I love Fridays. There is something wonderful about a teaching day that is flexible, full, and ready for whatever learning opportunity is needed. My plan book was blank today, but I knew just what learning would support the learners in our class today. We didn’t squander a single minute…and left inspired and ready…for more learning, for spring break, and for our 30-day poetry challenge!
My time in the garden yesterday stayed with me today. I was thinking about bees and the work they do. As I wrote today (waiting for a table to be ready for us for dinner), I realized that teachers are a lot like bees. The work we do is often perceived as unremarkable, the day in day out attending to a series of seemingly small skills that add up to fueling all of the professions in our country. Like bees and pollination, teaching is work that matters in so many ways but seems so inconsequential in its dailiness. As teachers, we pollinate the future, growing the innovators, the designers, the architects, the scientists, the work force of the future. I’ve learned to appreciate bees, and I know that teachers are appreciated in many circles, but the teaching profession tends to be under appreciated and misunderstood in our larger society. Enough from my soapbox, here’s today’s poem:
Bees
Cellophane wings
with invisible speed
buzz buzz
carry fuzzy pollinators
from bloom to bloom
buzz buzz
doing unremarkable work
that matters
to all of us
buzz buzz
pollinating the future
Douillard 2018
I can feel the pollination of poetry taking hold in the classroom. Students came in to school this morning ready to share poems they had worked on at home overnight. Here’s a little collection to enjoy!
Trees
Tall, lanky branches
stretch out
like fireworks,
leaves explode into different colors
throughout seasons,
roots grapple to find water in the dry soil.
After getting old
the bark shreds off,
like a snake shedding its skin.
The branches that used to be fireworks
slowly snap, then fall
and break into pieces of branch and twig.
Koa
The Giant
The giant soars above me
towering over the town
the giant’s arms glide against the wind
over everything in the park
the calm surrounds me
as the roots dig deeper into the ground.
silently watching everything
Photo and poem by Avi
And something playful…
A Hula Hoop
It twirls like never before
it dances like a ballerina
it spins like a dreidelWhen it falls it gets back up
Photo and poem by Siena
It’s officially spring break…I can’t wait to see how the poetry momentum sustains when we are away from school!
Thinking Through My Lens 