Day -10: The Priest's Son

Last year, I tried a new writing project at the end of the year. I had my students assume the role of a person living in one of the periods of California history that we had studied, and I had them write a diary in the voice of that person. It was a fun and revealing exercise, giving students a too-rare chance to really exercise their imaginations. I would turn the lights off, have the students help me with sound effects as our time-travel machine warmed up, and then narrate events we were traveling backwards through. "We're traveling back before cellphones were invented, before computers were invented, before there were cars, before there was electricity. We're traveling back before California was a state," etc. And then I would ask students a series of questions, guiding them as they tried to imagine their lives in the past. "The sun is rising and you are waking up. What do you hear? What do you see around you? Who is with you?" And so on.

This year, the time I have for teaching social studies each week has been cut in half (down to 45 minutes a week from at least 90 minutes a week in past years) due to our school's "Program Improvement" status. (Schools that fail to meet standardized test score targets must implement a variety of changes, and in elementary schools, those changes mean that everything but language arts and math instruction is basically eliminated - or at least drastically reduced). I felt like I didn't have time to do the historical fiction project on the same scale this year, plus my students have learned about fewer time periods than in past years. So I decided to have everyone set their diaries during the mission period this time around. Some students assumed the roles of Native Americans living at missions and some assumed the role of Spanish priests or soldiers.


Alex wrote this diary, and though he has some misconceptions about the sex lives of priests (misconceptions, I guess, which are shared by some priests themselves), he gets the important parts.

I see a bed, a cruz on a wall, a cemetery. No one is with me. The room looks old world, really old. I hear the bells and the people speaking to me. I hear birds. I see the old pictures. I'm going to the church because I am the padre. I am a priest. I am 20 years old. My family is in Spain. I came here to become a priest like my father. My name is Jesus.

It's in the middle of the day. I fed the animals. I helped the Native Americans with chores. When I first came here it was a disaster. I planned to marry a beautiful Spanish woman and to be the best priest ever. I will learn to pray more to believe in God. Make the Native Americans believe in God. God has the power. There's only one god, not a bunch of gods. You people should believe in God. That's my dream speech. I want a nice house in Spain. Sometimes I want to go back to Spain, meet my family there, make a new life there, become the greatest priest in Spain. People will respect me. The day is fainting away. It's time to sleep and dream sweet dreams. Good night.

P.S. What students really liked about the historical fiction project last year was that I bought parchment paper (the kind you use for baking) and cut out rectangles that they used for the covers of their diaries. They loved crumpling up the parchment paper so it would look old. It is hecka hard, though, to hole-punch parchment paper!