What is this?

I should begin by simply answering the question in the title of this post:  it is a blog started in the summer of 2018 that seeks to provide a repository for retrospective writing about the high school experience.  The target audience is the high school student; the majority of writers are slightly older young people offering advice about how to survive high school “with your soul intact.”  The title, 650 Words, is a reference to the maximum length of the Common App college essay, the real or false statement of identity that sits at the end of the high school journey.

But let me backtrack a little and explain its origins.

The idea for this blog came to me while I was on one of my summer walks.

August morning, second mile, headphones in, listening to the post-rock instrumental compilation that serves as a soundtrack for my thinking (Explosions in the Sky, Red Sparowes, and my favorite, Lights and Motion.)

As an English teacher who gets two-and-a-half months off every summer, I am always looking for writing-related projects.  For years I have been plucking away at various extended pieces of fiction, from a Young Adult novel about high school to a Middle Grade novel about Little League to a collection of short stories centered around a Southern California independent school -- just to name a few.  And if you are wondering, my attempts to get anything published have been sporadic and mercurial.  Don’t get me wrong -- I would love to see my work in the Fiction/Literature section at Barnes & Noble.  But it has never been the priority.  I love the process of creating characters, breathing them to life out of nothing, and then seeing what happens when I drop them into a story. And while writing fiction in this manner is a completely solitary activity, it forces me to see the world through the perspective of others, which ultimately serves to increase my capacity for understanding, empathy, and love.  So even if I continue to plink away anonymously, I will always keep writing.  It makes me a better person.

But this summer I was between projects.  So as I walked, I brainstormed about different ways I could carve out a purpose for my passion

What if I started a blog?

It could be geared toward high school students, offering them a wide variety of advice from the perspective of the college counselor turned English teacher.  Advice for surviving high school, practical information about letters of recommendation, the inside scoop on dealing with teachers -- that sort of thing.

But as I walked, my enthusiasm waned.  I could certainly offer young people some advice -- I do it all the time as a teacher of 11th and 12th graders.  But after passing along some insider info about teachers and the college process, or maybe the odd post about hiking or birdwatching or how to live a centered life or the absolute necessity of reading this or that book, where would that leave me?  I would still be a 53-year-old guy trying to talk to 16- or 17-year-old kids.  Also:  I have papers to grade, rec letters to write, books to teach.  How would I be able to keep up with something like that?

About mile 4, swinging back toward my house, it hit me.  I might not be able to speak directly to the contemporary high school experience, but I have access to hundreds of people who can.  In my 28 years as a teacher, thousands of students have passed through my classes -- and I am still in touch with hundreds of them.  Some are in college.  Some are married, some are not.  Some are soccer moms who organize team parties.  Some are two years out of college, bouncing from job to job in LA or Chicago or Austin, Texas.  Some are making films.  Some are writers.  Some haven’t written a word since college.  Some are doctors, some are lawyers, some are actors.  Some are spiritual teachers. Some are straight, some are gay.  Some were gay in high school but didn’t know it.

This is where I started getting excited, because I began to imagine a scenario where I could provide a safe forum for many of my former students, all of whom have taken different paths and lived different lives, to tell their stories.  Stories might come from a hundred different angles and take up a hundred different topics, but the unifying theme would be identity and the high school experience, especially as it looks in retrospect.

By the time I got home from my walk, the reasons to move ahead with the blog were lining up nicely. I could think of a handful of reasons why it was a worthwhile project, but above all, it was about utility. I thought, and still think, that it could be of use.  High school readers could benefit from the collective wisdom of their older peers, whether they were writing about academic pressure, gender identity, dealing with parents, navigating relationships, questions of sexual orientation, or garden variety teenage angst.  Such a format would allow me to play the role of recruiter, curator, moderator, gatherer, and solicitor of materials -- a role I’m much more comfortable with than the all-knowing dispenser of advice.

As I began to imagine the blog taking shape, I started getting more and more excited about seeing some of my former students' writing again.  One of the most disappointing things about being an English teacher is that in most cases you don’t see the long-term fruits of your labor.  You work all year helping to coax forth someone’s writing voice -- but then in most cases, you never see anything written by that person ever again.  Perhaps this would be an ancillary benefit:  it might give a handful of young people a good reason to come back to writing.


As I think back to all of the great writers who have come through my classes over the last 28 years -- hundreds of you -- I feel like the guy who is trying to get the band back together.  C’mon, it will be fun! We can play a pleasant mix of new stuff and old favorites! This new generation of teenagers hasn’t heard any of our classics! :)