The Man Who Planted Trees

Note: I wrote this during and after school yesterday, but didn't get the chance to post it.

Today’s journal entry is a question: Can one person change the world? Explain your answer.

I am interested to see what my students think. Do they believe it is possible for one person to affect world change? I know already that I believe it is. And that the fact has been demonstrably proven with both positive and negatives effects.

Take Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as an example of changing the world in a negative way. He was the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attack on the US. That one man did change the world. Wars started. Prejudice and hatred increased. Terrorist attacks have risen. Tens of millions of the world’s poorest children starved to death as direct and indirect result of the economic upheavals that occurred.

On a more positive note, as one of my students pointed out, Gandhi was a person who affected a positive change upon the world. I elaborated by pointing out that the non-violent resistance was not only successful in India, but also in South Africa and the United States as well. Gandhi began his nonviolent resistance in South Africa and that legacy lasted. There was a change of government there that did not require civil war and millions upon millions dead. And Martin Luther King, Jr. adapted the lessons of Gandhi to the civil rights protests right here. Imagine the different way our society and the world would have reacted if the marchers in Birmingham had shot back at the police--or if the Freedom Riders came in armed and shooting.

Some students who are adamant that no one person can change the world, that doing that is up to God. Or that it was just plain impossible. It is a more than a little sad that their life experiences to date have trained them to nihilism. Some are very fatalistic. Some are full of anger. Some have already given up and are trying to live life without the benefit of hope.

Then I showed them the movie The Man Who Planted Trees, from the story by Jean Giono. It is an inspirational story of a man who plants trees, just because he felt the need to do so. And over the course of years he planted a forest. And very slowly and quietly, never seeking recognition, the forest grew. Most others thought that this was a miracle of nature.

To see the changes that this one man nurtured, through two world wars, is little short of miraculous. The animation of the film is breathtaking. It is simple yet profound, as befits the story it tells. I always find it to be an uplifting experience to watch this film.

Giono later wrote, after being asked many times, that the story was a work of fiction. But that should not deter us from believing the deeper message: one man can change the world. I point out the many thousands of people inspired by this story to plant trees. Millions of trees around the world have been planted by those who read the story. Or by others who were inspired by these people. One man, in this case Giono, has made a difference.

I love the power of writing.

More than One Way to Skin a Cat

Yesterday I had fun. It was Evil Fun. But, in doing so, I believe I made a point and turned a potential struggle for control in the classroom into a comedy show.

This is my first full, five-day week with my writing students (all of them, that is, except the ones out driving with the drivers' ed teacher). As such I am taking time each day to explain and practice with them writing to each of the different types of journal prompts I use in class.

To digress, at the beginning of class I have a PowerPoint presentation that automatically loops around and around to the five different prompts. The first slide is a quote, the second a picture of some sort, the third a story starter from The Writer's Book of Matches: 1,001 Prompts to Ignite Your Fiction by the staff of fresh boiles peanuts, a lterary journal, the fourth a question from the Book of Questions, and lastly a chance to write on whatever topic interests them that day.

So each day this week I am introducing them to a different kind of prompt, getting them to write to it. Writing to it myself. Yesterday we were writing to the picture prompt. It is an old one of some football player being tackled. I don't even remember where I got it. I told the class, after we talked about what kind of writing could come from the picture, that it was time to start and to get writing.

One young man, who I promised would remain nameless here, wasn't getting started. He was just sitting there. I stage whispered to him, "Nameless--it's time to get writing, man."

He looked up at me with a direct challenge in his eyes and said, "I don't want to write."

I looked at him in mock horror as I could feel the eyes of the rest of the class stealing over to the scene. They wanted to know how I would handle it. Would I yell at him, threaten him, ignore him and let him get a zero? Was this a path they wanted to follow him down?

I said in my best fake choked-up voice, "You don't want to write?"

Then I literally fell to my knees in front of his desk, clasped my hands together in supplication and began to wail in best theatrical voice, "Oh, Nameless, PLEASE write something! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!"

The rest of the class was silent for a moment. Whatever they expected, it sure wasn't this.

"Please, Nameless," I wailed, false sobs ripping from my chest, "Please write something during journal writing time!!!"

At this point he jumped up out of his desk and started backing away from me as the class dissolved into helpless laughter. I followed on my knees still begging him in my best theatrical manner to write.

He returned to his seat and picked up his pencil. The look in his eyes said he wasn't sure if he should be angry at me for the show I was putting on or scared that I really was a crazy man. I began to implore him. "Nameless, all you have to do to make me stop is to write something in your journal. Please writne one little thing in your journal so I can stop doing this!!"

He relented and began to write in the journal. As he finished his first word he looked up at me to see what effect it would have on my weird behavior.

Still on my knees I raised my hands into the air and shouted, "Halleluja! He's writing! Nameless is writing!!!" Still fake sobbing, now in joy, I rose to my feet, dusted off my knees, looked at the rest of the class and asked in my normal voice, "Is there anybody else who desn't want to write in their journal today?"

The room was silent except for the scribbling of pens and pencils on paper.

All in all, it was one of my better performances.