2022 Post #17 -- A Poem to Inspire Confidence and Swagger

by Jessica Sherburn

Patrick Kindig’s poem "Gum Patrick” is a humorous and relatable exploration of how even the smallest details -- in this case, the gum we chew -- can elevate our sense of self-esteem and inspire confidence.

NOTE: If you teach this poem, students will ask you for a piece of gum -- guaranteed. You have been forewarned.

After reading the poem (and reviewing appropriate gum disposal techniques) ask students to consider the following questions:

1. What can the speaker do confidently when they are chewing gum? How do they walk, talk, and move through the world with swagger?

2. Which situations in life make the speaker feel vulnerable, uncomfortable, or worried? How does chewing gum change this?

3. What would a perfect day look like for you? How would you walk, talk, and be in the world? What would magically go right? What awkward or confusing situations would you avoid?

In the past, my students have listed ideas like:

• Never pushing a pull door (or vice versa)
• Striding through the crowded halls without bumping into anyone
• Hitting every greenlight
• Getting all As
• Never draining their phone battery

What’s an item of clothing, accessory, situation, etc. that makes you feel extremely confident, even if only for a brief amount of time?

Students often identify things such as:

• Athletic uniforms, theater costumes, or other hobby related clothing/accessories
• A new outfit or pair of shoes
• Sunglasses
• Driving with the windows down
• Listening to the perfect playlist

Ask students to put all the pieces together to draft a “Gum Patrick” style poem, like “Fresh Haircut Jess” or “When I Wear My Ray-Bans.” Then sit back and enjoy the bustling, gum-smacking energy of the classroom as your students write their way to their best imagined selves.

Further Reading from Patrick Kindig

Jessica Sherburn lives in Chicago, Illinois where she teaches English at Stephen T. Mather High School. She has served as a Representative-at-Large within the Michigan Council of Teachers of English and a Teacher Advisory Group Member for the Zekelman Holocaust Memorial Center. Follow her on Twitter @JessicaSherburn.

2022 Post #16 -- Giving a Song A Second Read

by Drew Sterner

As I typically do with poetry, we look at it twice. I will often have students read it first to themselves and jot down their quick reactions in their writer’s journal. Then, I will read it to them. A question we often start with after doing this is “How did my reading alter your original interaction with the poem?” Students can discuss their reactions in small groups, or we can discuss it as a larger group.

With William Carlos Williams “The Fool’s Song” it makes sense to take a moment to have students identify the metaphor as well as the use of repetition and why Williams chooses to do this in his poem.

I tried to put a bird in a cage.

O fool that I am!

For the bird was Truth.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

And when I had the bird in the cage,

O fool that I am!

Why, it broke my pretty cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

And when the bird was flown from the cage,

O fool that I am!

Why, I had nor bird nor cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put

Truth in a cage!

Heigh-ho! Truth in a cage.

I like this poem though more for its message and the use of Truth as a metaphor. Hopefully by this point, a student has observed that Truth/the bird cannot be restrained. It is rife with opportunity for students to write about or discuss the many things in our lives/world that resemble this metaphor of things that we struggle with or perhaps shouldn’t try to restrain, as well as the many “truths” that fly around us in our modern world.

Students can also experiment with free verse after looking at this poem and create a similar type of metaphor and then compose a single stanza that emulates Williams’s style in this poem.

Further Reading:

   

Drew Sterner teaches ELA at the middle school level and is an advisor to the student-run school literary magazine, Roaring Voices Review.

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

2022 Post #14 -- A Dream Deferred

 by Nate Harris

I recently taught a lesson to my sophomores that centered around Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” as it relates to Loraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, as well as their own lives. The connection between the poem and the drama was noted to students before we read the drama (for those unfamiliar, the title of the play is drawn from the opening line of the poem), but this particular lesson took place shortly after we completed the play. After rereading the poem together and reviewing and discussing exactly what may happen to a dream deferred, students watched the following commercial and were asked to individually determine the story that they think is being depicted.

The lesson then shifted focus to various aspects of the historical context that surrounds Hansberry’s work, including the women’s rights and civil rights movements, other aspects of post-world war US, and the life of the author herself. We then circled back to “Harlem”, and after quickly sharing their responses about the commercial with each other, I encouraged students to volunteer and share with the entire class. After fielding several responses, I shared with the students that the woman featured in the above Nike advertisement is Sanya Richards-Ross, who achieved her dream of winning an Olympic gold member after coming up short in two previous attempts.

I then closed out the lesson by sharing about a time in my life when I had a dream deferred when I was a high school student, and how I had determined to not let that particular dream dry up like a raisin in the sun. I then had my students write about a time in their life when they had a dream deferred, but instead of being discouraged, they determined to make the experience educational and motivational. Just before they left for the day, I asked them to remember the story of Sanya Richards-Ross, as well as their own personal example of perseverance, so that they may always be encouraged by what can happen when a dream is deferred.

