Author Visit to Kennedy Middle School

Last week I spent a day and a half at Kennedy Middle School in Cupertino, CA. I shared with their 6th grade students (500 of them in groups of 60 at a time!) about my Ancient Elements series of books, The Bronze Dagger, The Alabaster Jar, and The Sliver Coin. They also got to see and touch my ancient artifacts.

What a sharp and delightful group of students! In sharing about the writing process, I talked about how becoming a writer was always one of my dreams, and compared having a dream or a passion to the process of making a hard boiled egg.  After discussing the comparison, I asked students to put this quote from Carl Sandburg in their own words, “Nothing happens unless first a dream.” One 6th grader said, “It means that when you have a dream about something it’s usually beyond what you think you can do, but if you really want it, having a dream helps you push past the hard things to make it happen.” I then asked students to share some of their dreams. They included becoming one of the fastest runners, becoming an inventor, an engineer, a teacher, and a writer, among other dreams.

One student came in wearing this top. She was delighted when she heard one of our topics was about having a dream. I didn’t have time to take a picture of the shirt that day, but she surprised me when I returned to school the following day. Now sporting a different shirt, she brought the dreams shirt with her so I could catch a snapshot of it!