strong foundations.

So I am in week 2 now exited to spend more time reading the blogs of this community and hoping to get to know its members better.

Just yesterday I met an online friend who I have been slicing with for a few years at great blog hosted by two writing teachers .We didn’t skip a beat. I think I like the hybrid friendship.

So far, this is great!

Morning Slicers,

I have been a hit or miss Slicer for awhile, trying to get my blogging mo jo back.  A few days ago I joined an online course dealing with the issues of teaching online and of course you need to be blogging so, small steps will get me back.  I have been very good about writing my 750 words every day with http://750words.com.  So as school begins again so will I.

Last Thursday, as many teachers slowly found their way back to school for that first dreaded Superintendent’s Day Conference, I was scheduled to keynote at a new district that’s hired our writing project to support their work in technology and writing.  While my buddy Troy who began skyping in a kick off keynote from Michigan was not smooth and not welcomed, my physical presence and passion did hold the staff’s attention. They were willing to move from the back of the auditorium and even more amazingly, they were willing to write and write, in silence.  Here’s my picture.  I still can’t believe it!

Have a great day and a great year everyone.  I’m so happy to be back. Tara, thanks for the welcome back.

Bonnie

And here’s a poem to enjoy as you begin again:

     To be of use

                                                                                         The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who stand in the line and haul in their places,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil,

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

~ Marge Piercy ~

(Circles on the Water)

Have a great day and a great year everyone.  I’m so happy to be back. Tara, thanks for the welcome back.

Bonnie

Happy Labor Day everyone,

I am so glad that Lisa included me in this adventure given that I’m behind a few days. I found you on Facebook as I scrolled through my Status Updates.  Elyse Eidman-Aadah, Director of the National Writing Project posted your information and I clicked to your site and found that your experiment fit perfectly as a challenge I’m ready to take on.

My name is Bonnie Kaplan and after 30 years of teaching high school English and Drama it was a great decision for me to move out of my high school classroom and spend more of my time working with my other teaching/learning passion, Co-Directing the Hudson Valley Writing Project housed at the State University of New York at New Paltz, NY.  A local site of the National Writing Project, we invite great local teachers to our annual Summer Institute for an intensive one month institute that supports their development as writers and teacher consultants based on the national model of teachers teaching teachers.  The NWP has been around for over 30 years and like many other great education organizations, we have lost our federal funding. But our work as a site continues, especially in the technology area and given the issues of time and money, more and more teachers are looking to the internet for online courses.  So the timing for this adventure couldn’t have come at a better time.

So thanks Lisa for including me.

I have been blogging for 5 years now so I am comfortable in this virtual space.   I have been looking for a way to get back to my blog after a break.  I have a photo/text blog as well that I’ve maintained for a few years, posting a photo a day.  But one day I just stopped everything and have been trying to get my online rhythm going again. I do write into the morning with  750 words and that’s been really helpful.

So I have reconnected with my Diigo account and I just bought my first Etextbook.  So I’m psyched!

I haven’t stopped going to the movies but I don’t remember the last time I wrote a review but now that I’m itching to return to my blogging life what a perfect opportunity to share my excitement for The Debt, directed by John Madden, on Labor Day Weekend.

For yesterday’s premiere at the Garden State Plaza Mall theater, I was sure that the  4:10 showing would be small but as the minutes ticked closer to the dimming of the lights for the REAL set of previews, the theater was filling up respectably so Tuvia and I share the pleasure with a large group.

I don’t know why, but I was guarded about my expectations and warned Tuvia not to expect much. Usually it’s a bad sign when a movie is advertised and then it’s set back for opening and then released at the end of the summer but all of my doubts disappeared as the movie opened to scenes of Tel Aviv and a movement from present (1995)to past (1965) to present and back again with a trio of younger actors: Rachel (Jessica Chastain) ,Stephan (Marton Csokas) and David (Sam Worthington)in 1965 and then the trio played by a set of older actors: Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarán Hind,  30 years later.  No effort was made here to age the 20-something group and that was a great decision. Each group of actors were wonderful and none of the cast was Israeli and that didn’t mar the authenticity either, although in reading about the movie, now that I’ve seen it I just discovered that it’s a remake of an original award winning israeli version from 2007 that i’m not dying to see.  Just from the trailer it looks frame for frame identical.

