This year, with masks, social distancing, and other barriers that we have separating us, Richard Blanco’s poem “One Today” seems especially poignant. I remember hearing the poem while watching the second inauguration of President Barack Obama. While I was moved by the poem then, it carries an even more urgent message today. While the poem is worth reading in full, in keeping with the spirit of lessons that can be taught in 10 minutes, I have opted to use the excerpt of the poem which was published on Split This Rock.
We begin class with a short writing activity: each student writes down one fact about themselves that no one else in the class may share (that they know). As we read out our ‘differences,’ we sometimes discover common experiences that we didn’t know before. Using that as a segue, we now write down one thing that we have in common. (I tell them that my class is the default so we have to find other things that we share in common.) For kids who have known each other for years, the challenge is often that they can list shared experiences more easily.
Once we have listed similarities and differences, we begin work on the excerpt from the poem. We read the excerpt silently and then chorally. When I have more time, we also listen to the poet’s reading of the poem.
We then review our lists of similarities and differences with the poet’s list. I point out that what we left out as default finds its space in the poem. We talk about how our class’s commonalities extend out into the country - that there are kids like them who are learning similar material but who will also have very different life experiences. As they picture kids whose worlds are so different from their own, we begin thinking about the “one light,” “one ground,” and “breath” that connects all of us.
We revisit the poem and our discussions when we reflect in our writer’s notebooks. While this poem works well with other occasional poems, it also works beautifully with excerpts from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s translation of the “Allegiance to Gratitude.”
from “One Today” - Richard Blanco
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the "I have a dream" we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of our farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind -- our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Further Reading:
Bio: Rama Janamanchi teaches at an independent high school for students with language-based learning differences.
Instagram / Twitter: @MsJanamanchi410
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