as muCH AS My

Good morning and welcome to a nerdy, rambling post in which I start with a simple (albeit stunning) photo and end with, perhaps, a colonoscopy.  There will be a poem, too.

I'm the family social secretary, and twice recently I've made confused errors with events on our family calendar. I saw a haircut scheduled on Feb. 14 that I was sure wasn't right, and took some time texting with my stylist to establish that no, I didn't make an appointment on Valentine's Day, but wasn't it a coincidence that my spouse ALSO had a haircut on Valentine's Day?! Turned out that was a real appointment, that the one I was seeing on the calendar WAS my spouse's, never mine, but for two days I thought there were two concurrent appointments! And then I sat right at the Sunday evening family meeting, reported my teacher training event located miles away, and then planned to pick my son up on that day--which, by the time the day arrived, I realized I couldn't possibly do.  (The reason that I'm the social secretary is that both spouse and son sat in that meeting and neither one questioned my flawed plan as I was making it.)

These incidents, and certain other signs of aging, have me questioning my own ability to do what I've always been especially good at: to remember verbatim what has passed in a conversation, to observe keenly and take detailed note of what is happening when and how.  My own precision in this is noticeable because of how I've heard my spouse recount conversations I've witnessed, using language that is at best in the same hemisphere as the conversation--but not nearly in the same neighborhood, never mind the same house. (She also says that no one wants to hear this much detail, for example at a cocktail party; they want to get to the punchline faster.  I say there are plenty of people I know--hello writers--for whom the detail IS the cocktail, the party and the punchline.)

I keep thinking about what psychology research tells us about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, and how our brains use all kinds of unconscious bias to build memories which we then treat as objective fact, and I begin to wonder if I have ever been as good at reporting my own observations as I think.  Am I, at nearly 56, losing a skill I really had, or did I never have it, because no one does?  This is very concerning for someone who relies on being right about stuff for their mental health.  Okay, maybe for their mental unhealth.

So, the poetry. I'm participating in Laura Shovan's 8th Annual February Poetry Project.  There are about 35 participants and someone provides a prompt for every day with a water theme this year.  It has taken up a good part of my poetry attention, which is why I didn't see Cheriee Weichel's host post last week until Linda Mitchell wrote a poem based on a form created by Avis Harley, the subject of Cheriee's post and of one on Sylvia Vardell's Poetry for Children blog in 2011. (Are you with me?) "Wow!" said my puzzly wordnerd detail brain. "I too want to write an intravista! Two poems in one! Deep hidden meanings! Orthography!  Let's go!"

That day's prompt was this photo by Catherine Flynn, of a particular piece of the Grand Canyon called Elves Chasm.  What better image to inspire a poem with a canyon full of more to see inside?  So I started writing.  And here's the thing:  I don't know how I did it.  I know I found the word "knives" with the little word "I've" hiding in it, which indicated a first person voice, and I knew I wanted the elves in the poem, and then I realized that I would have to choose the embedded words first and write around them somehow.  And then a thing happened where a) I was in full Csíkszentmihályiesue flow and b) the needs of the embedded poem and the needs of the outer poem were talking to each other in a conversation which I could observe and record, but not exactly control until the poem finished itself.  This mental state, for a person who overthinks and overcontrols and relies on being right, is a very very very great relief--joy, even.  Kind of like that "twilight" feeling you get with the light anaesthesia of a colonoscopy. (Don't say I didn't warn you.)

Et voila, the poem.

           ©Heidi Mordhorst 2020

So, thanks to Cheriee and Avis and Sylvia and Linda and Laura and Catherine, who all had a role in my blissful elfin chasmic flow of joy, and thanks to Karen, who's hosting today at her shockingly clever blog. May you ride or escape the flow today, as you choose.

Welcome

Welcome

Add your name to the birthday chart.
Look--on Wednesdays we have Art.
Choose three books for your reading box.
Let's all get ready 'cause Second Grade Rocks!




Not my very best little ditty, but it conveys the message:  I am no longer a kindergarten teacher.  I loved kindergarten and I'm sorry to leave it...but now that it's real and the room is set up (just about) I'm getting excited about 2nd grade.  The one thing I'm really grieving is that first-day-of-school Swimmy-Makes-us-Mighty-Minnows tradition.  I have some of the same kids I taught, and they are bigger and more grown up.  I don't think they want to be Minnows any more.

So, I'm starting the year with Sylvester and the Magic Pebble instead, because we have some rocks-and-soil science in the first few weeks to connect to, and we'll also be reading and working with Roxaboxen and If You Find a Rock, books I adore.  But I haven't figured out yet what we will become as a group.  "Magic Pebbles" doesn't capture the characteristics I want to emphasize, and "Mighty Magnets" is a bit of a stretch....I'm hoping it will come to me over the weekend, but if you have any suggestions, PoFolks, I'd welcome them.

