Both positive and negative is like honey and bitter medicine. Good for you.

I did three presentations at a school today and it was so nice to get feedback! The first presentation of the day was my Work in Progress presentation.

It’s a presentation I developed to be a kind of on-going look at the projects I’m working on, but it’s evolved more into a piece about character education.

Character education is really big in the Ontario school curriculum.

I start by talking about what a work in progress really is. The kids know it’s like a project or something you’re working on, but then I tell them that I consider, myself a work in progress.

Until the day I die, I’m constantly editing myself, constantly learning from opportunities that come my way. I share a number of stories that I learned a lot from and some of them are extremely embarrassing.

All the feedback I got on my presentation was very positive and yet, I do not consider Work in Progress my best presentation. Before when people would compliment me on it, I would tell them that they hadn’t seen my The Roses in My Carpets presentation or ESL to Author. But I heard that it’s not nice to do that. It’s better to accept a compliment graciously and not try to correct the person giving it.

Today, one teacher told me she could have listened to me for hours. A grade six girl followed me up the stairs when I was heading to the staff room and told me she’d been inspired.

And then, in the staff room, a teacher who’d been absent all morning at a testing workshop, told me that she hated to have missed my session. And when she told the people at the testing workshop that I had been visiting her school, so many of the teachers running the workshop knew about me, said I was fantastic, and that she was really missing out.

It was kind of this teacher to tell me that!

Was it really just the other day that I was feeling down, in the trough of a sine curve?

The hardest thing about school visits is getting up early.

I really find them so rejuvenating in so many ways.

Meeting your readers, sharing good things you’ve learned with them, and in the end you can almost keep their encouragement in mind when you’re sitting down to write the next piece.

But today wasn’t all positive. Got some negative feedback too.

My hubby thinks my ramblings on here make me look like a loonie.

Two of my daughters were more kind. They said that most of my posts were fine but sometimes I sounded unbearably smug and obnoxious–a little.

Really, they said, it was mostly when I was writing about other books and writers that I’m critiquing. They said they know how blunt I can be when I’m talking about things like that but that other people might get the wrong opinion of me.

Well, then. I guess it’s something I’ll just have to work on.

My hubby thinks I shouldn’t be dismantling the ‘mystique’ of who Rukhsana Khan really is.

Yeah right!

I really don’t agree.

I actually believe that blogging is a way for people to get to know the person behind my books, warts and all.

And in fact, in my presentations, I don’t candy coat my own shortcomings, I’m down to earth, and as frank and honest as I can be. That’s probably why I can present at schools in some of the worst urban ghettos in Toronto, and not have any problems keeping the kids’ attention.

I did ESL to Author down in Regent Park (one of the biggest ghettoes of Toronto), and a few months later I met one of the teachers who’d seen my presentation at another school and she told me that that particular school, and those particular students were some of the most notorious she’d ever come across, and in fact the same kids I’d presented to, had made other presenters cry.

Wow! I was just glad I hadn’t known that before I got up in front of them.

The funny thing was the next year, that same notorious school asked me to come and do some storytelling for the same group of kids. I decided to tell them some Persian folktales, one in particular, that dealt with honesty. Many of the kids had criminal backgrounds. Again I had no trouble with these kids. I was about five minutes from finishing my storytelling session when the recess bell rang.

Knowing how much these kinds of kids loved their recess I told them I would wrap up without finishing the story.

The kids told me, “No! Finish the story!”

So what’s the point of today’s post?

I hope it doesn’t sound too braggy.

Basically it’s that I think you need the positive feedback to carry you through the whole idea that you could deserve to stand up in front of a group and tell them stuff. It takes a lot of chutzpah to think you can do that and have something meaningful to say.

But at the same time, take the negative criticism, so you can improve yourself.

I’ll be watching for a smug tone that creeps into my posting. Especially when it comes to dealing with other people’s writing.

Oh, by the way, my tech-savvy son in law got rid of spider solitaire and freecell for me. In fact he deleted all the games from my computer, so yup, the monkey’s off my back! Yeah!