new year's note to self: short and long versions

New Year's Note to Self, short version:  

Put first things first and take a writing/blogging sabbatical for a couple of months.

New Year's Note to Self, long version:
Yes, Heidi, you are a poet & teacher who practices her arts blah blah blah, but you are also a parent--the parent of a kid who has distinct executive function challenges that keep getting more pronounced as life gets more complex.  But just like you told said kid, when you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, you don't sit back and say, "Oh, these things are hard for me so don't expect me to do them well."

Instead, top to bottom ed/psych testing is an opportunity for everyone to practice using their strengths to develop their weaknesses.  Right?  So you the parent need to model this.

Weakness:  responding flexibly when things don't go smoothly, efficiently and according to schedule.
Strengths: "goal-directed persistence,"  organizational and time-management skills.

You the parent need to temporarily clear the decks and free up some time and attention to focus on this child who needs extra frontal lobe in order to cope with the demands of 4th grade.  If you keep doing everything you're doing all at once, there's no frontal lobe to spare for him. 

The poetry will still be there in 60 days. (Heck, it holed up and hibernated circa 1985 and then popped out full of spring sap 15 years later.  Not to worry.).  But two months is a long time in the life of a 10-year-old who needs more patient reminders and less frantic screeching about missing homework and undone chores.

So, give it two months and see where the family gets.  Check back in around March 1.  "Everything will be all right in the end.  If it's not all right, it's not the end."

Love,
Heidi

how things fit together

I'm consumed this week in finding a suitable (and yet, shall we say, practical) way to honor a grand achievement:  my parents' upcoming fiftieth anniversary.  In my search for a related poem, just as I was becoming frustrated, I found this.

The Great Order of the Universe

by Christian Bok

The notes say that it was composed in response to the fiftieth anniversary of the Lego patent, in 2008.  I suppose I could wish that the Lego anniversary coincided exactly with my parents' anniversary, but goodness! Isn't it pleasing when things fit together so variably, so neatly, so interlockingly coupled?

teach like Ernest Hemingway

You bet I'm a charter member of Students First.  I agree generally with its whole platform and I admire the straight-talking leadership of Michelle Rhee (on this project at least), but the name of the organization does just say it all:  the needs of students--that's children and young people we're talking about--should come before the convenience of adults or the demands of a bureaucratic system.

I got an email from Students First yesterday with an intriguing subject line:  "Do you write like Hemingway?"  It read:

"It's said Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story using just six words: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' He reportedly declared it his greatest work. Words are powerful tools — for learning, for inspiration, for transformation. When we choose our words with precision, we can say so much. It is with Hemingway as our inspiration that I write to you with a fun challenge: Describe what it means to be a great teacher in just six words."

Well, that's a straight-up poetry challenge, and my mind started percolating--but just like I spike my basic drip coffee with a layer of cinnamon, my current reading seeped in and flavored my six-word essay.  I'm reading Drive by Daniel H. Pink, which is all about what motivates humans of all ages, extrinsically and intrinsically.  He comes at the question of motivation mainly from a business/work perspective, but of course the research he cites and the new "operating system" he proposes--dubbed Motivation 3.0--are entirely applicable to education settings.  Here's the conclusion Pink reaches by the end of his exploration of the three elements of Motivation 3.0, which are autonomy, mastery and purpose.

"A CENTRAL IDEA of this book has been the mismatch between what science knows and what business does. The gap is wide. Its existence is alarming. And though closing it seems daunting, we have reasons to be optimistic.

The scientists who study human motivation, several of whom we’ve encountered in this book, offer us a sharper and more accurate account of both human performance and the human condition. The truths they’ve revealed are simple, yet powerful. The science shows that those typical twentieth-century carrot-and-stick motivators—which we consider somehow a “natural” part of human enterprise—can sometimes work. But they’re effective in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. The science shows that “if-then” rewards—the mainstays of the Motivation 2.0 operating system—not only are ineffective in many situations, but also can crush the high-level, creative, conceptual abilities that are central to current and future economic and social progress. The science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution.

Bringing our businesses in sync with these truths won’t be easy. Unlearning old ideas is difficult, undoing old habits even harder. And I’d be less sanguine about the prospects of closing the motivation gap anytime soon, if it weren’t for this: The science confirms what we already know in our hearts.

We know that human beings are not merely smaller, slower, bettersmelling donkeys trudging after that day’s carrot. We know—if we’ve spent time with young children or remember ourselves at our best—that we’re not destined to be passive and compliant. We’re designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences in our lives aren’t when we’re clamoring for validation from others, but when we’re listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.

So, in the end, repairing the mismatch and bringing our understanding of motivation into the twenty-first century is more than an essential move for business. It’s an affirmation of our humanity."

Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Chapter 6. 

That's certainly how things look to me.  So I submitted my six-word essay on what it means to be a great teacher, and I submitted it although I know it's probably a bit too "spiritual" to win the iPad prize, even for Students First. 

Love says, "Welcome."  Faith says, "Grow."


I wonder if I successfully captured what I mean.  If you're a teacher or a librarian, I invite you to respond with your own six-word essay.  The Poetry Friday round-up today is with Elaine at Wild Rose Reader.

we're so brave, we're so smart

The Mighty Minnows of Room 144 are almost literally splishing and splashing down the hall this week due to the many inches of rain that have fallen here, and in two weeks of school they have not been out to recess ONCE.  (Long story; must get to writing that grant to fund 20 pairs of galoshes and 20 ponchos so we can go out in all weathers).