The round-up today is hosted by Sylvester I mean Sylvia Vardel at Poetry For Children--enjoy the welcome there too, from Sylvia and my geographic neighbor Linda Kulp!

Poetry Friday & NCTE

The time draws near and I'm getting excited...the NCTE Annual Convention begins next Thursday, November 20!  I'm looking forward, as I do every year, to spending some time surrounded by fellow teachers who are passionate about English language and literature teaching.  It's also the time of year when I get to hang out in person with the blogging poets and teachers whom I "see" each Friday right here in the virtual Poetry Friday community.  Click here to find out more about the six-year-old Poetry Friday tradition.
 
Out of these steadily inspiring virtual relationships has come a great gift to teachers--the Poetry Friday Anthologies, created and compiled by two champions of children's poetry, professor and cheerleader Sylvia Vardell and poet and community organizer Janet Wong.  Their mission to support teachers in bringing more poetry into  classrooms began with an e-book--Poetry Tag Time--a concept which I am proud to have been a little helpful in developing.

There are now three Poetry Friday Anthologies--one for K-5, one for middle school, and most recently one for science.  Over the last few weeks I've been highlighting science poetry by "classic" poets, but The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science is a catalog of the best poets currently writing for children, all in one place, supporting teachers as they attempt to do Too Much All at Once.

I'm a classroom teacher.  I know what our curricula look like.  Someone in our central office (or several someones) puts together a ginormous pile of standards, indicators, lessons and resources in an effort to help us classroom professionals offer our students a rich and "rigorous" curriculum.  (Personally I prefer a rich and vigorous curriculum; somehow "rigor" always make me think of dead bodies, stiff and cold.)  The effect is almost always an overwhelming feeling of dread as we look ahead each week to all that we are supposed to do and teach in our measly 6 hours per day with our students.  The triage is bloody and there is only one solution:  synergy.

syn·er·gy  ˈsinərjē/    noun

the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects

Synergy is the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

We also call this "integrating the curriculum," but when your curriculum is delivered to you in several separate binders or individual webpages labeled Math, Reading, Writing, Science and Social Studies, it can be hard to remember that none of these "subjects" stands alone and separate--not in our adult minds, and certainly not  the minds of elementary students.  That's just not how people think and learn.

There is always a necessity to get down into the details of how to teach each little skill and concept, but if we let that approach run our days in the classroom, we rob our students of the chance to marvel at the beauty of the interdependent web of ideas, knowledge and indeed all existence.

So how do we successfully attempt Too Much All at Once?  One way is to use poetry to address other curriculum areas.   This will be the subject of the Children's Literature Assembly Master Class that I'll be helping to lead at this year's NCTE conference.  My roundtable discussion will focus on ways to use poetry to teach science and vice versa--to synergize the elements of language, metaphor, curiosity, investigation, research and data into a whole that becomes a powerful tool for student engagement and learning.  The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science takes us there with next to no effort (although we will need some courage, if we're not teachers who live entirely comfortably in the world of poetry).

Here's a shout-out to my colleagues at Rock View Elementary School in North Kensington, MD, some of whom will win copies of The PFA for Science in a raffle on Monday.  I'll close with one of my personal favorites from this anthology, placed in the 1st grade section but accessible to elementary kids of all ages.  It's by Mary Lee Hahn, my friend and fellow classroom teacher from Dublin, Ohio, who will also be presenting at the CLA Master Class next weekend.  See how few words--well-chosen words!--you need to bring rhyme, rhythm, scientific concepts and higher-order thinking to your students?

The Lion and the House Cat ||  Mary Lee Hahn

different strength
different size
same chin
same eyes

different mane
different stride
same stretch
same pride

And below are a few snippets and excerpts from this wonder of a book, all taken from the Pomelo Books website.  Go on and make your teaching life a little more efficient and a little more beautiful:  commit to Poetry Friday (once a month? every other week? every Friday?) and get yourself one of these anthologies to help out.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Keri at Keri Recommends.  Enjoy!
 

     

Poetry Friday power-up!

The Poetry Friday Anthology:

Poems for the School Year

with Connections to the Common Core

compiled by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong

Pomelo Books 2012 -- official release date September 1

This supremely practical anthology, which will be available in both soft-cover book and e-book versions, is the latest feat of  magic worked by that Daring Duo of Poetry, Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong.

