2022 Post #5 -- What I Learned

by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

Every year, I send the same poem to my mother on March 8, her birthday. The poem is Julia Kasdorf’s What I Learned from My Mother. It is a list poem, and it begins with practical tips for life such as “...have plenty of vases on hand/in case you have to rush to the hospital/with peonies cut from the lawn” and ends with the big learning, “To every house you enter, you must offer/healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,/the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.”

The speaker of this poem honors the mother with each chosen list item. We readers understand this mother, though nowhere are we told, “My mother was thoughtful.” After the last line, we are left to wonder if the mother is living or dead. Does it matter? Would the speaker remember differently if things were different now?

While this poem strikes a tone of love, “What I Learned” lines can be playful or serious, sad or curious:


I learned from my friend how to make bean soup for winter days.

I learned from onions how to let my sad old tears go free.

I learned from my dog that our backyard has thousands of smells!

I learned from my friend that forgiveness can hold anger in its arms.

I learned from the sky how to change every morning and still be me.


As poet, you may choose to write a one-person list poem as Julia Kasdorf did, or instead, you might make a “What I Learned” list in your notebook and then choose just one item to build a poem around.

Fine tune the interplay of meaning and sound of your poem by reading it aloud as you write and revise and revise again…

What have you learned? What will you learn next?

Further Reading: 

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is a writing teacher and author of books for children and teachers. In person, you can find her at home in Western New York, and you can find her online HERE.

2021 Post #14 -- Memories of Home

by Suzanne Dailey

Stories are hidden in the nooks and crannies of our home. Oftentimes, these stories happen when we are doing ordinary things.

I remember my family room growing up. Brown carpet with designs pressed into the surface, covering an original wood floor from the 1800s and dark paneling from the 1970s. And the little space near the downstairs closet that was the p-e-r-f-e-c-t hiding spot for jumping out at someone and scaring my brother – especially when he was carrying something in his hands!

My favorite room was our kitchen tucked in the back of the house. Yellow linoleum floor, cream colored stove, and cabinets that never fully shut, especially in the winter. Yellow linoleum floor, cream colored stove, and cabinets that never fully shut, especially in winter. It’s where I smelled apple pie in autumn, assembled gingerbread houses in winter, dyed Easter eggs in spring, and snuck popsicles in summer.

We spend a lot of time at home making memories that stay in our hearts forever. Some fill our hearts, and some break them.

What are the emotions or memories that live in your home? Maybe it’s a moment of love or a rainy day or the sound of music or a time you heard lifechanging news. Some of these emotions or memories may come to you easily, while some of you may need help accessing the stories in your minds and hearts.

As a class, read the poem "Daily" by Naomi Shihab Nye.

After sharing the poem, I might say to students, "Try drawing your house and jot down some of the memories you’ve created in the space you call home. Then find a story that’s hidden in the nooks and crannies of your home. Some memories may be seemingly insignificant at first glance, like my memory of sneaking popsicles in the kitchen each summer. But if you get still and really think about it, there are stories there."

I remember enjoying that popsicle sitting under our “snowball tree” dressed in terrycloth shorts, grass-stained bare feet, and a blue t-shirt from my Grandpa that said, I’m a Georgia Peach! Some of my favorite memories from home are in my backyard as a young kid. It’s why I find so much peace in nature as an adult.

Draw your home, get still, and find the stories hidden in the nooks and crannies. Your heart will thank you.

Using a document camera/blank document, model drawing a part of your home, and as you draw, naturally tell a summarized story that “lives” in those areas.

Set a timer for about 5-7 minutes, so students can draw their home. As they are drawing, create a quick write for one of the stories you shared earlier using the format of "Daily": 

These meals we eat
gathered around the garage sale refinished table

These games we play and play until there’s a winner
Tattered boxes with missing pieces in the living room


After students have drawn their home, share your quick write and invite them to do a 3-4 minute quick write as well. As they are writing, choose another story from your home and do an additional quick write.

Invite students to share their quick write, asking classmates share a question or compliment. Invite students to do an additional quick write for another space at their home (inside or outside!) to see if there is a possible story hidden in their home.

Further Reading: 

Suzanne Dailey is a staff developer in the Central Bucks School District.  You can learn more about her work at www.suzannedailey.com and check out her Teach Happier podcast.  

2021 Post #13 -- Diving Into Gratitude

 by Rebekah O'Dell

During "Pandemic School" -- a term my colleague coined to encapsulate the general chaos and turmoil we are all experiencing this school year -- I have been trying to model specific, concrete gratitude for my students.

“I’m so thankful I get to see your entire faces today,” I said in our first class meeting during a sudden virtual pivot.

“I’m so glad we’re all back together again, even if it’s behind plexiglass and masks,” I said our first day back at school.

“I’m excited we get to figure out together how to make our language field guides digital this year!” I feigned.

I do this because I need it. Because, this year, gratitude is not always my first language. Because I want it to become a language students start to practice when they need help, too.

Gratitude is a fake-it-’til-you-make it sport. We become more grateful and experience the myriad mental and physical health benefits that gratitude affords not because we are always feeling it but because it’s a discipline.