The "big song" we're learning is one both my own children sang in Kindergarten with the wonderful Miss Cook, The Sun Inside Us. (Scroll down to play a sample.)  It's by Sarah Pirtle, from an album called The Wind Is Telling Secrets, and we hope Sarah doesn't mind that we've changed an important word in the chorus from "strong"--which for little children implies muscle power only--to "brave," which is a fine character trait that even the most physically challenged can develop. 

It's just a song, and it's not like they made it up themselves, but I can hardly express how it feels to hear 5-year-olds assert, in sincere and joyful voice (and of course, with motions) that they were born brave and smart, with loving hearts.  I know that singing those words rubs off on them.  The poetry's darn good too.

The Sun Inside Us
Sarah Pirtle

Chorus:
Derry-down a-diddle-um-day!
So we are and so we’ll stay.
We're so brave; we're so smart;
We were born with a loving heart.

We were born with the sun inside us,
We were born with the mystery moon.
We were born with the stars to guide us,
We were born with the blackbird's tune.

We were born with the river's turning.
We were born with the river's run.
We were born with the wild bird's yearning.
We were born with the blue jay's fun!

We were born with the strength of hickory,
We were born with the seagull’s sight.
We were born with cells of crystal,
We were born with the rainbow light.

You're so brave; you're so smart;
You were born with a loving heart.


Katie's hosting Poetry Friday at Secrets and Sharing Soda today.  Bubble on over and fizz!

the big day

Update, August 12:  here we are, having done the deed!

Those zebras are going to have to wait yet another week, because suddenly, after 20 years and two children together, my beloved and I decided to tie the knot----you know, officially and publicly, with a license---because who knows how long same-sex marriage will stay legal in DC., and who knows how long until it's legal in Maryland?  So the big day will take place down in the big city and the ceremony has been hastily cobbled together this week around the theme of  "unconventional"--best expressed by our 8-year-old son's decision to wear a black tuxedo, accessorized with a sombrero.  Really.

Here are words I find appropriate on such a momentous little occasion.  I just read that e. e. cummings was criticized for his failure to grow as a poet, and one reviewer called him "a case of arrested development."  But I'm with Edward Estlin: I say that keeping that beginner's wonder at "the root of the root and the bud of the bud" through decades is what grows the tree called life [called love] so sky high.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
....................................i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

~ e.e. cummings


Visit Kate for more poetry love at Book Aunt, and think of me and Fiona, the Spice Girls (spouse girl + spouse girl = Spice Girls) on Saturday morning!

the badnesses of this world

My preference is usually for "uplifting" poetry, that which (along with everything it does for cognition and imagination by sounding good to your ears and feeling good in your mouth) leaves me with a reverberating sense of wonder at the goodnesses of this world, kind of like the ones I posted back in January that suggested some animal spirituality.

I'm having trouble therefore understanding why the poem below keeps me coming back to it. I received it courtesy of The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day service. The pain barely contained in it is enormous and frightening and wonderful.

Prayer for the Man Who Mugged My Father, 72
by Charles Harper Webb

May there be an afterlife.

May you meet him there, the same age as you.
May the meeting take place in a small, locked room.

May the bushes where you hid be there again, leaves tipped with razor-
blades and acid.
May the rifle butt you bashed him with be in his hands.
May the glass in his car window, which you smashed as he sat stopped
at a red light, spike the rifle butt, and the concrete on which you'll
fall.

May the needles the doctors used to close his eye, stab your pupils
every time you hit the wall and then the floor, which will be often.
May my father let you cower for a while, whimpering, "Please don't
shoot me. Please."
May he laugh, unload your gun, toss it away;
Then may he take you with bare hands.

May those hands, which taught his son to throw a curve and drive a nail
and hold a frog, feel like cannonballs against your jaw....

Take a deep breath and read the complete poem here. Poetry Friday is hosted today by Breanne at Language, Literacy, Love.

live from philadelphia

First, thanks to everyone who played along with the idea of "definito"s last week. I'm coming back to them soon and wish I could find a way to display all the comments permanently...

Despite my best intentions this week, I neither visited Miss Rumphius to pick up a Poetry Stretch on Monday, nor managed yesterday morning to post live from the NCTE Conference live from Philadelphia, where I had just the best time at the Poetry Party organized in honor of the NCTE Poetry Award (finally) Winner Lee Bennett Hopkins.

Many who contributed poems to a beautifully produced tribute volume joined the panel in saying a few words and reading their poems, but I believe I was the only one having the pleasure of meeting Lee for the first time. I have never felt so physically middle-aged than I do this fall (and let's face it, 45 is very probably halfway along my lifeline), but something about being in a room with him, with Bobbi Katz and Jane Yolen and the gentle spirits of Myra Cohn Livingston and Eve Merriam, makes me feel like my 4th grade self again, the one who wanted nothing more desperately than to have a poem published in the brand-new Cricket Magazine. When John Ciardi visited my school (thank you, Mrs. Jane Toler, school librarian), I was starstruck and have saved the autograph he gave me in my musical jewelry-box forever: it stood for poems, and what is a poem but a musical jewel? (I'll tell the story about the three cigarettes that once spent a few guilty days in that same jewelry-box another time.)

In the years since, I've been living and working on the outskirts of Poetry Town--knowing just enough news and just enough people to feel like a part of the community, but rarely setting foot in the Town Hall. So getting up and reading "Stanza Means Room" among that crowd of luminaries was was was--DIZZYING, knowing that my poems are built out of their poems, that the internal recording of my experiences as a kid was in a language they taught. I'm not the same now as when I went in, a guest in their poetry house.

The Hug, by Thom Gunn

Heart-snagging.

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
Half of the night with our old friend
Who'd showed us in the end
To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
Already I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
Your instep to my heel,
My shoulder-blades against your chest.
It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
Or braced, to mine,
And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.