2022 Post #15 -- What We Share

by Rama Janamanchi

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

2021 Post #25 -- Achieving Victory

by Nathan Harris

Earlier this school year, I introduced my eighth graders to “Victory”, a poem by Sherman Alexie. I asked six volunteers to read it aloud to the rest of the class (one student per quatrain), and then I asked them to read it to themselves while answering one question in their notebook: Why does the father weep? A large number of students thought that the father wept because he was ashamed of and disappointed in his son’s actions, whereas a smaller number of students were able to correctly recognize that the father wept out of shame for his own inability to provide the best for his son.

I then briefly lectured to my students about the concept of identity, which had been a topic of ongoing conversations in my classroom since we read The Outsiders. My students were first reminded that part of our identity is written without our say: who are parents and family are, how and where we are raised, and everything that comes with the ripple effect from those circumstances and decisions. None of us can alter the exposition of our lives.

But then I present the most encouraging news of all: the story of their lives is still largely unwritten. Just like Ponyboy Curtis and the boy from the poem, my 13 and 14-year-old students are realizing that the biggest part of their identities is going to be shaped by their own decisions going forward. No matter their beginnings, all of my students are now old enough and capable enough to make decisions that can put them in a position to be happy, maximize their talents, and achieve their own victories as they do their best to write the rest of their life story.

Further Reading:



My name is Nate Harris, and I am in my seventh year of teaching English Language Arts at the middle school level. I am excited and humbled to be a part of a collection of inspirational ideas. I have not had any social media since my senior year of college, but I can be reached at nharris@cbsd.org.

2021 Post #23 -- Growth

by Susan Barber

Nikki Giovanni is one of my favorite poets: she has stood the test of time, speaks truth, and continues to teach at Virginia Tech today. I love the way she plays with words and images and makes the abstract and sometimes difficult topic accessible and inviting. Today’s poem, “BLK History Month”, was published in 2002 but speaks to ideas that are relevant today.


Encourage students to:

1. Take a piece of paper and fold it in half. Fold it in half again until the paper is divided into four squares.

2. Read the poem aloud. “BLK History Month”

3. Illustrate the three images Giovanni uses to draw a parallel to Black History Month and write what you consider to be the most important words associated with each image in the same square.

4. In the fourth square, respond to any of the following questions:

• What do you notice about the words you chose as the most important? What connections can you make between these words and Black History Month?
• How does Giovanni’s choice to use the word “not” throughout this poem strengthen the message?
• How does the work of the wind, the rain, and the sun build on each other? What is the relationship between them?

I think this poem offers encouragement in that even though we do not always see movement, that doesn’t mean growth is not happening.

What acts toward social justice can you do to “carry seeds . . . dampen the ground . . . encourage the seeds to root . . . warm the earth . . . kiss the seedlings?”

Does the way we choose to live each day tell others: “You’re As Good As Anybody Else / You’ve Got A Place Here, Too?”

Further Reading: 

Susan Barber is an English teacher at Grady High School in Atlanta, GA. You can find her on Twitter and IG or sharing what’s happening in her classroom on APLitHelp.com.

2021 Post #22 -- Your World

by Shawn O'Brien

The most valuable experiences in the classroom are those that help us to learn more about ourselves and what we really aspire to. For that reason, big questions can come up in English class. One of the biggest comes up early in my courses: “Are your choices making you more or less of the person that you hope to be?”

We talk about respect. We talk about humanity. We talk about doing the hard work to really climb, rather than allowing ourselves the all-too-easy slide down the proverbial mountain of our potential.

Here is where Harlem Renaissance poet Georgia Douglas Johnson comes in, as she concisely paints a powerful picture in “Your World” that begs the question: “How long will you allow fear and doubt to hold you back?”

After a reading of the poem, I ask students to respond privately to a couple simple prompts that help us to dive deeper into discussions about writing, about identity, and about courage.

• Please share your thoughts on "Your World" by Georgia Douglas Johnson. Please use at least one short quote from the poem to illustrate your feeling and insight.
• What do you feel Johnson has to say in "Your World" about self-respect? What does she have to say about the human experience? Please include at least one short quote from the poem as you explain.

