July 12th, 2018

Writing to Heal

The third day started with a new author talk. Husband and wife, Hassan and Francemise Kingsberry, both authors, spoke about what inspired them to write and gave the campers some advice, while leading them through a brainstorming exercise. The Kingsberrys’ both wrote books about their first daughter, who passed away at a young age. While Francemise found solace in painting and poetry, Hassan found it in autobiographical storytelling. They told the campers that neither one of them had thought of themselves as writers, but after going through this hardship they felt called by it. Once they had shared their story, the Kingsberrys began to talk more about the process of writing itself, relating it to the process of gardening. At the end of the talk, they conducted a brainstorming exercise in which the campers had to “word dump” all the words that came to their minds when they thought about happiness and what made them happy. 

After the morning author presentation was over the campers divided into their groups and started their work for the day. It was the fourth and fifth grade class’ turn to travel to the Weatherspoon Art Museum on campus. There, they completed the activities that the groups yesterday had done. In the classrooms and computer labs, back in the education building, campers were busy completing writing exercises, specifically centered around imagery and characterization, and brainstorming about ideas for their big writing piece.

Snack time was made more exciting today by a visit from the Kona Ice truck. Each class had a turn to buy a snow cone if they choose to. The process allowed the campers to enjoy some nice fresh air which, combined with the sugar, got them excited to write.

At noon, campers either returned home or stayed for the afternoon session and ate lunch. The afternoon sessions were just as fun packed as the morning’s were.
Today the fiction class went to the art museum and viewed a video the museum had on display. After the video concluded, they discussed how there were different point of views present in it and how those types could be used in their own fiction writing. When they returned to the education building they were ready to use what they had seen and talked about in their own writings.

The podcasting class listened to some interesting examples of current podcasts. The campers then had a chance to think about the topic of these podcasts and do a little debating on what they felt they might have done or what they believed to be true. Many of the campers thought of strong points and concepts that they could incorporate into their own future podcast.

The spoken word class had some visitors. Two of the instructor’s former students came to speak about their experience with poetry slam and offered the campers some advice. The group also walked around campus, finding cool buildings and trees that could inspire future poems.

​At the end of the day, campers were worn out but felt excited about the progress they were making.