And, like any discipline, we sometimes do it through gritted teeth.

One particularly bleak winter morning, I came across the poem “Winter Thanks” by Marcus Jackson.

What struck me was the specificity. Unlike some other gratitude poems, this poem isn’t sweeping in its scope. Instead, it gets highly specific about one thing the poet is grateful for in the winter: heat. Jackson drills down, stretching and pulling his thankfulness apart to examine what it’s made of.

This poem provides a great lesson on zooming in and getting specific.

Here’s how I used it with my students:

First, we read the poem, and I asked students the question I always ask students about everything we read: What do you notice?

Students immediately noticed that all of the items discussed in the poem have to do with heat, which is something you would naturally be thankful for in winter. They smartly said it’s like Jackson “zooms in” on all the things that make heat, that give him heat in the cold winter months, and he describes each one very specifically.

They noticed the formal tone that “sounds like church” and the repetition of the word “praise”.

Then, I asked students to try their own, using these instructions:

• Think of something you’re thankful for right now.
• Now, zoom in. Break that down into 8-10 smaller aspects or elements.
• Describe each of those elements in a phrase that: describes its appearance, describes its function, describes its behavior, describes its feeling, describes its sound
• Now, string them together -- adding line breaks + repeating “praise” at the beginning of each new element you describe.

Jackson’s easily-recognizable frame provides a template into which students can fit their own thinking and quickly end up with a successful poem of their own in about 10-15 minutes.

Further Reading: 

 

Rebekah O’Dell teaches middle school English in Richmond, Virginia. She is the co-founder of MovingWriters.org and the author of a number of professional books. You can find her on Twitter @RebekahODell1 and at movingwriters.org.

2021 Post #12 -- Instagram Poems of Empowerment

by Allison Marchetti

In the age of social media, most of us have been the recipient of an unkind message or comment. Deleting or ignoring these messages can help take away the sting, but oftentimes the hurt from words lingers. In her incredible new book of poems, What Kind of Woman, Kate Baer takes the raw material of Instagram haters and transforms their disparaging words into new poems that empower, embolden, and better serve the recipient than the original message.

Baer’s Instagram rewrites look a lot like the newspaper blackout poems popularized by Austin Kleon (Steal Like an Artist), but instead of using newspaper and magazine articles, she uses the direct messages she receives. For example, in the poem “I hope this finds you,” Baer transforms a message in which a follower encourages her to take a detox cleanse to shed her extra weight. Using the same words in the same order, plus the power of erasure, she dissolves the original message into just 12 words that speak the power of learning to love the bodies we live in. Another poem, “It is unbearable” turns a message that criticizes Baer’s work into a feminist overture.

How might these poems of transformation help our students who are barraged by digital messages that might not be serving them? Here’s how a study of Baer’s work might go:

Pull up Baer’s instagram feed and share some examples of her Instagram blackout poems. You can tell you’re looking at a blackout poem because the post will contain two slides: the first slide is the new poem, the second slide is the original message.

Invite students to discuss her work: what makes these poetic responses so powerful? How do you think Baer goes about choosing which words to keep and retract?

Invite students to pull up or remember a hateful message they or a friend has received. Alternatively, allow them to scroll the profiles of Instagram influencers in search of hateful comments -- sadly, there is no shortage of them.

Give students time to talk in groups about the original message and how they might go about transforming these messages of hate into poems of empowerment. Give students time to write, share, and write some more.

The next day, students can share the original message alongside the new poem in a gallery style walk (either virtual or in person).

Further Reading:

  

Allison Marchetti (@allisonmarchett) is co-author with Rebekah O’Dell of WRITING WITH MENTORS, BEYOND LITERARY ANALYSIS and A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO MENTOR TEXTS (March 2021). She is the co-founder of Moving Writers, a blog for secondary writing teachers. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.

2021 Post #10 -- A Miniature Autobiography

by Don Kemball

"Autobiography in Five Short Chapters" by Portia Nelson is one of my favourite poems for discussing the topic of hope.  

What captures me most is that it begins in despair -- but an ignorant sort. A place where you do not realize you are the problem. It builds slowly, finding the solution through struggle. Yet the poem ends with this incredibly powerful message -- that you can take any problem in your life and turn it on its end. You CAN find a way through and be successful.

Once my class has read the poem and broken it down using the SWIFT technique, I give them a short period to jot down a problem they are having -- one they truly feel is insurmountable. Then they look at it through the lens of the poem and look for a solution they haven’t thought of before. Do they keep walking down that same street? Can they find another?

Some years we extend the activity by sitting in a circle and sharing our problems in a general nature. We listen and reflect. Sometimes we give advice. But usually we just sit silently and appreciate each other and the courage it takes to share. Needless to say, this is not a September activity. I usually save this for the darkest part of the year when many people feel the lack of sunlight.

Further Reading: 

Don Kemball works as a teacher for the York Region District School Board just North of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been using a poem-a-day strategy for almost 10 years with his class and is not sure how he could live without it. Find him on Twitter @dkemball