2021 Post #5 -- Kaleidoscopic Thought

 by Brett Vogelsinger

Since childhood, I have always loved the mirrored, sparkling, shifting imagery a kaleidoscope can offer. For this mini-lesson, it might be fun to have this YouTube video of hypnotic, kaleidoscopic imagery projected on a screen as students enter the classroom:

The poem "Thought." by Alice Dunbar-Nelson was recently featured by the Academy of American Poets in their Poem-a-Day emails, a subscription I highly recommend.  

It goes like this: 

Thought. 

A swift, successive chain of things,

That flash, kaleidoscope-like, now in, now out, 

Now straight, now eddying in wild rings, 

No order, neither law, compels their moves,

But endless, constant, always swiftly roves. 

The poet catches my eye when she says thoughts are "kaleidoscope-like," and in keeping with this simile, continues to shift from comparison to comparison, image to image for the remainder of the short poem. Reading the poem makes me pause and tune into my own stream of consciousness, that subtext to our experience in any moment that often escapes our notice. 

After reading the poem, I might ask the class to comment on "What does Alice Dunbar-Nelson observe about human thought? How does the way our thought patterns work relate to those kaleidoscope patterns we were watching on the screen a moment ago?"

Next, we could pause for sixty silent seconds with this aim: Just tune into the kaleidoscope of your own thoughts. In the course of sixty seconds, where does your mind go. What shifts happen and what forms emerge? 

Then, in our writer's notebooks, we can craft a short poem that tries to put those shifting thoughts into words. Remember, it could be figurative instead of literal, and it doesn't have to make pure, perfect grammatical sense, much like Dunbar-Nelson's poem. 

Georgia Heard's new book of children's poems, My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems For Mindfulness, helps readers to do what this lesson emphasizes, pausing in the moment to bring awareness to just what is going on in our mind. In stressful times, teaching students how to do this, then putting some of their thought into words that will not be judged, assessed, or graded, can serve an important emotional purpose in our classroom. This kind of pause can provide a balm in anxious or divisive times.  

And our students do well to remember that whoever they are and whatever their aspirations, their thought is "endless, constant, always swiftly roves."  

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.