Today’s #verselove prompt from Susan was about communications. She focused on notes from the past. But with Earth Day on Monday, I am thinking about communications with our planet, with nature–how we can build a symbiosis between humans and our planet.
Prewriting and walking–they go together for me. As I walked the beach today in the cool spring sunshine, poetry began to form. What I haven’t learned yet is how to capture those fleeting thoughts while I am in motion. By the time i get home with my notebook, specifics have flown…I have to reach back in my mind to reconstruct, rethink, revive, and revise the nascent poetics.
I’m lucky enough to work at a school that has fruit trees growing throughout our campus. I had noticed the blossoms on the apple trees a couple of weeks ago, but today when I went to pick my students up from PE I had to double back and capture a photo of the explosion of tiny fruit that is now growing.
The #verselove prompt today was a complex one. Stefani introduced an Irish quatrain with both a syllable count and a rhyme scheme. At the end of a long week, I did cheat a bit with my ending!
Today’s #verselove prompt was offered by Shaun who introduced a Bukowski poem that was all about you taking care of you–or at least that was what I took away from it. It led me to thinking about all the ways we, as teachers, often do not take care of ourselves, which then led me to think about how little things can make a big difference.
So, here goes!
Do it for You
On days that feel like weeks and months
it’s the little things that matter
an early morning walk dodging snails and letting dew drops
give you that magical sparkle
even when it’s hard to get out of bed
a stop by the local coffee shop on the way home
for that expensive coffee (decaf of course)
that transports you to a place that is quiet and calm
and just the right kind of warm, the kind that feels like a hug
Today Dave over at #verselove introduced me to a new poetry format called Kwansaba. This format depends of sevens: seven lines, each line with seven words, all words seven letters or less, and the poem should be one of praise. (For more details read the #verselove post linked above) Here is my attempt:
Some days writing feels hard. Even when there is an interesting prompt, there are days when the words seem to be hiding. This has been one of those days for me.
With Angie’s invitation at #verselove, I used Clint Smith’s poem, No More Elegies Today to frame my poem, to get me started. Maybe this is one of those pieces I will return to on another day and find my way to another place with it.
Today I will Write a Poem
Today I will write a poem about writing
It will not dwell in the challenges of deciding on a topic
or the many chores that suddenly need my attention (instead of writing)
It will not illuminate the scribbled out words
or the dead end paths started but not followed
Instead
It will be a poem about how writing can be
the rainbow that colored my way to work this morning
reframing a Monday with scarlets, tangerines, indigos, and violets
It will use words as shovels and hoes
digging up the rich loam of meaning
sowing the possibility of a seed taking root
It will take me out of my writing funk long enough
A Golden Shovel? It’s a poetry form I’ve heard about, but have never tried until today. Margaret at #verselove today suggested picking a line from a Billy Collins poem as inspiration for a golden shovel or any other kind of poem. But I couldn’t get Ada Limon’s new book, You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World out of my head. You can get a peek reading this article: Pick Your Poem: 6 Poems to Transport You into the Natural World. So I decided to pick a line from one of the 6 that has been speaking to me–it’s called Twenty Minutes in the Backyard by Alberto Rios.
After reading the poem a few times, I decided to use this line: While the whole world simply moves forward.
Nature’s Medicine
Backyarding with the crows and bees while
framing photos in my mind’s eye seeking the
sunlight’s warmth, trying to remain whole
as time stretches and contracts, I’m spinning in space atop the world
in this outdoor space, I stop the spinning to smell lavender blossoms, feel the ridged aloe simply
spreading, spreading, filling space along the path as it moves
greening and growing wholing my mind, calming frantic synapses, inching me forward
A brain dump. That’s what Barbara asked us to do as part of the #verselove poetry prompt for today. And I don’t think I followed the rules at all. Maybe my poem isn’t a poem at all or maybe it is an 100 word prose poem or even a manifesto in the making. Whatever it is, it was fun to write. There might be some more there there.
Teachers and Unicorns
They tell me I’m a unicorn. A serious person who believes that learning should be fun–should be real. Experiences immersive: audio, visual, tactile, numerical, connected. Classroom walls don’t contain learning. A serious person who believes that play is essential. For children in and out of school and for adults too. That reading and writing and math and science are all opportunities for play and playfulness. School is a place for making–friends, memories, art, poems… Where processes are more important than products and where kids matter. I’m a teaching unicorn who’s serious about the joy of learning. We need more unicorns.
What do you need right now? That was the question Amber over at #verselove asked today. While she suggested some fanciful supplies, I couldn’t get my current favorite pen out of my head. So today is a sort of ode to my pen.
I think this was the first day in my long teaching career that I have ever taught during a solar eclipse. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a total eclipse in our area, but still an eclipse. And on this first day back from Spring Break, we were fortunate. All our of classes were supplied with eclipse viewing glasses…so why not turn the day into an eclipse-centric science phenomenon-based day of learning?
Even before the eclipse began (around 10am our time) we reviewed what we had learned about solar eclipses before our break by watching and listening to a song called “Total Eclipse of the Sun” by PBS kids. I did remind students that we were not going to see totality, but the energy in the classroom was rising. We took our first peek at the sun shortly before recess. With glasses in place, we looked up and could see right away that our usually round sun had a big bite right out of it! From that moment, these first graders were hooked.
After recess, I set up the livestream so that we could keep track of the eclipse for those places in the path of totality and we headed outside with our solar glasses to view the partial eclipse progress about every ten minutes, coming in to sketch and document the time after each viewing.
Totality, even via livestream was exhilarating! “The diamond ring!” they shouted as we watched the sun just about disappear. Four minutes of “nighttime” passed so quickly and then we watched the sun reappear. And just when students thought there was nothing more to notice about our partial eclipse, one more viewing before we headed out for lunch revealed that the “bite” of the sun had changed sides!
And no day of science learning would be complete without adding in some art and writing. After lunch we tried our hand at creating our own eclipses using oil pastels and a masking technique. Students were encouraged to use some artistic license with color–and enjoyed creating these colorful coronas.
Inspired by a poem from the book Welcome to the Wonder House by Rebecca Kai Dotlich made up of all questions, students took a first try at crafting a question poem about their eclipse experience. While we ran out of time before we really had time to finish, here is an early look at a first grade question poem by F.
The Solar Eclipse
When is the next solar eclipse?
Can America have a full eclipse?
Who can track the eclipse?
Can someone see the eclipse from inside an airplane?
Why do we have the moon come in front of the sun on special days?
When was the last eclipse?
When I look up at the moon at night I see a smile on it, but why?
For my own poem, I turned the #verselove Zip Poem prompt into an eclipse teaching poem using my school zip code (and using emoji’s as suggested for the zeros). Thanks for the inspiration Mo!
Zip Poem: Teaching Under the Influence of a Partial Eclipse
9-Solar science eclipsing school day, igniting first grade wonder
2-Planetary alignment
0-☀️
0-🌙
7-Young astronomers’ energy fueling totality-free sky learning
Some days poetry is about big ideas and big emotions and other days poetry is about…taffy!
Today’s prompt suggested a Tanka–a five line poem that has a (suggested) syllable pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 where James over at #verselove suggests we use it to express a moment where life felt wonderful, peaceful, or perfect. Not so sure that eating candy actually qualifies, but then again, why not?
Thinking Through My Lens 