Teachers Write! Weekly Check In #2

I’m excited to hear how your second week of Teachers Write: Poetry and Play went! 

Our challenge this week was to look for haikus in the wild and when I think of haikus, I think of my friend Marcie Flinchum Atkins. She’s a librarian and writer in Virginia. You can check out her books here and her poetry resources here. We’ve been supporting each other as writers for years now and I’m excited to tell you why haikus make me think of her! 

Here we are in Baltimore in 2019 at the NCTE Annual Convention.

Marcie writes picture books and novels and poetry. You can sign up for her poetry postcards and she’ll send you snail mail haikus! They always make me smile when I find one in my mailbox. Here are some I’ve received from her:

Marcie and I enjoy talking about process and she’ll often share behind-the-scenes posts on her Instagram at @marciefatkins. She goes on walks and takes photos that inspire her writing. Since Kate and Loree Griffin Burns asked us to look for inspiration all around us, I went through my camera roll to see what has sparked my attention lately. 

Last Sunday, I went down to Botanical Cafe in Chicago to meet up with my Chicago Latina Writers group. I was about ten minutes away when I turned my head and spotted a huge, larger than life skeleton sitting in the parking lot of bar/restaurant. I had to see it up close so I made a u-turn and parked so I could take a picture. While most people are out in nature looking for inspiration, I put an urban twist on this week’s challenge. Here I am with the art and my Chicago Latina Writers group. 

   

Here’s the brainstorming I did:

And then I went back to Canva and here’s my picture and my haiku! If you’d like to print it, you can find it here.

I didn’t expect to use Canva this summer for Teachers Write but it’s been a super fun tool and I use it with students as well. You can get a free account or sign up for an education account. If you use Canva or try it out, you can share your creation in the comments or share a link to your creation in the comments. I’d love to see what you create!

 

And now for the Weekly Check In!

Teachers Write Weekly Check-In Agreements:

1. We respect each other and the type of writing we each do.

2. We are positive and encourage each other.

3. We recognize and maintain this as a safe, inclusive environment for all.

4. We have fun!

Ideas for today in the comments section:

What are your goals for Teachers Write?

How did you do this week? Did you meet your weekly goal(s)?

What was the pit of your week? (The hardest part, the non-fun part?)

What was the peak of your week? (The best part, the most-fun part?)

My Weekly Check-In: My goals for this week was to play with the prompts and to add some words to my current work in progress (WIP). I had fun with my urban twist on the haiku challenge! AND I opened up my WIP and actually added words. While I only added a little over 600 words, it was nice to reconnect with my manuscript and see what I have and what I can add in. 

This upcoming week I will be at a yoga retreat in Costa Rica. I’m looking forward to unwinding and relaxing and really letting myself be in the moment. I have a poetry workbook to take with me so I’ll continue to play with poetry but I’m not letting myself take my iPad so I know I won’t be adding words to my WIP. 

I hope you have a fantastic week and I can’t wait to hear all about it!

Teachers Write! Weekly Check In #1

Welcome to Teachers Write 2023 and the Weekly Check-In! I'm Jen Vincent and writing is my jam! Teachers who write make the very best teachers of writing and Teachers Write has been a huge part of my journey as a writer.

If you’re here, you get it! Whether you already write consistently or you are here to dust off your notebook or you have an inkling that this will be a game changer, you understand that being able to walk the walk matters when it comes to writing instruction.

A quick intro to me! I’ve hosted the Weekly Check In for Teachers Write with Kate Messner since we started Teachers Write in 2012. I've written young adult novels and picture books and essays. Most recently, I’m working on writing about what it looks like to live the life of a writer and how we can share this with students.

I'm a 6-8 Language Arts teacher for Bannockburn School in Bannockburn, Illinois and I’ve been in a variety of roles in my 21 years of teaching. Beyond school, I love being outdoors, hiking, kayaking, paddle boarding, practicing yoga, and hanging out with my husband (also a teacher!) and our two teenage sons (yikes!).

This year, our focus is Poetry and Play and this week, I played around with how I might use Laura Ruby’s suggestion to use a hermit crab poem to write slant and share why being a teacher who writes matters.

Yesterday, I met my friend Carrie Thomas, a high school English teacher friend who writes, at a local coffee shop and I snapped a picture of the menu.