Further Reading:

Nate Harris is a high school English teacher at Central Bucks West High School in Doylestown, PA

2022 Post #13 -- "We Are Made of Star Stuff"

by Angela Stockman

Recently, Abigail Lund shared this wonderful post intended to help writing teachers bring stop motion video making into their classrooms. I've been sinking into this work myself in recent weeks, in preparation for my own work with young writers in my little studio here in Buffalo, New York.

Once upon a time, I would have been daunted by such invitations, but now--thanks to technology--it's not so difficult to create these quick animations anymore. There are so many different apps and tools that support stop motion creativity, and even our youngest and least experienced writers are able to navigate many of them.

And National Poetry Month is the perfect time to try! I know that we often situate stories inside of these frames, but in many ways, poetry is even more accessible. Really! Let me explain.

I was so inspired by this poetry in motion short, inspired by Georgia Heard and narrated by Namakula. Notice how the images align to the words? This kind of creation is as clean as it is complex, don't you think? Linking images to lines as opposed to scenes is a simpler something for new and inexperienced writers. Try this. You'll see what I mean.

Beginning is as simple as storyboarding a poem, line by line, and snapping, drawing, or locating open source images that represent each line. How might you use Namakula's video as a mentor text for one that your own student's might create? And how might Abigail's post inform you further? If you'd like more support, including storyboards and examples to share with the writers and designers in your workshop, visit this Drive folder. I've left some goodies for you there.

Further Reading: 

Angela Stockman is the founder of Make Writing Studios in Buffalo, New York. An Instructional Designer and adjunct faculty at Daemen University, she's published several books about the relationship between making and writing. You may find her on Twitter @AngelaStockman and on Instagram @angela_makewriting.

2022 Post #12 -- What Might We Spoil

by Nawal Qarooni

Sometimes when we read poetry, we leave with simply a feeling. The words feel less about meaning and more about emotion; the images conjured are raw and even very subjective. But with Hala Alyan’s poem, "Spoiler,” readers are left feeling some of both.

More than anything, the poem leaves us with a brutal truth as takeaway, a message I seek to elevate in the classroom.


I’m here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in.

I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.


This makes me think about intricate mandala art, sometimes crafted out of sand for hours and hours that then – poof– disappears in an instant. It reminds me of incredibly detailed nail art, that also takes hours to design, only to be chipped and removed before not too long. It elucidates the belief that journey is far superior to the destination; that there’s magic every step of the way.

Hala’s poem for me depicts a picture of truth across the board. There are sadnesses, nightmares, dying; trees planted in infertile soil. But the lingering image is one of building sandcastles so beautiful it doesn’t matter how intense the tide. At the end, she leaves us with the ‘spolier’ that in life, process is more important than the sum of those momentary products.


What Might We Spoil?

This lesson riffs off the idea that we embrace with open arms inevitable change.

With students in upper grades, you might use Hala Alyan’s poem as a springboard for writing their own ‘spoliers.’ To brainstorm, I suggest students draw a three-column chart - one with emotional moments that one might perceive as setbacks, one with life milestones they hope for, and another with potential lines to remix the idea of spoiling. What do we work so hard towards? What moments in our lives felt painful? What goals and life events are we seeking? What metaphors, like water destroying meticulously-crafted sandcastles, can we conjure to highlight the journey, and the idea that the steps along the way are important experiences worth painting positive?

With this mentor, students can organize their staccato sentences similar to Hala’s, maybe even leading with their own question, moving into moments of disappointment across time, to a final, purposeful metaphor at the end. After listening to Hala’s audio recording, I would have students record their pieces too.

There is beauty in ruins. There is beauty in the spoiling.

Further Reading: 

Nawal Qarooni is an educator and writer who works in education spaces to support a holistic model of literacy instruction. She and her team of coaches at NQC Literacy work with teachers and school leaders to grow a love of reading and composition in ways that exalt the whole child, their cultural capital and their intrinsic curiosities. She is the proud daughter of immigrants, and mothering her four young kids shapes her understanding of teaching and learning. Nawal’s first book about family literacy with Heinemann is forthcoming in 2023.

2022 Post #11 -- A Whit of Whitman

 by Brett Vogelsinger

A confession:  I am not a huge Walt Whitman fan.  

I mean, I love Dead Poets Society, and therefore "O Captain, My Captain," so I'm not a monster.  Whenever I see lilacs, I think of when they "last in the dooryard bloom'd," and I always felt the title "Leaves of Grass" was particularly wonderful.  

But when I actually sit down to read Whitman, his words don't stir my soul as I feel they are stirring his and as they stir many other readers of poetry. 

I tell this to students.  I want them to know it's OK when someone presents them with literature that is "GREAT LITERATURE" in all caps that they still have the right to taste as readers, to respect what people identify as "GREAT" about it, but also acknowledge that you are neither a shallow person nor a bad reader if it does not speak to you in the same wonderful way it speaks to others.  And I also acknowledge that if I ever took a full college course in Whitman, I'd probably feel differently, that digging in deep to study a writer's work will often lead to greater understanding and appreciation than I currently have for this particular poet's work. 