Johnson’s piece, being both short and profound, makes for a great exercise in selecting strong quotes, and learning to incorporate them into a piece of writing.

With such a minimal commitment of time, a little work on “Your World” pays off big.

Further Reading: 

Shawn O’Brien is an English teacher at Central Bucks High School West in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Students find Mr. O. particularly passionate about hip-hop, philosophy, junk food, comics, and The Legend of Zelda. He’s been known to occasionally share some of those passions, and to promote West events, on Instagram and Twitter.

2020 Post #18 -- I Am and I Am Not

by Linda Rief

COVID 19 has shut down many schools for the next few weeks, preventing so many of you from participating in those activities that make the school experience so important to you: athletics, drama, musicals, jazz band, orchestra, Mathcounts, Robotics, outdoor ed, community volunteer work, etc.

As you read the following excerpt think of the “Try This…” prompts in terms of what you are experiencing right now, at home or at school. You could start with the line “I am a… but…” or grab any one of the ideas and write as fast as you can, outrunning the censor in you that often stops the writing.

Read the poem out loud to yourself once. Then read the prompts underneath the excerpt, to see which one appeals to you the most. Then read the excerpt again, and write nonstop as quickly as you can for two to three minutes in response to any of the prompts. You are writing to find writing, trusting that the process will lead you to some surprises, some things you didn’t expect to write.

An Excerpt from Chapter 2 from The Running Dream (Van Draanen)

(from The Quickwrite Handbook, 2018, Heinemann)

I AM A RUNNER.

That’s what I do.

That’s who I am.

Running is all I know, or want, or care about.

It was a race around the soccer field in third grade that swept me into a real love of running.

Breathing the sweet smell of spring grass.

Sailing over dots of blooming clover.

Beating all the boys.

After that, I couldn’t stop. I ran everywhere. Raced everyone. I loved the wind across my cheeks, through my hair.

Running aired out my soul.

It made me feel alive.

And now?

I’m stuck in this bed, knowing I’ll never run again.



Try This (as quickly and as specifically as you can for 2-3 minutes):


Write out anything this excerpt brings to mind for you.

Borrow any line and write as fast as you can, letting the line lead your thinking.

Think about something you are passionate about (something that “airs out your soul,” “makes you feel alive”) and write down everything that makes this activity so important to you.

Start with the line “I AM A ___________ ", and fill in the blank, describing all that you do, think, feel, experience while doing this activity.

Change the line to “I am not a ____________", expanding on all the reasons why you are not whatever it is.

Her last two lines say she will never run again. What has stopped you, or has halted you temporarily, from doing something you love doing?


After finishing this one quickwrite, go back to see if there is a line or a phrase you want to slow down and develop. Write more. Or simply take some time to extend what you said in only two to three minutes.

Further Reading:

Linda left the classroom (reluctantly) last June (2019) after 40 years of learning from eighth graders. She misses their energy, their curiosity, and their desire to read and write. She is an instructor in the University of New Hampshire's Summer Literacy Institute and a national and international presenter on issues of adolescent literacy. Her latest two books are The Quickwrite Handbook (2018) and Read Write Teach (2014), both published through Heinemann. Her Twitter handle is @LindaMRief.

2018 Poem #25 -- Reclaiming Identity

by Kelsey Hughes

Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, “We Real Cool” is a perfect choice for the classroom for many reasons—its brevity (which is, of course, appealing to students at first glance) allows for deep-digging into a small space; the speaker’s voice is palpable and relevant to many teens; and the possibilities for connecting the poem’s themes and tone to a class novel are endless.

This year, I used “We Real Cool” when teaching S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. I presented the poem to students at the beginning of class and let Brooks read the poem herself (Listen here). Her introduction provides a good backstory before reading the poem, and by listening to Brooks read aloud, the students are able to benefit from hearing her rhythm and her voice as she reads the poem beautifully. The students then re-read the poem multiple times on their own, marking up the text each time through a new layer--be it through line-by-line extractions of meaning, notes about repetition and figurative language, or even insights into the poem’s progression. After ample time with the text, we “tear apart” and discuss the poem together on the SmartBoard.

