Thursday quick-write - In the school library

The prompt: A student walks into the library/media center at lunchtime.  What is she/he thinking?  Worried about?  Dreading?  Hoping or wishing for? What are the risks/stakes for him/her? Show us in a paragraph or two. ( from Katemessner.com)

*****

"How could Coach do this to me?" Jamie moaned. "Delaying tryouts for two days? This will throw me off my game for sure."

"Two extra days of practice should help, J," observed Sam. "It's not like Coach Weitz moved tryouts earlier or something."

Jamie leaned wearily against the library wall. "But don't you see? Now seventh-grade basketball tryouts are the day after report cards, not the day before! And you know what my parents say about grades..."

"School is your fulltime job - As and Bs or else!" the two friends chorused.

The librarian looked over with a grin. "Surely you're not worried about your grades, Mr. Webster! You've always been a good student."

"But Mrs. White, our whole English grade is a poetry unit! What do I know about poetry? And we'll have to write our own poetry! Ms. Baker is just trying to torture us."
*****
Yep, junior high boys and poetry... ought to be an interesting second six-weeks grading period!
**kmm

Tuesday quick-write: a favorite place

Today's Teachers Write! prompt is a quick-write about describing a favorite place.

Since I've chosen to write with fountain pen and paper for now, it's not a simple thing to copy-and-paste whatever I've written for exercises like this. But that's also good, since I don't think that I want everything I'm writing for practice to be 'out there in the world' through this blog. And since it's on physical paper, it takes a little more effort to make the strikeouts and restarted sentences disappear than it would if I were writing on the computer. I know that when it comes time to copy down some worth-saving practice work into Word, I'll edit and rewrite as I go.

Some bits of my favorite place paragraph, after rewriting to include more sensory details as led by Kate in the writing prompt:

"As the high school day winds down and the last locker-slams echo in the hallways, I can still sense my students' pathways through the library today..."  (and I changed one word as I typed this from my handwritten page, because it sounds better. Told ya.) "...the concentrated essence of favorite black hoodie worn too many days in a row..."

Most of my WIP will be set in school, probably junior high, and even some time spent in the library there. Big surprise!
**kmm