It contains 218 new poems by 75 of the best poets now writing for children, but unlike other quality anthologies of literary poetry, this one is organized with the busy classroom teacher in mind (and I should know).  In other words, it's the best of educational and literary publishing all rolled into one lively package!

It includes 36 poems for each grade level K-5, which is one for each week of a standard 180-day school year.  Even better, the poems have been organized according to broad themes that repeat for each grade level, so that in Week 1, all grade levels enjoy a "School" poem, in Week 18 every kid K-5 gets a "Human Body" poem, and in Week 29 there are poems about...poetry!  There are heartfelt and serious poems under themes like "A Kinder Place" and "Families," and hootingly playful poems under "Stuff We Love" and "Nonsense."  By the end of the school year, when kids have had lots of poetry experience, the themes are related to poetic devices such as "Metaphor and Simile" and "Personification," addressed at accessible levels.   

For the few teachers who are truly poetry-phobic, this anthology is a gift.  It says, "Take a few minutes just one day a week to make poetry your focus...we'll help you do it right, do it in community, and enjoy all the rewards!"  To support the less confident, each poem comes with 5 quick tips for sharing, teaching, enjoying:

*a hook for introducing the poem,

*a developmentally appropriate way for students to join in reading and speaking the poem,

*ideas for discussion and teachable moments,

*and finally, a connection to another poem in the anthology or another poetry book to explore.

Of course, many more teachers will be doing as I'll do, dipping in here and there to select poems not by week but by theme, and looking beyond my own grade level to find other gems that I'll bring into our curriculum through content connections, writing and performance.   I'll be highlighting some of my favorites in coming posts, and you can bet that those of us contributors who also participate in Poetry Friday in the Kidlitosphere will be sharing more tips and tricks and on their blogs, too!

p*tag you're it

After the rounds of poetry tag played at my Honesdale Highlights workshop, I didn't think a tag game would ever be quite so exciting again.  But I was wrong:  I have been invited to participate in the second poetry tag project coordinated by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, champions for the dissemination of poetry for young people.  Titled p*tag (you can play along here), it's the "first electronic-only anthology for teens" and will be illustrated with photos taken by Sylvia herself. 

Even as I write I'm in the midst of the challenge:  I have just been tagged by Stephanie Hemphill, an accomplished verse novelist.  My mission is to a) immerse myself in a photo I selected from Sylvia's intriguing gallery, b) select three words from Stephanie's fine poem, and c) compose my own poem inspired by the photo using Stephanie's three words and an as-yet-undetermined number of my own.  I have 24 hours in which to do this, and to write a piece that describes my process and how the resulting poem is linked to the photo and to Stephanie's.  

Then I get to tag another of the 31 poets who are participating (with respect for who's on vacation this weekend and who's working!).  The project will all be complete and available for download at an irresistible price by October. How cool IS this?  I just hope I can pull off something worthy of the concept and of the first Poetry Tag Time volume, which was e-published in April.

So, back to Stephanie Hemphill.  Her latest book is Wicked Girls, which I confess I thought might be another girls-telling-lies-and-being-mean-to-each-other-book despite its subtitle: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials.  I took up HarperTeen's offer to "browse inside" and found myself reading way past my bedtime with fascination and admiration.  Here's a selection called "Caught."

Caught
Margaret Walcott, 17

Past the crooked evergreen
and the brook what lost its water,
on my way home from playing
games on who'll make me husband,
I cross Ipswich Road.
I rub my eyes.  His two blue ones
be looking straight on me.

My pulse starts to gallop
like a steed.  But today I trip not.
I track on up to him and say,
"Be you following me?"

His arms be thick enough
to lift the axe of three men.
Isaac's laughter shakes
through him so fierce
it scatters the snow off his boots.
"Yea, Margaret Walcott,
betwixt tending the stables,
staking out the fields
and bringing wares to town,
I be scouting all the time after you."
He raises one brow.
"But where hast thou been?"

The color splashes over me,
drenching me red.  I hold up my buckets.
"Fetching water," I say.

"Thou are far from any stream
I know of," Isaac says,
and shakes his head.
His eyes catch on me
like he be holding lightly
my face with his hand.

"I must then be lost," I say,
and I pick up my bucket
and my skirts and trot off.
And do so quite a bit like a lady.

~ Stephanie Hemphill
from Wicked Girls, Harper 2011


Apart from the draw of the story itself, of the girl accusers of Salem's alleged witches, I am completely fascinated by the sound of American English at this early, early stage of our history--the syntax, the grammar, and not least the voices of these girls who find themselves, unlike most girls of the era, known in history rather than anonymous.

Check out what other worlds folks are dreaming today at A Year of Literacy Coaching with Libby.  Happy Poetry Friday, and look out for p*tag!