One thing I love about teaching middle and high school is the unique opportunity to watch my students grow and evolve as they traverse the angst of teenage life. Often, I marvel at their kinship and at their willingness to lift one another up when the need is there. What a wonderful human quality that is - to lighten another’s day! Thomas Lux’s work, “Ode to the Joyful Ones”, is a lovely poem that sums up this sentiment beautifully. It is based on an Anglican prayer of St. Augustine, and it expresses the sentiment that we should be grateful for those who make life sweeter.
In the poem, Lux repeats the line “Because you don’t have to tell them to walk toward the light”, which is a wonderful discussion starter: What is the light of which he speaks? Students define and discuss the light they see around them in their friends and family members, in their beliefs and in their dreams. Another line: “Because when there are two of them together / their shining fills a room” is lyrical. Students fill a page in their Writer’s Notebooks with gratitude for the people who are their ‘joyful ones’ - the ones who make them smile or laugh out loud, the ones who make life sweeter.
This poem is also a wonderful segue into certain literary characters. Hans Huberman from The Book Thief comes to mind immediately. He is certainly a light in the lives of all who know him.
I believe that a practice of gratitude, including poems like Lux’s “Ode to the Joyful Ones”, is critical to our students’ development as fully functioning human beings on the planet.
Further Reading:
Elizabeth Jones is an English teacher in the Central Bucks School District in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
No comments:
Post a Comment