Hello, Students!

When I was a kindergartener, one of my favorite things about school was show-and-tell.  Once a week, we dragged out our carpet squares, sat in a circle, and learned about each other through objects outside of our classroom experience.  This week, I’ve asked you to bring a material or object essential to your writing or your conception of yourself as a writer to class.  We’re just getting to know one another, and we’re busily constructing our classroom space and terms together, so I am eager to learn what you’ll bring and how that object or material shapes you and your writing.  You’ll want to get to know me, too, so I’ll use this space for show-and-tell.

Writing is a big part of my identity, so it has been difficult to choose just one object.  After some thought, though, the material I find most essential to my writing is…sticky notes

 

As you can see, not all of these are regular sticky notes.  I tend to favor flags, but my favorites are those yellow ones on top.  They look as though they might be flags, but they’re sticky down the length of the note, not the width.  It’s as if someone cut most of the paper off of a regular, square pad of sticky notes.  My mom used to receive a lot of packages at her place of work, and one of the companies she dealt with used these sticky notes as packing filler.  She realized how useful they might be to me, so she sent them my way.  And I use them for everything.  I use them to mark pages and write marginalia in books.  I use them to take small notes.  I use them as tape when I cut my drafts apart and rearrange them.  I use them to remind myself to check facts or quotes.  I use them to add things to my planner.  I use them to write myself nice notes about trying my best.  I use them to remind myself that my mom still cares about my work.  And me.