Tag: lifelong learner

HopeWords Conference 2024

Posted on by Rachel Lonas

When you own your own tutoring business, you have to research and pay for professional development for yourself. HopeWords has been a writing conference that is an easy place to say yes to every year. It’s located in the beautiful state of West Virginia which is actually a reasonable driving distance from us in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All the speakers sit out among the audience and eat at the same tiny restaurants as everyone else. Everyone just chats like it’s the most normal thing to do with strangers who write from all over the U.S.

This is my third year and I want to emphasize that one of the blessings of HopeWords is that they are making space for all ages at the conference. My oldest daughter, age 14, came this year and last year and Travis (the host), the other attendees, and the authors have welcomed, embraced, and challenged her. In her everyday life she is used to people mispronouncing and misspelling her biblical name. Many of the conference attendees when they met her said, “What a beautiful name” because they understood its biblical significance. Daniel Nayeri, the keynote speaker, signed her book and when I said offhandedly that she has 3 other sisters with Bible place names he said enthusiastically, “Ooh. Tell me all of them!” as we proceeded to have a short and lively conversation. The next day when he came in the restaurant where we were eating he boisterously (and so jolly-like!), pointed at all of us saying he knew us and we just laughed and waved right back at him going back to our conversation, like it was not odd to give a friendly wave to a Newbery award winner at dinner.

Our college friend, Amanda Opelt, sings and writes and was invited to welcome guests back into the afternoon sessions with her guitar. She asked our daughter a week before the conference if she would be willing to sing the high harmony with her on an Appalachian tune covered by the Wailin’ Jennys. When our daughter joined her on stage she introduced her as her friend, not my “college friends’ daughter” but a young woman worthy of her identity and relationship in her own right. Amanda even paid for appetizers at the local restaurant saying she owed her a portion of her honorarium.

Photographs by Cheryl Eichman

At the “after party” on Saturday we sat at a table with the men responsible for a lot of the revitalization projects going on in Bluefield, West Virginia. We had a riveting discussion on community development practices for 30 minutes. The undertone was about not giving up hope in hard places. My daughter said later it was a fascinating conversation and not at all what she thought we’d end up talking about with so many writers around!

It’s the little things like that that remind me why HopeWords is special. There is a deep respect for children and young adults within this Christian community of writers and community movers and shakers. The attendees treated my daughter like an adult. The speakers did the same in their speeches and in how they are truly the same humble people on and off the stage. Anyone involved with HopeWords welcomes and invites all into a life of writing, creativity, community, and curiosity. As an educator, I cannot think of a better mission for a conference.

This year I noticed there were many more young people than had come in the past and I hope the number of teens keeps rising as this conference continues to flourish. Our youngest daughter is in Kindergarten and she says she has “poem words” in her mind. She illustrates stories about pirates, animals, and princesses constantly. Maybe some day she will want to come, too?


Until next year,

Rachel

Ranking View or Side View

Posted on by Rachel Lonas

Several weeks ago, the girls and I were discussing an essay by Alfie Kohn called “The Costs of Overemphasizing Achievement”. I wanted his reminders that much harm can be done when we lose sight of what it means to be a lifelong learner. As we talked, a brilliant metaphor popped out of someone’s mouth. She said, measuring your personal best is kind of like an Olympian runner deciding which view he’s going to take when the race is over– the view where they are all ranked from ‘best to worst’ or the side view where the camera has to slow down so much to even see the hundredth of a second difference in their performance. The first view says that getting a medal and glory is the highest goal, but the second view says “we all trained incredibly hard with what we had and that’s the best we could give that day”. A ranking view is vertical and hierarchical, whereas the side view shows a horizontal effort from everyone and a driving passion.

I’m 25 years older than the girls in the program, but I told them that I am still learning these lessons, especially as a parent. I often rank myself — coming in 9th place for “consistently provided kids swimming lessons” or 5th in “children have matching socks to wear”. Busy days like today particularly catapult me into a ranking view of motherhood. Kids arrive home from school, back to back appointments, pick up something from Walgreens, drop off library books that are due, go to a cross country meet, come home to make dinner, bathe toddler and get her to bed, finish mixing pumpkin pie filling for tomorrow, unload and load dishwasher, write this blog post and struggle to keep my eyes open.

Mercifully, most days aren’t quite this full, but I was reminded of a saving grace that helps me take the side view of parenting — MaMa’s spaghetti. It’s a running joke in my family about how when my sister and I visited my grandparents in Nashville, MaMa would always have a crockpot full of spaghetti to greet us. She did this for years, and as I was quietly told after she died, it was because my grandma wasn’t the best cook but always wanted to provide something that would be well received by the grandkids. For a bit of context, MaMa was the youngest in her large family and both her parents died when she was very young, causing her to get tossed around to various siblings for a time. She also married young by today’s standards and worked a lot when PaPa was on the road playing steel guitar; she didn’t exactly have the time or emotional energy to pour herself into creative cooking. If I get a text from my mom asking what my kids will eat when they come over, I sometimes reply, “MaMa’s spaghetti is always a hit!”

So on a night like tonight that is packed with needs, I am thankful that my children still enjoy me fixing them various bowls of pantry pasta — angel hair, farfalle, or rotini. 3 generations of moms sharing a small ritual when the creativity has left their brain, but the generosity has not left their heart. Just the small act of us being around the table helps drown out the I-should-be-feeding-them-a-more-balanced-meal noise. The rotini is tri-colored. That’s vegetable enough for this evening.