I’m passionate about supporting teachers as writers because it matters. It matters because when we write, we are better able to connect with students and confer with them from an authentic place. Living the life of a writer means navigating the ups and downs and being able to say to a student writer, “That’s happened to me before. You know what I tried?” I wondered, how could I use the menu as a mentor text to share some ways that being a teacher who writes matters?

I started with a blank page in my notepad, recreating the menu with a Teachers Write spin, playing with the words and trying out ideas.

Then I switched over to Canva and had fun designing my own Teachers Write Specialties menu. If you’d like a PDF version to print, you can find it here.

I’m absolutely thrilled that you are here and looking forward to hearing how your first week of Teachers Write: Poetry and Play went! 

Here’s how the Weekly Check In goes. I share a bit of my writing life and I invite you to reflect on your writing life this week and share the ups and downs in the comments. It’s been pretty much the same since 2012 when we first started and if you’d like to see the resources I’ve shared over the years, this link will take you to all my previous Teachers Write posts, starting with the most recent first.

Teachers Write Weekly Check-In Agreements:

1. We respect each other and the type of writing we each do.

2. We are positive and encourage each other.

3. We recognize and maintain this as a safe, inclusive environment for all.

4. We have fun!

Ideas for today in the comments section:

What are your goals for Teachers Write?

How did you do this week? Did you meet your weekly goal(s)?

What was the pit of your week? (The hardest part, the non-fun part?)

What was the peak of your week? (The best part, the most-fun part?)

My Weekly Check-In: My goals for Teachers Write this year are to follow along with the prompts from Kate and our fabulous guest authors and to let myself play and explore. I do have a WIP (work in progress) that is currently at 21,244 words and I’d love to add to my word count and possibly finish my first draft before school starts in August…but I’m giving myself a lot of grace and going with the flow. 

This week I had fun blending Kate’s idea for found poems and Laura Ruby’s hermit crab poems suggestion. BUT I did not work on my WIP until I needed to write this blog post and realized I should at least open it during week 1. Let’s see if I can get some words added by next week’s check-in!

Give yourself a huge pat on the back for being part of Teachers Write this summer! Yay you! I‘m excited to connect with you and hear how Teachers Write is going so far. If you have any questions or if I can help with anything, please let me know.

OPEN WRITE: Poetry Treasure Hunt

This week I'm joining Ethical ELA for a 5-day writing opportunity for teachers. It's called Open Write and there are posts with a prompt everyday. Teacher writers are invited to try the prompt and share in the comments. Today the prompt was to gather found items from outside and the invitation was to use write found poetry inspired by #teachinglivingpoets' We're going on a treasure hunt!

I meant to look for things while walking Perdi or when we went out to eat for Father's Day but I ended up finding a snatch of text from an interview I listened to. It was Michael Silverblatt interviewing Zadie Smith about On Beauty and it was too perfect not to write down.

On How To Be Human

It's summer

And I can read again

I can write again

I can create again

I have headspace 

And I'm not used to it

Sometimes I scroll on my phone

Sometimes I feel listless

Other times I get busy

And I crave more

Like I'm watching YouTube

But I'm also listening to an interview

Like I'm programmed to do all the things at once

And then I'm struck with beauty

Words that are so true

Words that I feel so deeply

The reading of novels and poetry

was instruction 

on how to be human

Michael Silverblatt's voice sears 

straight to my soul

I stop

And listen to them again

Write them down

Read them one more time

It's summer

And I can read again

I can write again

I can create again

OPEN WRITE: Things You Can Do With a Garden Hose

I've followed Ethical ELA for a while now and this week I noticed that they have a 5-day writing opportunity for teachers so I decided to join in. It's called Open Write and there are posts with a prompt everyday. Teacher writers are invited to try the prompt and share in the comments. For the first day, the prompt was from Allyson Berryhill and the invitation was to use Ally Visser's poem Things You Can Do With an Orange as a mentor text. I used the wheel to spin a noun and got "garden hose" so here's my poem.

Things You Can Do With a Garden Hose

celebrate
for summer is here

time to
unwind
let loose
release the kinks

time to
quench
the lawn
the flowers
the garden
your thirst and your soul

time to
slip and slide
sprint through the sprinkler
splash a sibling

time to
fill a bucket
a baby pool
water balloons

and celebrate
for summer is here

Can you tell I'm so excited that summer is here? I am reveling in the time to be still and quiet and to be outside and to read and write and visit with friends.