After making sense of the poem in isolation, I then ask the students to make a connection between this poem and The Outsiders. I intentionally leave the question, “How does this poem connect to The Outsiders?” open-ended, as the connections range from connections of theme to tone and form. Students surprise me with the amount of meaningful connections they can make with this poem.

After discussing their connections, I then had them look at the definition of “reclaim”* and ask how the speaker here is reclaiming his identity. I then take them to the moment in The Outsiders where the Greasers are almost pronouncing their own “manifesto” before the big rumble; here, we closely read this excerpt and discuss how Greasers are “reclaiming” their identities and why they might need to do this.

A creative writing option would be to have students write a poem in which they reclaim their own identities. This could be a pastiche poem, where students utilize the form and the repetition of “We” or “I” to create their own manifesto. An added challenge would be to require the students to incorporate gradual shift in tone that Brooks creates in “We Real Cool.”

Further Reading:

Kelsey R. Hughes is a writer and English Teacher at Lenape and Holicong Middle Schools in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Her published and unpublished works can be found at www.kelseyrhughes.weebly.com.


*reclaim: retrieve or recover (something previously lost, given, or paid); obtain the return of.

2018 Poem #14 -- Voice of the Past

by Brett Vogelsinger

There is always something special about hearing a poet read his or her own words, and perhaps something extra special about hearing a recorded poet read these words posthumously.  This act reminds us that even the poems that end up commonly anthologized and in the canon are meant to be heard aloud, that they speak from the past most eloquently when we breathe life into them.

Langston Hughes poems frequently surface in student anthologies.  In this video, students have the chance to hear Langston Hughes talk about the experience that led him to write "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" as a young man just out of high school, and then he reads the poem aloud.

An intriguing video to pair with this: a contemporary high school student recites the same poem in the twenty-first century for the Poetry Out Loud competition: 

Three questions to discuss with students after sharing this poem:

• How does knowing the background of the poem and hearing it in the writer's own voice affect our experience with the poem?  
• How does listening to a poem written nearly one hundred years ago give voice to the past? 
• How does the content of the poem give voice to the poet's past? 

Further Reading:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth-grade English teacher at Holicong Middle School in Bucks County, PA.  He is the faculty adviser for the school literary magazine, Sevenatenine.  Besides his annual blogging adventure on this site, he has published work on Nerdy Book Club, The New York Times Learning Network, and Edutopia and you can follow him on Twitter (@theVogelman).

2018 Poem #6 -- Our Many Worlds

by Rama Janamanchi

One of my favorite poems to teach is Joseph Legaspi’s “Amphibians.” It is a short poem which offers so many avenues for discussion and teaching that we often reference it as we go through our unit. The activity I am sharing below is one that I use when I introduce the poem.

We begin with reading the poem. Each student reads a line until punctuation indicates a significant stop (the period, the semi-colon, or colon). Then we read the poem again chorally. Once we are done with the choral reading, I ask them to list amphibians they know and picture those amphibians, their habitats, and whatever else they know about them.

The students then write down their own habitats: Where do you live? Then they list one activity they most closely identify with. Then we go into identity more broadly. Once they have listed about five or six words they use to identify themselves, we talk about similarities in the room. We begin with activity: all the basketball players stand together, all the gamers gather together and so on. Then they find them moving around the room and shifting groups based on race, hobbies, being the eldest, being adopted and so on. As they position themselves into different groups, they note the people with whom they share these groups.

Once the activity is done (about 7 minutes), we talk about Legaspi’s line: “Immigrants give birth to Americans.” Our many identities converge into the shared experience of the activity, of being students, of being learners. At the close of the activity, we read the poem again. I usually then ask them to reflect on the poem in their journals to give them more time with the poem.

Further Reading:

Rama Janamanchi teaches at a private high school for students with language-based learning differences. Twitter: @MsJanamanchi410