They Were Keen Students

This morning, I spoke to the eighth grade language arts class at St. Rose Elementary School, about 35 minutes from my home.  My invitation to speak came way back in November, and like any good middle school assignment, I waiting until the last minute to write my speech.  I was asked to talk about Sherlock Holmes and the writing process.  Lucky for me, I had a speech on the writing process that I gave to another middle school so that part of the presentation was ready to go. 

But, I get to add a whole section on to my speech and talk about Sherlock Holmes?  Yes, please!

I knew the kids had read at least one Holmes story this year, but wasn't sure which one.  They were too old to be the target audience for Sherlock Gnomes, and St. Rose is a small farm town whose nearest movie theater is over a half hour away, so they probably didn't rush right out this weekend to see it.  BBC's Sherlock happened forever ago to 13 year-olds, and Elementary is for old people.  So, what would be my selling point?

Sherlock Holmes.  The cases.  Doctor Watson.

These topics might seem simplistic to the devoted Sherlockian, but when you get down to brass tacks, is there anything more interesting to the core of the Canon?  You have the original superhero, mysteries that defy logic but are yet solved with deduction, and the best wingman anyone could ask for.

I could've spoken all day about the Canon and what makes it so great, but teenagers don't want to hear an old guy talk at them about his hobbies.  I hit them with ten minutes of Sherlock Holmes talk, ten minutes of the writing process, and was lucky enough that the fifteen students in the room had some really great questions to carry me through the rest of the hour.

It turned out that the story they had read in class was "The Speckled Band."  Most of them were hazy on the particulars when I first started talking about it (one girl said, "That was way back in 2017!"), but once they realized I wasn't going to shut up about how good the story was, they jumped into the conversation.  We bantered about Grimsby Roylott and Holmes' early deduction with Helen Stoner. 

Anyone who's ever been around a group of kids, especially in a classroom, know that there's usually that one group of boys who want to be cool and funny.  So when one of those boys chimed in about how weird it was that the bed was bolted to the floor, I knew Doyle's story had made an impression.

From these kids today I learned a lot.  Most of it was awesome.  But when I pointed out that the Holmes stories have been around since 1886, and tried to contextualize it with pointing out how long ago NINETEEN 86 was to them... let's just say their reactions to 1986 didn't make me feel young.

But man, did we have some good conversations today.  We covered everything from Joseph Bell and The Strand to Logan Paul and Netflix.  I learned that none of them had seen BBC's Sherlock, but one guy said his brother watched "that show with the guy with the long coat," so I think we were talking about the same thing.

Although Sherlock Holmes and the writing process wasn't everyone's cup of tea in the room, everyone was very respectful and cool.  And there were some students there that were genuinely curious about the writing process!  One girl asked about how to manage the pacing of her writing, while another had a great question about the friendship in my book between Holmes and Watson.  You could tell these girls had the creative spark, and I hope they keep plugging away at whatever they're currently working on.

After a twenty minute speech and forty-five minutes of a really fun discussion, it was time for me to head home and the the students to head to their next class.  Even if everyone in the class doesn't immediately want to join their local Sherlockian society, they got out of work in class today, I got to talk about Sherlock Holmes for an hour, and we had some really good back and forth. 

I'll call it a win.