Writing Woke

I read this fantastic poetry collection last year and fell in love right away. On the very first day of this school year - via Zoom - I introduced students to Mahogany L. Browne and we read Instructions of Listening to the Trees and did shared writing. I go back to this book again and again. It's a collection with poems about a variety of social issues written by Mahogany L. Browne, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Olivia Gatwood with artwork by Theodore Taylor III. 

This text offers poems that can stand alone but can also be paired with another text. I'm a huge fan of pairing texts for two main reasons. 1. No one text can ever be diverse enough to encompass every lived experience. We have to offer a variety of texts to students and pairing texts or making text sets is a great way to do this. 2. Short texts are where it's at! Between the pandemic and the Tik Tok generation, short is key. Using short(er) texts, we can pair pieces and allow for students to practice comparing, making connections between texts, and learning from multiple resources.

As a mentor text, I love the shared writing I did with Instructions on Listening to the Trees so I'd like to share it. First of all, this piece is about paying attention and writers need to pay attention! It was a great way to kick off the year but this could be something to talk about at any time. Secondly, this poem is about community. I realized very early on in remote teaching that I have to be extra intentional about building community. Now that we are hybrid, this is still something I am paying attention to. Talking about it is important. Which leads me to shared writing. Not only are we reading about community but we each offered a line and I merged all the lines together into our own co-created poem. 

So when you read the poem, here's the line I zoned in on for students:

"And this is when I remember home"

I then asked students to step outside, notice, and write a line to finish their line: "The way..." My students are middle schoolers so I felt okay to ask them to step outside with the disclaimer to stay safe. I wrote my own beginning inspired by Mahogany L. Browne's poem and then added my students' lines. Here's a snapshot of the beginning:

I also tried this with teachers in my district and here's how that poem starts:

Y'all, this is just ONE poem from this collection. Every single poem is a gem and is so inspiring. Another one that resonates with my students is I've Been There Before. One of my 8th grade students was inspired to write about feelings he's been experiencing. I invited him to share with the class and what he wrote really resonated with others in the class. It was awesome. I'll be sharing slides that you can use with students in the Story Exploratory Patreon community this week. 

Writing with Brave in the Woods

As a teacher, I'm obsessed with two things right now. Pairing texts and digital texts. If you haven't seen Franki Sibberson's new Instagram account, @textsets I invite you to check it out. Texts sets are where it's at! 

Looking critically at the texts we choose to share with students is important. In my district, we were asked to teach a nonfiction unit from a resource that was bought without teacher input. When I looked at the list of resources, I saw that all the texts used in the unit centered white people and after doing my research, I found that they were all seemed to be written about white people. 

I brought this up to the administrators and my team right away and asked for us to have a discussion about the problem with this and how to address it. This is what happens if we do not look critically at the resources we share with students. 

Enter text sets and digital texts. We should always be making connections between texts and offering a variety of texts to our students. Because no one text will ever be everything it needs to be to every person. There is no simple black dress when it comes this work. There is no silver bullet. There is no magic diet pill. The solution is the work. And the work is gathering up lots of different texts to share with students and giving them opportunities to make connections. 

Okay, so here's this week's mentor text with a text you can pair it with to do exactly what I'm talking about and with purpose. You can pair texts for so many different reasons. This match up has to do with theme and also using repetition. 

At the beginning of Tracy Holczer's book Brave in the Woods, the main character is worried about her brother who has gone missing. 

Here's the snatch of text to look at and wonder about:

"In the thirty-two days since they'd found our Connor had gone missing, the worry had never left Juni's mind.

Not when she tried to read The One and Only Ivan for the seventh time because it was her favorite book ever. Not when she worked with Anya all day turning blackberries into jam. Not when she climbed the magical juniper tree, for which she was named, to sit in the old saddle Connor had loosely tied to the widest branch. 

Especially not then. 

She worried about being cursed. She worried about the bees in her chest. She worried that school was about to happen to her again. How was she supposed to get up every morning and think about math and English and social studies when her brother had vanished? How was she supposed to sit at a school desk five miles away when the army man could come back at an moment and tell her family they'd found Connor?" (p. 7-8)

I noticed the worry, her brain on overdrive and thought about Jason Reynold's book Look Both Ways and the story The Broom Dog. It's available with Jason himself reading it aloud with my Scholastic account so I asked students to read and listen to the story and to notice what the main character is worried about and how the author shows it on the page. 

A few weeks ago, I asked my students to write to me about things they wished their teachers knew. Worry and anxiety filled my screen. They are aware of their mental health and that they need help navigating complicated times.

