Author Archives: kd0602
Things and Places: #writeout
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An email subscription led me to a podcast called Everything is Alive, where inanimate objects are interviewed. (Full disclosure, I only listened to a few minutes of one podcast–but did read the transcript linked above.) But, this idea of the personality and alive-ness of inanimate objects got me thinking about inspiration for writing. And, in the serendipity sort of way I often experience when thinking and writing and lesson planning, I came across an old favorite poem I have used with students called Pencils by Barbara Esbensen. (You can read Esbensen’s poem linked above.)
I have this idea that students will pick an object that matters to them and create their own inanimate object poetry inspired by Pencils. Should I have them write about pencils? No…let them choose something that matters to each of them. What would I pick? My camera, of course. So, here’s my try:
Cameras
The rooms in a camera
are a tight fit
but forests seascapes classrooms
crowd right in
In a camera
nature’s colors riot, drawing your eye
and dim light shifts the world
to black and white
From a photographer (experienced or not)
an unexplained photo may emerge
framed by the untold story
living in the stillness, frozen in time
Every image in your camera
is ready to
dance on rays of light
ready
to focus and expose
ready to come right out
and save that moment
so that you can explore
and experience it again and again
®Douillard
Will my third graders be able to animate their inanimate objects? I think so…and I also think that the objects will connect them to places they love and spend time at…so #writeout it is! I’ll share the results later in the week!
Here are some of my favorite places that crowd right into the rooms in my camera!
A Place I Love: #writeout
When I learned that the National Day on Writing, the National Park Service, and the National Writing Project would join forces to celebrate writing through #writeout in October, I was all in. #writeout is meant to help writers focus on stories of place…particularly if there is a national park nearby. I don’t happen to live near a national park, but I do live by spectacular outdoor spaces where I spend lots of time walking…and that inspire my writing.
As October began, students read and studied the poem, City I Love by Lee Bennett Hopkins. The rhythms and patterns of the poem were friendly to students, they were able to notice many techniques Hopkins employed. And better yet, they were eager and ready to write their own versions using this poem as their mentor text.
City I Love by Lee Bennett Hopkins
In the city
I live in—
city I love—
mornings wake
to swishes, swashes,
sputters
of sweepers
swooshing litter
from gutters.
In the city
I live in—
city I love—
afternoons pulse
with people hurrying,
scurrying—
races of faces
pacing to
must-get-there
places.
In the city
I live in—
city I love—
nights shimmer
with lights
competing
with stars
above
unknown heights.
In the city
I live in—
city I love—
as dreams
start to creep
my city
of senses
lulls
me
to
sleep.
With this poem as a mentor text, I wrote my own version, focusing on a favorite place of mine. Of course, I had to write about walking on the beach!
Beach I Love
At the beach
I walk on
The beach I love
Seagulls hover
Squawking and flapping
Searching for treats
In unattended
Beach bags.
At the beach
I walk on
The beach I love
Salty waves
Curl and break
Tossing swimmers
And tempting surfers
Into the cool, refreshing
Depths.
At the beach
I walk on
The beach I love
Squishy sand
Sucks at my toes
Tiny grains sanding
My soles smooth
And sheltering
Tiny frisky crabs and
Multitudes of bean clams.
At the beach
I walk on
The beach I love
Rhythmic seas
Slow my breath
Warm my heart
And clear my mind.
Kim Douillard
So in honor of the National Day on Writing and #writeout, I let the outdoors inspire my writing. I will include my students’ writing in days to come!
#USvsHate: Going National!
How do you deal with hate in the classroom? As teachers, I know we all work on building safe and productive learning communities–places where the young people entrusted to our care can thrive. But sometimes the world creeps in. Kids hear hurtful comments and see hurtful actions–on media, from adults or others in the community, then bring them to school to test out their impact on their classmates and peers.
And frankly, for whatever reasons, we live in a society where hate has become normalized. So what do we do about it?
This is where #USvsHate comes in. Mica Pollock and a small team of teachers in San Diego decided to take advantage of the many anti-hate lessons freely available through a variety of organizations (Teaching Tolerance, Facing History and Ourselves, the Anti-Defamation League, Rethinking Schools, the Bully Project and more) to open up spaces for students (kindergarten through college) to learn about the origins of hate, to explore their own experiences with hate, and to create messaging to publicly refuse hate.
Last year, I was fortunate to join the leadership of this effort as director of the San Diego Area Writing Project (SDAWP) along with a team of SDAWP teacher leaders. We piloted lessons–some directly from the organizations listed above, and some we had created or adapted for our own contexts and academic requirements–and had our students create anti-hate messaging. I had a front row seat to the empathy and creativity of San Diego students as I helped judge entries from the #UsvsHate contests in November, February, and April. (And of course as I implemented #USvsHate into my own classroom!)
I traveled to the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama in July with our team as we presented #USvsHate to the team at Teaching Tolerance. And it made its national debut this week!
Join us in the effort to refuse hate and to amplify student anti-hate messaging. Read the article in Teaching Tolerance for more background information and check out usvshate.org for lessons to use with students, examples of winners and finalists, and protocols and supports for opening up potentially difficult conversations in the classroom.. Our collective action can and will make a difference!
