This Approaching 50-Stuff is Coming at Me In Stereo...When Grad Students Find It Difficult to Simply Plot the Story of Wizard of Oz

I need to update my tools. Wizard of Oz is no longer in the repertoire of stories a majority of kids know. They know of it, but don't know it. Drawing on Best Practices in Writing Instruction and a chapter on Narrative Writing we 'piggy-backed' on the arc of The Three Little Pigs to plot a story of our own (Freytag's pyramid...basic, late elementary-school stuff). The problem was in recall. The storyline was not engrained in the head of the learners, which is a demonstration that I'm getting old.

To be fair, the graduate students were kind with the prompt, although they said they will think of something that might be more in the grasp than Dorothy, Toto, and the moral of the story, "There's no place like home."

Now, I knew I was out-of-vogue with music (shucks, I've always been out of touch with music), but I guess I thought Wizard of Oz was still a family ritual, because...well, isn't it? 

It's not. 

I had to coach the crews with this, and I've learned my lesson. What has worked for 12 years with grad classes is over and I now think I'd be better with a children's book shared in class and then a tracing of the arc....all to prove a point for helping young writers with their own beginning, middle, and end.

Oh, I'm an episode of The Chair I am. 

Actually, I made this point to the students in which case they came to my defense saying that I still have the works of good instruction, but that flying monkeys need to be retired. I thought going to children's classic was the surest way to assure the point I was trying to make. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp. It is no more.

Well, time to get the heating pad, some denture cream, and to schedule that colonoscopy. This was my bad. I own it. I just never thought I'd see such a day. Que sera sera. And I thought the loss of running 10 miles a day was a blow to my ego. I mean, Geez.