Here's an opportunity to explore what it means to worry and how that manifests in our brains and our bodies. And then to try writing about it ourselves. I started thinking about what it means to worry and how that means fear is driving the bus. 

And then I thought of a time in my life when I was really worried, when my brain was on overdrive. It was in middle school when we had to go on a field trip to a teams course. You know the kind where you go with your group into the woods and a facilitator leads you in all sorts of team building activities. I hated them at first but then I grew to love them. 

I made a list in my notebook of what I was worried about and then how it went. And then I looked at the mentor text again and how repetition and listing all the things shows how worry shows up and is persistent and grows. And I wrote a poem to share with students:

What If?

We're on the bus, off to the teams course.

What are we going to do?

Why can't we be with our friends?

Will people be mean to me?

Will people say horrible things to me?

Will people judge me?

Will I be able to do the activities?
What if I can't do them?

What if I fail?

What if I mess up?

Will I survive?

We're on the bus, me and my brain.

Wondering and worrying

and wasting away the minutes 

until

We're there and we climb off the bus.

We stand with our group. 

We follow our facilitator into the woods.

We put one foot in front of the other.

We introduce ourselves.

We try the activities, one at a time.

Human knot, 

carefully passing a Koosh ball, the cure to save all humanity from a deadly virus,

 saving each other from lava on Mars.

crawling through a two-foot wide tunnel.

We survive.

What if next time we just did it?

During a time when it's so important to pay attention to our mental health and also to think about how we honor our students' by talking about our emotions and in giving them opportunities to engage with characters with a variety of lived experiences, I love pairing these two texts. I love that there's a digital option to listen to Jason read aloud the story himself. I love all the invitations to write with mentor texts. 

Writing With Say Her Name

I know I'm in love with poetry right now. After Amanda Gorman's spoken word performances at the inauguration AND at the Super Bowl, I've been thinking a lot about poetry and spoken word. I've been talking to my students about activism and we're looking at poetry as a way to speak up about something that is important to you. 

A few years ago, I went to a poetry workshop with Ola Faleti at 826CHI and I remember she talked about how writing your name on a piece of paper is resistance. Just the fact that YOU are here matters. I love that sentiment and have thought about it over and over again. 

We watched Amanda Gorman's The Hill We Climb and then we watched Elizabeth Acevedo's Rat Ode and we answered some of the questions from session one of this 826 Digital Lesson: Poets in Revolt! written by Ola herself. I used Flippity to create a spinner with 6 numbers on it and we discussed the questions that came up. This is how I was able to put a digital-hybrird-pandemic "spin" on Ola's M&M activity. You could use digital dice too. 

I love poetry as revolution and was happy to discover Zetta Elliott's Say Her Name. It's a poetry collection that pairs well with Woke by Mahogany L. Browne, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Olivia Gatwood with illustrations by Theodore Taylor. 

In the introduction, Zetta writes, "I shared my 'mentor texts' - poems I have admired, studied and taught for years. These poets helped me to find my own voice and I hoped they would inspire my students, too." (Introduction, p. 1)

One of the questions that came up with my students was whether they read poetry or whether they considered themselves to be poets. One student mentioned Shel Silverstein. I grabbed two Shel Silverstein books I had and read "Jimmy Jet and His TV Set" and "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out" and how he's definitely speaking up about something he cares about with those poems. Overall, though, my students didn't feel that they knew much about poems or that considered themselves to be poets. 

We're going to change that! I asked them to share song lyrics that they like and we'll discuss them next, looking at what stands out and how they might try that themselves. As I read, I thought about poetry as resistance. I thought about me as resistance. How do I take care of myself, how do I live fully, what am I doing that impacts the world, how am I celebrating? So many themes popped out to me and I started making lists. I love to make lists and sometimes I don't know how much I have to say until I start to make lists. And then once I can see what I have to say, then I can decide how to organize it and make it mean something from there. 

I started by thinking of ways I resist...

which is kind of how I show up fully as myself without apologizing to anyone:

Then I read one of the poems on self care and I wrote some words about that:

And then she included a Lucille Clifton poem called "Won't You Celebrate With Me?"

and I asked the question, "how do you celebrate everyday?"

And finally, I saw this poem and it made me smile because I have a tattoo with roses and this poem made me stop and think about how roses are gentle but also thorny and fragile about they also climb walls, they won't be held down and I love that. 

You might use this poem as a mentor text, or many of the poems in this book. Or this might just be one poem or collection you share as your explore poems. I think it's fun to help students find their own style and poetry is one way to really have some fun. 

