Post #20 -- Learning Beside Oregon's Poet Laureate, Anis Mojgani

by Penny Kittle

I am from the green of Oregon in mid-June when the sun is up early and the trout are biting in every pond. I was born and raised in the beauty of my favorite state, and it still sings inside of me. So I was thrilled, as you can imagine, when I learned that a favorite poet of mine, Anis Mojgani, had been chosen as the 10th annual Oregon Poet Laureate. He follows the two-year-term of Kim Stafford, son of legendary William Stafford, who served in the role for 15 years. Oregonians know poetry: it is in the sky in September, at Cannon Beach just after a wild windstorm, and in the view from the summit of Mt. Tabor where I walk each morning on my annual trip home.

Mojgani is a two-time National Slam Poetry Champion, and you simply must watch his 2010 performance of “Shake the Dust” on YouTube. Click now and find it. I’ll wait. Anis brings such a gentle compassion to this poem. Students respond to his call for imagining the lives and struggles of others. They want to write next to this poem.

I have used Mojgani’s poem in middle and high school classrooms for the last 11 years. I give each student a copy of the words to the poem, and then I show Anis’s performance of it. I want students to have the words when they are ready to write. Following his performance, I open my notebook and tell students I’m going to imitate his poem with my own lines:


For the new student who doesn’t know where to sit at lunch, shake the dust.

For the grandmother lonely in her room in a nursing home, shake the dust.


With each line, I tell students, I imagine someone I know who is hurting and write for them.

We all write together. The room fills with words spinning from hearts to paper. We imagine, we write, we fiddle with language and lines, and we create something beautiful in our notebooks. There is no grade, no rubric, just an opportunity to write our thinking. This essential daily practice in first draft writing builds confidence. Imitation allows all students to feel successful as they begin to trust their words and ideas on the page.

After several minutes, I ask students to underline a few lines they feel capture something important. We end this practice with a whip share—where each student has the chance to read a line or two out to the class (or pass, of course.) I love to gather these notebooks and create a class poem from their lines, which I share the next day. Community poems bind us together.

You can learn more about Anis Mojgani and his poetic genius at thepianofarm.com. Or follow him on Twitter @mojgani, Instagram @thepianofarm, or Facebook Anis Mojgani.

Further Reading:

Penny Kittle teaches freshman composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years, 21 of those spent at Kennett High School in North Conway. She is the co-author of 180 Days with Kelly Gallagher, and is the author of Book Love, and Write Beside Them, which won the James Britton award.

2020 Post #21 -- Words of Comfort

by Brett Vogelsinger

Since reading a poem is a daily ritual in my class, patterns develop in our poetry selections.  One of those patterns -- yes, a pattern students observe in much of the literature we read in English class -- is that writers often tackle dense, heavy, depressing topics.  Poetry is no exception.  And I would argue it is important to bring these types of poems to our students.

However, we also live in an age of crushing anxiety, and each year I see more students struggle to maintain their emotional health.  I want to be sure that English class, and particularly a routine that begins our class period most days, does not deliver a daily dose of doom.  Picture the Pavlovian effect of that for a moment:  Bell rings, gloomy poem emerges on the screen, discussion of humanity's darkest moments ensues. . . what might be the effect of that day after day after day on our students?

Derek Mahon's poem "Everything Is Going To Be All Right" interrupts this pattern when we need something to reassure, comfort, or uplift our class.  The poem does not ignore that the world is full of problems, just as English teachers do not, but it does remind us of the healing power of nature, of the importance of taking time to observe and notice, of cycles and hope and the potential to begin again.

Dr. Katherine Dahlsgaard, a psychologist who specializes in childhood and adolescent anxiety, recently spoke to teachers in my school district about the science of hope.  She said that "teachers are ambassadors of hope."  If I am to be such a teacher, I must introduce my students to the power of words not just to identify problems and give them voice but also to explore solutions, find peace in the face of turmoil, and provide comfort when we feel lost.

So I leave you with Derek Mahon reading his own poem in a video, and a question to pair with this poem for students:  What brings you comfort in troubled times?

Further Reading:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA.  He has been starting class with a poem each day for the past ten years. He is the creator of the Go Poems blog and the author of Poetry Pauses: Teaching With Poems to Elevate Writing in All Genres.   Find him on Twitter @theVogelman.