Without a group of Ecole Deer Meadow School students, Maxine Spence would have had no idea that toilets in newer schools don't have tanks behind them or that Grade 5 students aren't allowed to use whiteout.
“These are important little things that I definitely would have missed without the feedback from the kids,” she said.
Last fall, Spence, a writer from Didsbury who has self-published one book, came to the school to talk to students in grades 5 and 6 about being an author.
The students, she said, were so interested in her discussion about the creative writing process that she invited them to help her edit her own project.
“At the end of it, because the kids were so keen, I had this idea,” Spence said. “Editing is such a huge thing for the writing process and teachers are always wanting it stressed how important it is; I thought it would be a really fun thing to carry them (the students) along with me as I'm working on this chapter-book project that I've got going.”
So Spence presented her idea to teachers at the school and, in February, students from three classes began looking at the author's work and providing comments, suggesting changes and pointing out any spelling or grammatical errors.
The students also gave Spence an insider's view of the world and characters she was writing about, allowing her to alter her story to include details she would not have known without insight from a child in Grade 5.
The book, which has the working title of J-Company, falls within the fantasy genre and Spence provided the following synopsis for its plot.
“Our hero is unable to get into his secret world and there's an unlikely band that gathers together to try and save these secret worlds from the bad guys.”
When she started writing the story, Spence had a Grade 3 audience in mind but one student felt the characters were too old for Grade 3.
“I have shifted them now to Grade 5 age level,” she said.
And along with pointing out that school toilets no longer have rear tanks, the students informed Spence that Grade 5 students aren't yet allowed to use the white correction fluid commonly referred to as whiteout.
“And whiteout plays a big part in my story. So I have to change that.”
The students told Spence, however, that her description of riding a bicycle was “bang on.”
Montana Durand, a Grade 6 student helping with the editing project, said assisting Spence has sparked her own desire to pursue a career in writing and editing.
“It has been a really fun and funny mission. Reading along with it and giving all that feedback, it just makes you feel like that career is actually what you want to do when you grow up,” she said. “Ever since I started this project, I have been thinking of ideas of what I could write about, of what things I could do.”
Having the chance to be a part of a project that has the potential to be read by many people was one of the biggest thrills for Tierney Craven, a Grade 5 student at the school.
“It's really nice to know that you're contributing to a story,” she said. “It's a great opportunity to be working with a real author. When it's published, it'll be like, I helped write that.”
Noah Martens, who is also in Grade 5, said the students involved in the project have taken pride in helping Spence create a realistic vision of a young person's world.
“We've been telling her when something didn't make sense, what we liked about the story.”
Beyond helping Spence tell the best story she can, the students are also receiving tips from the author for their own creative writing projects.
“So that it could be a two-way sort of thing,” Spence said.
Many of the students have sent Spence chapters from their own stories and she has been responding with comments and suggestions.
Emma Dixon, a Grade 5 student, is creating a picture book about the adventures of two children who fall into a hole while looking for seashells at the beach.
She said her interaction with Spence has taught her the importance of reading a story over carefully and letting other people offer ideas.
“I'm going back and seeing if some of the stuff (Spence) uses would work in my story,” she said.
Grade 5 student Katie Supernant said the chance to work with Spence has opened up a new “colourful vocabulary” that she plans to use for her story called Enchanted Island, which is about an orphan girl who, after being adopted by a “mean person,” rows to an island to discover a friend who she thought was dead is living there.
Charmaine Dagg, a Grade 5 teacher at the school, said she agreed to the collaboration because she thought the exchange of ideas between Spence and her young editors would show the students the value of perseverance and patience while writing and editing.
“Basically it was because I wanted them to see that editing isn't just rereading once and handing it in and saying ‘Help me Mrs. Dagg.' I wanted them to realize it's a struggle, it is a really huge part of the editing process,” she said.
So far, the students have helped Spence polish the first 33 chapters of the book.
She said she has about three chapters left to write and she and the students will continue editing each other's work into the summer through email.
Once the book is completed, Spence will start looking at possible publishers and she is already thinking of how to include the names of the students who have helped her in the book's credits and inviting them to a book launch.
Since she still has to write the book's ending and then edit the entire manuscript, she added, there's still a long way to go before the students will see the book on store shelves.
“They might be in Grade 10 by the time it happens.”
