My Cardboard Balcony

I have learned a lot about my students in the past week. Hearing them talk about books and seeing their work in class says a lot more about them than I think they're even aware of. And one thing I have definitely noticed is how creative and talented these students are. See, one thing that really bothers me about California universities is that their requirements no longer leave room for more creative writing. Even essay writing can show some creativity, but the steady push for nonfiction and rhetoric completely ignores the fact that you become a stronger writer by being permitted to use your imagination. In both classes that I am student teaching at my high school site, my mentor teachers have assigned short stories. One teacher has provided basic benchmarks: A character, a need, and an obstacle, in three acts. Another teacher has them thinking about motif, conflict, and drive. The ideas I see from these students - mostly sixteen or seventeen years old - are remarkable. And their

Even Napoleon Was Taller Than This Guy by Belinda Roddie "Shut up, I'm dangerous!" squealed the diminutive emperor, flailing wildly.

I wanted to get up. I wanted to get up badly. I stared upward at the ceiling, which seemed to bend and dip and curve with each slow drop and laborious rise of my eyelids. This was no ceiling. This was an all-consuming plaster maw, its lips snapping for sustenance as it swelled toward me, ready to snap my soul up in its weary jaws. I was dying. I knew that now. My hand kept twitching against my stomach where the pain first began. Now the flame was in my chest, and it was burning, deep into my weathered ribcage, so battered after so many long and dreary years.