Here's what I came up with: 

Celebrate Your Life, Come On

I am here

with a "white girls' name" that was spelled 

Jenniffer

on my birth certificate

I am here 

to live big

and with purpose

to connect with people

and take time for myself

to dance to live music 

and sleep in the next morning

to tell stories

and listen to some too

Designed to live

Determined to live

Unapologetic and free

I inspire others with my audacity

I am here

to be me

Have any poetry you love to share with students or that goes along with the theme of poetry as resolution? Please share!

Writing With A Fire In My Hands

One of the challenges of writing a story is to be able to zone in on a small moment. And then from there to choose not just a small moment but a meaningful moment.

Writers use mentor texts to gather up ideas and to think about how to take those ideas and turn them into published pieces.

A Fire In My Hands is a collection of poetry written by Gary Soto. His poem Oranges is the most anthologized poem in contemporary literature. How's that for a fun fact?

To get students brainstorming, first show students four images: oranges, a bench, a football, a clock. Model how to make a list of ideas for each of them and give them time to write their own ideas that come to mind. 

Then read Oranges, Some Words About Time, and Manuel and the Football Scrubs and show students how one small moment can be a poem. Ask them to notice what stands out to them and then have them try some of these techniques and craft moves in their own writing. They might even have more ideas for stories to write after reading what Gary Soto wrote about in his poems.

Of course, I tried this myself and suggest you try it too! I decided to use the first few lines of Oranges to get myself started.

The Clock Tower

The first time I saw the Clock Tower

with my friend Mike, I was 18? 19?

We took off driving

rolling down the windows and turning up the music.

College kids with nothing to do, 

meandering through cornfields in my white Suzuki Sidekick.

Eventually we found ourselves in Rockford,

stopping to get gas at a station next to the Clock Tower.

I wrote about this with my 8th graders 

the morning of the attack on the Capitol.

It was January 6th, 2021.

I taught my 7th graders about the Bill of Rights that afternoon.

The next day I thought about how to show up for my students.

How to talk to them about freedom in America. 

How to talk to them about injustice and how to speak out against it.

I decided we'd write and we'd talk

and I'd give them space and hopefully hold them up.

I reminded them to enjoy the moments

to cherish the times

when they can be themselves

hang out with a friend

roll down the windows

turn up the music

go for a drive

through cornfield after cornfield

and end up at the Clock Tower in Rockford. 

Because it's moments like that

two friends

happy and spontaneous

not a care in the world

young and free

that remind us what we are fighting for 

in moments like this.

Writing Out of Wonder

In 2017, I shared the book Out of Wonder by Kwame Alexander with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth with illustrations by Ekua Holmes. You can read all about it here. 

I LOVE mentor texts! I started this blog because I love them so much and I see the power in how to use them. At any moment in time, writers always have mentors, people who have come before us, people who have led the way, people who guide us. But we have to know how to call on them. 

Out of Wonder is an awesome place to start with mentor texts because it's literally a book of poems inspired by poets. The authors chose twenty poets to learn from and wrote poems in honor of them and their style. 

In the Preface, Kwame writes, "I believe that by reading other poets we can discover our own wonder." This reminds me of a quote from Mary Lou Kownacki, "There isn't anyone you couldn't love once you've heard their story."

When we share mentor texts with students and invite them into life of a writer. We say, welcome to the party! See all these other awesome people? They write just like you. We give them role models to look up to. 

This is why it's so important to read widely and select texts that represent a variety of lived experiences. In this way we show our students that we value diversity and that we celebrate being in community with those who might look like us and those who might not. 

I suggested in my original post about this book that you can invite students to choose a poet from Out of Wonder, read the poem that was written in honor of them, and then go research them and their poetry. I decided to try this myself with Kwame's work. In my notebook I made a list of his work that stands out to me. 

Depending on your students, you can decide if you do this together or if they do it on their own. You can decide if you give them links to an author and their work or if you let them research on their own. With my middle schoolers, I know they have music they love and I think it would be super interesting to let them try this with bands or singers that they listen to. 

I started by making a "What I Notice" list. Kwame's writing has rhythm and is fun. He pays attention to word choice and word length and sometimes he plays with how the words are arranged on the page. And then I had to go and listen to the The OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO for Kwame Alexander's THE PLAYBOOK (with Music by Randy Preston)

Kwame reminds me to have fun! 