Interesting story: A trio of young Mossad agents are sent to East Berlin to capture and bring home a known Nazi criminal, a doctor known as the Surgeon of Birkenau, Doktor Bernhardt (Jesper Christensen) who performed horrific experiments of Jewish children during the Holocaust.  Not an easy assignment for this team and given their youth and passions. During this capture the trio is forced to share a lie that will haunt them for the rest of their lives into the present, when Rachel and Stephan’s daughter writes a book about their heroics.

Rachel( Helen Mirren) takes center stage here to resolve the burden that has plagued all three.  I was riveted  but I needed the ride home and the moments just before sleep to digest it all.  I woke up satisfied with scenes still swirling in my brain.

I think that’s enough to share, don’t you?  It’s worth your time and money and now I’m on the trail of  “Ha-Hov” .

Morning,

I want to be back with my blog, so here I am…Actually I’m wondering if I start a new fresh blog.  What do you think?  A new format?  I’m not sure.  I’m a person of history.  I don’t know that I want to trash this blog.  What do you think?  I have my photo blog.  I don’t want to trash that one either.  So I am back and it feels good.

I have been writing every day on 750words.com and that commitment will continue.  But I’m thinking new blog to get this going… I don’t know that I need a history.

I am going crazy with indecision.

New blog? Hmm…

Morning,

I want to be back with my blog, so here I am…Actually I’m wondering if I start a new fresh blog.  What do you think?  A new format?  I’m not sure.  I’m a person of history.  I don’t know that I want to trash this blog.  What do you think?  I have my photo blog.  I don’t want to trash that one either.  So I am back and it feels good.

I have been writing every day on 750words.com and that commitment will continue.  But I’m thinking new blog to get this going… I don’t know that I need a history.

I am going crazy with indecision.

New blog? Hmm…

What a glorious way to sweat in DC on a Saturday in July!

ANd here’s more from the day!
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/07/save_our_schools_rocks_the_cap.html

For years I wrote every morning, almost every morning to start my day.  I used an online site: http://www.wordcountjournal.com and then I moved over to my wordpress blog, uploaded a new photo and wrote about it and then I got off the couch and moved into my day.

But one day without any plan I stopped.  First at my blog and then,I stopped writing into the day.  I still began my day on my computer but it was more connected to reading and answering emails, clicking around to links via twitter and personal updates on Facebook.

But I did really miss the writing but I allowed myself to take a writer’s break.

I’ve been back here, reflecting on projects and over at the iAnthology, our National Writing Project blog I co-facilitate with Kevin’s Meandering Mind.

And then, one morning  last week, as I was reading through tweets in  my tweeter feed my buddy Casey, mentioned that she had started writing into the morning at a site called 750 Words,  a challenge to write Morning Pages, inspired by The Artist’s Way.  I clicked over to the site and tried joining, until I realized I was already a member but I had yet to write there. Yes, I remembered.  A recommendation from Brian Fey.  I ached to get my fingers moving again and I was ready now to take advantage of this perfect new way to return to an important ritual that I was missing and now I was challenged to a 750 minimum every day.

Today is DAY 4. 750 words, 3 pages and then you can click on stats and get an idea about what dominated your writing. A fresh monthly challenge begins on August 1.  I committed to a the month with promises made for rewards if I succeed and and promises made if I don’t make it.

I think I live for new challenges.

So as I finish up my SOLC for a second week in a row( I’m really back)  I’m already thinking about what’s on my mind for today’s pages.

Have a good one…and join me if this sounds intriguing.

Bonnie