Hello There!   (or maybe “Good morning!”)

 

I’m a writer, a teller of stories.

I’m also a teacher… more accurately, a mentor.

I’ve been practicing the use of words – and teaching the art of their use – for as long as I can remember.

In the classroom and at my study desk.

In the city room of a couple of pretty fair daily newspapers.

In libraries.

In various coffee shops.

And online.

I work primarily one-on-one with student writers. It’s how I make my living.

Full disclosure: I charge for the work I do.

Even more fully, I have never – and will never – turn a student away because of money.

If you have a son or daughter – junior high through college – who could benefit from working with me, I would consider it an honor and a privilege to talk with you. And thanks to Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, the Other Guy, and everyone who has made teaching and learning a moveable feast, we can talk with one another without leaving the kitchen table, the office, the coffee shop – wherever we are situated and comfortable.

I have more to say, but I have run on too long already, and I will save the rest for Monday morning, and then for each Monday morning thereafter.

Be well!

John – AKA The OH!

 "We Gotta"

 

Some years ago – well, honestly, many years ago, back when I was young and a good deal less mature and capable than I thought I was, I worked summers as a camp counselor, and as the fates would have it, I was appointed the riflery instructor.

Now, I am not at all interested in guns and hunting and such, and wasn’t when I was made the head riflery instructor. I was given that job because the camp director wanted someone responsible working with – as I generally described it –“six rifles, 12 young campers, and 20,000 rounds of ammunition.”

The rifle range atmosphere was not good when I was given the key to the gun locker. Many of the campers didn’t want to spend a morning or afternoon in a confined setting with too many rules and no fun.

I sympathized with that, and, along with several safety-related, common sense rule modifications, I worked on what today we would call “changing the culture” of the rifle range from an activity the kids “had to do” to one they wanted to participate in. And I succeeded.

And now to the point. That’s how I mentor student writers. Writing is an excellent way to do something we all want to do – express ourselves. It’s not about rules, but about the stories we have inside of us that want out. And what is wanted is not rules, but a simple “I gotta” environment – defined as an environment in which there is no need for writing assignments, because each student’s writing spirit will not be denied:

“There ain’t no teacher here. Just me and that old guy, and I gotta get the words down before I forget ‘em.”

 

(On Friday, The single “we gotta” rule. And it may surprise you.

E-DOT

I was a teacher, a young one, and not yet very good at my trade.

I was also a father, with a son named Martin, whom my wife and I took swimming when he was about five months old. He took to the water like he remembered his first nine months.

Somewhere in his third year I thought I might introduce him to diving.

But…

But I did not do the traditional, “Martin, we’re going to learn to dive, so stand here on the edge of the pool, raise your hands over your head, shove off, and drop hands-and-head-first into the pool.”

We started with Martin holding my hands and jumping into the pool. It was not long until he was jumping in without holding my hands.

Then came a period of jumping in… climbing out… jumping in… climbing out – a period I began to think would never end.

Until one night. Martin had done his jumping in… climbing out routine for a while, and then, after a brief meditative communion with the water, he raised his hands over his head and launched himself into a dive. First attempt, a technically perfect dive.

Without quite realizing that I was doing it, I allowed that experience to wander around with my other musings, and eventually came up with an explanation – not of what I had done, but of what Martin had done.

For whatever reason, diving became what his young spirit convinced him he ought to do, and from there he worked the process out in his mind and his body. And then he simply dived.

Meantime, I was metaphorically sucking on my thumb and cogitating the journey Martin and I had taken together – the process, if you will, and what I came up with was what I now shorthand as E-DOT – Environment. Direction. Ownership. Time.

Martin’s Environment was the YMCA swimming pool and our fellowship.

His Direction was diving – not that he was told to dive, but that he found that he wanted to.

The project – learning to dive – was Martin’s. He had Ownership of the learning process.

In addition, Martin had the Time he needed. Not the artificial and arbitrary time period established by someone else, but the time his spirit told him he needed.

E-DOT.

It’s how we learn. 

 

Writing Mentor: It's what I do

Writing is my life, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

I remember the first time I imagined myself as a writer. I was in fourth grade, and as I sat at my desk with all my schoolwork finished, I allowed my imagination to take me back to the brief period in 1860-1861 between Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency and his inauguration. I was a reporter for a Northern newspaper writing from somewhere in the South and I wrote a dispatch for my newspaper, reporting that the time was dire, and that a war could start at any time.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that imaginary newspaper article sealed my fate: I would be a writer. I went to college, graduated with a degree in education and teaching certification – and no desire to teach. My first job was as a reporter for the largest newspaper in Illinois outside of Chicago.

I stayed with journalism for a while, then took a job as a sixth-grade teacher, and finally, after wandering in the desert called “Middle Age,” began the course I am, at the age of 79, still on: combining writing and teaching.

It’s what I do.

I basically work one-on-one, and there’s always room for one more.

I'm always available - johnoverbeck42@gmail.com - 513-476-4963.