But he also reminds me to take a stance in Take a Knee.

I decided to try this myself and here's what I came up with. 

Live Big

One

life to live

Many 

dreams to pursue

One

soul in one body

Many 

hugs to give

One 

step to take

Many 

miles to walk

One 

turn to take

Many 

shots to make

One 

breathe to take 

Many 

sighs to exhale

One 

heart to beat

Many

people to meet

One

life to live

So many chances

to live big

Which poet are you interested in celebrating? I'd love to hear your favorite poets or your students favorite poets. If you love this and want slides so you can use this as a mini lesson in your anti-racist writer's workshop, join the Story Exploratory Patreon community here. 

Whatcha Wanna Do? - Friends and Small Moments

Britt Hawthorne is one of my most favorite people to learn from. I follow her on Instagram and am a Patron on Patreon because I appreciate everything she shares. This week she shared a spoken word poem from Phil Kaye called "Before the Internet" that is pure gold to a literacy teacher. 

In his poem, Phil shares a small moment. A small moment with his friend during summer back in the 90's before the Internet. It's a perfect nine-year-old memory that I think a lot of students might relate to, even if they are kids living during a pandemic in 2020 with the Internet. 

I'm definitely going to share Phil's poem with my students but I'm going to preface it by showing the following clip from Disney's The Jungle Book where the vultures are sitting around trying to think of something to do. 

  

Both the Disney artists and Phil Kaye found something so universal, sitting around with friends trying to think of something to do, and made it interesting by adding super specific details. The vultures joke about waiting for something to die and how they'd be happy about that and Phil talks about watching Indiana Jones and wanting to pretend they could be as cool as he is. Two similar moments with two different stories that make them unique. 

It made me think of this poem "Instructions on Listening to the Trees" from Woke: A Young Poet's Call to Justice by Mahogany L. Browne with Elizabeth Acevedo and Olivia Gatwood. This poem is about going outside and taking a moment to breathe and listen. It's about noticing how we are part of something bigger than us. I think Phil's poem is sort of about this too. It's about recognizing a small moment and writing about it in such a way that it's obvious that he paid attention.  

I'm excited to start off the school year with these texts and to invite students to think about their lives and to pay attention to the small moments and to notice the world around them. This year I'm being super intentional about choosing texts that match and pair together to help students think more deeply about the concepts we're discussing and about themselves as learners and humans. 

If you have any texts that you think would pair well with the ones I shared here, please share!

Whoopi and Rainer Maria Rilke

This week, we started looking for movies to watch since we are home and sheltering in place because of the coronavirus. We were scrolling through Disney + when I saw the movie Sister Act on the screen and convinced my family to watch it.

The next day, my older son started watching Sister Act 2. (Yay! He must have actually liked the first one! He's an almost teenager so it's hard to tell what he likes or doesn't like these days...)

For some background. In Sister Act, Whoopi Goldberg witnesses a crime and has to go into hiding. She pretends to be a nun and lives in a convent where she befriends the other nuns and takes charge of their choir, makes it amazing, and save the church.

In Sister Act 2, Whoopi Goldberg is invited back to pretend to be a nun and teach students and save the church this time by turning around the school's choice program.

I was working on school stuff but listened to the movie in the background and pointed out that Lauryn Hill and Jennifer Love Hewitt were in the movie too. At one point, Lauryn Hill's character can't be in the choir because her mom won't let her. Whoopi's character trackers her down and tells her about Rainer Maria Rilke and his "Letters to a Young Poet." Here's the scene:

And here's Letters to a Young Poet (The First Letter) by Rainer Maria Rilke. I just had to go look it up because how awesome is that!? I love when pop culture gives me little nuggets of ideas to look up and explore more. 

And then of course, I wanted to know more about Whoopi Goldberg. These days she can be found on The View but she's been through a lot as an actor and it was fascinating to spend some time learning about her. Here's a fascinating episode from OWN and Oprah's Master Class that's called The Hilarious One-Woman Show That Sparked Whoopi Goldberg's Career. Whoopi Goldberg is an awesome example of being who you are. She does what makes sense to her and doesn't listen to what others think of her. 

You know, 

be an actor because you love to act. 

Don't be an actor because 

you think you're going to get famous, 

because that's luck. 

-Whoopi Goldberg

No matter what it is you want to work at, do it because you love it. Not because anyone else is telling you to do it. Not because anything is telling you that you should. Do it because it rings true for you and because you believe in doing it.