Kaleidoscope

I teach creative writing at an arts camp called Kaleidoscope. I missed that movie that came out last year about an arts camp, but I can see why someone thought it would make a great premise. There's so much drama, so many little coming of age stories, and so much life. Our camp takes place at Winthrop University which I think adds a kind of Hogwarts dimension to the whole experience. It's really my favorite two weeks out of the year. For a teacher it's incredibly gratifying to go in a classroom and sit with people who share your passion and who happily do whatever you suggest and yet who have the independence of mind to be able to take assignments and make them their own. Each kid leaves his or her mark on you. And it's fun to see how they change from year to year. Of course, each year has its conflicts and dramas. This year a couple of girls snuck down into the boys' dorm. They were caught, of course, and I think it was fairly traumatizing and humiliating. A couple of years earlier there was a big stink about foul language and some of us almost staged a revolution, but it eventually calmed down. And of course there are always little personality conflicts and romances that ignite and burn out.

Every year I get the same classroom, second floor of the red brick conservatory building. The room has four large windows overlooking a courtyard. The walls are a dull gray with two white boards on either side. There are four rectangular heavy wooden tables and probably twenty rolling chairs in the room. We always push the tables together to make one big one. I throw a ream of paper and my collection of colored markers in the middle. Books on poetry and fiction writing go in the middle, too, and the literary magazines from past years.

They come strolling into the room, five to ten young writers, some of them brimming with talent bigger than their bodies can hold, others who are just wondering if by any chance this could be their claim to fame. I try to sit at different spots around the table each day and listen to their words. We laugh a lot. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes I open a window and music pours in. Other times the music inside is plenty.

For me, personally, the camp is incredibly inspiring. There's a novel that I've been working on forever--a coming of age novel about a girl in the early 1970s. I read a chapter each year and the kids have come to expect it and look forward to it. This year I didn't have a chapter ready so I wrote one in two days. The response was wonderful. Maybe I'll get inspired enuff to actually finish it.

I highly recommend this camp to any teenager who is interested in the arts and has an open mind. We get a little wild, but it's a great place to learn what it's like to live in that world.