I got this from a long-time member of our group:
Hi Ben –
Most of my classes have gone completely off the rails and are now 100% free form, one story leading into the next, using characters we already have and occasionally adding a new one. There are family trees and timelines all over my room, back stories, time travel. One class has an immortal Russian woman who’s been married 10 times. They are creating stories to go with each of the husbands, but not necessarily in chronological order.
The point to all this is that, after checking in with the blog today for the first time in weeks, I realize that I may be the only person in the entire community who is being paid money to do whatever the hell I want to with kids. They are limited, frustrating, infuriating, culturally-impoverished kids, but I get to do whatever I want to with them. Or more accurately stated, whatever they want to. Whatever we want to.