ABSTRACT
Frankl’s work focused on the meaning that we bring to, compose, create, or find in our lives. He suggests that meaning is not stagnant, but exists with a certain degree of organicity, something that has a sense of present, past and future. Earlier in the same work, he wrote, “. . . those most apt to survive the camps were those orientated toward the future-toward a task, or a person, waiting for them in the future” (p. 34). Our work in the fifth and sixth grades was about making meaning and making sense of the past and present. Yet as I considered the children’s futures, I wondered about the importance of a strong sense of self and the importance of the ways in which self influences others. The children gained in confidence and self-esteem (even pride) as they presented their writing in three venues, described and discussed in this chapter. In two of those venues, they read the work they’d written at school. In one, they composed relying upon a familiar format as they wrote and presented slam poetry. In the analysis at the end of the chapter, I discuss the children’s work using the idea of ‘spheres of influence’ to consider the far or not-so-far reaching effects (influence on extant inertia) of their writing. Their individual and very local sense-and meaning-making have been discussed in almost every chapter; their influence on the official portrait is the focus of the spheres of influence discussion. Some spheres of influence are present in our lives, but others are a potential, an orientation toward the future. I found no professional literature on spheres of influence, but Tolle (2006) refers to them in writing about human spirituality and the ways in which we influence other’s lives.