Nevertheless, most of my students will cross the Walt Whitman Bridge from Philadelphia to Camden, NJ (Whitman's hometown) on their way to the Adventure Aquarium or to see a concert, and it would feel wrong to start class with a poem every day and never introduce one of our region's most famous poets.  So I share his fame, my personal reader reaction, and a fragment of his poetry, accessible to all. This passage about animals from "Song of Myself, 32" resonates with just about everyone: 

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

We use this passage for simple exercise in paraphrase and personal connection.

I ask students: "What is this poet saying about animals?  Put it in your own words without using any of the poet's words."  I comment on how important it is to learn how to paraphrase ideas that come to us from different centuries, since older variations of English can be off-putting at first.  Without grappling with these, however, we risk losing the ideas history has produced. 

After we share a few of the paraphrases around the room, I ask students if anyone feels something akin to one of these lines when with a pet at home, and invariably someone wants to tell me about the peace they have discovered because of an animal in their own home.  

With this tiny intro to class, I name a significant American poet, share an excerpt of one of his most famous poems, practice paraphrasing, and invite personal connections.  Not bad for a small investment of time!  Do I win them over to the wonder that is Whitman's work?  No.  But I'm still working on that one myself. And that's OK.  

As Carol Jago puts it, we can read and love poetry without putting it into "a golden frame." 

Further Reading:

Brett Vogelsinger is a ninth grade English teacher and NBCT at Holicong Middle School in Doylestown, PA. He is the founding editor of Go Poems, facilitates his school's literary magazine, Sevenatenine, and contributes monthly posts at Moving Writers. Follow him on Twitter @theVogelman.

2022 Post #10 -- A Ghazal For Our Times

by Carol Jago

Traditional forms may at first glance seem like a straight jacket for poetic expression. They can also be useful structures that living writers employ to explore contemporary issues. In her poem “You’re at home, speak English, Mexican,” nineteen-year-old Juliana Sosa uses the ancient Arab form of a ghazal to reflect upon the various — and sometimes contradictory — spaces she navigates in her daily life.


"You’re at home, speak English, Mexican"
by Juliana Sosa


You’re at home, speak English, Mexican

But I have more than one home where I don’t speak English, Mexican


My light skin doesn’t show them I’m Mexican

Sosa tongue got them running in circles, Mexican


I won’t be thrown over the border type, Mexican

But my daddy might, Mexican


I won’t be chained in cages, Mexican

But my baby cousins might, Mexican


The 1st generation type, Mexican

I gotta make my dad’s wet back dry with a diploma, Mexican


You go to a fancy public school, Mexican

The I got white privilege, Mexican


Does the Spanish that leaps from my tongue have privilege? Mexican

It doesn’t write the air in cursive but spits dirt on my father’s boots, Mexican


I translated my father’s stereotype turned addiction, Mexican

Beer bottles wishing they stayed in Mexico, Mexican


We only go to Church on Christmas type Mexican

Beat our hands on our chest to scare the sin away, Mexican


I practically raised my baby cousins on my hip, Mexican

Do these hips scream Mexican?


Or do the stretch marks on them show how fast I had to grow, Mexican

To translate from teachers’ offices to courthouses at the age of 6, Mexican


I got the what to do if your Tia gets pulled over talk, Mexican

To convince officers that green cards turned brown are still valid, Mexican


We come in different shades of pride and regret, Mexican

But I came to fulfill a dream that my father regrets, Mexican

Source: Google Books

A Ghazal is a form of ode originating in Arabic poetry. It often explores both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love alongside that pain. A ghazal is comprised of a series (at least 5) of couplets, each of which could stand alone as its own poem.

About the poet:

Juliana Sosa wrote this poem when she was a senior at Oak Park River Forest High School (class of 2021) where she was a member of the school’s Spoken Word club. The poem appears in the collection Respect the Mic. Juliana was a Gold Key recipient in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Discussion Questions

How does the poet help a reader visualize her experiences? Can you offer an example?
What does the poem’s form, a ghazal, contribute to its effect?
What role does repetition play in the poem?
Why do you think Juliana Sosa wrote this poem?

Suggestions for Writing

Write about a time when you made your parent(s) proud.
What family expectations did you face growing up?
Write about a time you were stereotyped or one when you proved a stereotype wrong.
Write a ghazal that explores your identity.

For more information about Oak Park River Forest High School’s Spoken Word Club https://spokenword.oprfhs.org/about

Further Reading:

Carol Jago has taught middle and high school in Santa Monica, CA for many years and served as president of the National Council of Teachers of English. Her latest publication, The Book in Question: Why and How Reading Is in Crisis is now available from Heinemann (2019). https://www.heinemann.com/products/e09868.aspx