After the craziness that was the great "My Name" experiment of 2010, I went back and simplified the lesson, recreated a template that was easier to follow, and cut the text by at least half.
What I ended up with was a one paragraph excerpt from Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, which my students could easily use as a mentor text and create their own short poem about themselves.
Hallelujah! Burt and I had a moment of happy connection! He wasn't sure what to say about himself or his thoughts on his name, so we sat and talked more about what he likes to do and I was finally able to push through the "I don't know" mine field of doom into a place where Burt actually used sensory details completely on his own to describe playing video games. He finished his poem in record time -- before some of the other students! And beamed happily when I read it to the class for him.
I love the drawing board. It is always there waiting, always open to new ideas, always a blank slate, forgiving your past transgressions.
And I was able to send Burt home for the weekend with just one more taste of success.
This is why we experiment.
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