passing the poetime

Last night a little party convened here in Boston.  At the table were Mary Lee Hahn of A Year of Reading, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater of The Poem Farm, Laura Purdie Salas, Carrie Finison of Story Patch, and Janet Fagal.  Later we had visits from Franki Sibberson, Tara Smith of A Teaching Life and Linda Baie of TeacherDance. The conversation was both broad and delightedly poetricentric.


One thing that came up was Amy's inability to keep a watch running, and her tendency to interfere with other technology.  We laughed about the strangeness of that phenomenon and remarked how (as Daisy would say) "that's a thing"--we all had heard of people who have those sort of troubles with cell phones and alarm clocks and streetlights.

This morning I went and read about EMFs--electromagnetic fields--and about our own bioelectromagnetism.  I found my way to a fascinating discussion with the flavor of quackery which I nonetheless found to be a compelling argument for increasing animal dis-ease, including our own human panoply of illnesses.  This is an area also where science intersects with earthcentric spirituality: read here for more views of our human "energy body."

But for now, all we need to know is that some people have a problem with

Killing Time

I plug it in but
nothing happens.
Lights dim and die
when I pass by.

I press the button;
nothing happens.
Clocks stop and sigh
when I pass by.

I wind my watch;
replace the batteries.
Again they die.
I don't know why.

I specialize
in killing time.

HM 2013 draft


You can productively kill a little more time enjoying the posts over at Write. Sketch. Repeat. with Katya today.  Welcome back, Katya!

ncte boston | poetry and poets galore!

Tomorrow I'll be posting from a hotbed of poetic action, but for now, a poem that my daughter has deemed her favorite of all time:


(love song, with two goldfish)  | Grace Chua

(He's a drifter, always
floating around her, has
nowhere else to go. He wishes
she would sing, not much, just the scales;
or take some notice,
give him the fish eye.)

(Bounded by round walls
she makes fish eyes
and kissy lips at him, darts
behind pebbles, swallows
his charms hook, line and sinker)

(He's bowled over. He would
take her to the ocean, they could
count the waves. There,
in the submarine silence, they would share
their deepest secrets. Dive for pearls
like stars.)

Read the rest here.

 

Man, that girl has good taste!

 

way behind

12.  Ready or Not

this one is 78 months old
speaks three languages
comes from globetrotting scientists

this one is 63 months old
counts as high as 4 in one language
is learning how to look at a book

quiz: in what area
are both "fully ready"?

the only answer we need to know:
"The Arts: Expression and Representation"


13.  The Classics

At the end, covered in oobleck,
King Derwin sobs,
"I'm sorry!  It is all my fault!"
For dramatic effect and multilingual comprehensibility,
I beat my breast and wail, "Mea culpa!"

They get it.


14.  faith

you just know the wind is there--
watch it stir the trees
you just believe the water's there--
watch it leave the leaves
wind and water
air and vapor
science is a faith


15.  we interrupt this program

nibble from an editor?
priorities, girl!
mypoperday bows out

9.10.11.

9. Breaking Through the Word Wall

We

We look
We like

We like apple!
We like cat We like dog We like eagle

You like this fish.
You like this lion.

I like
suddenly getting how this whole
writing-reading-talking thing actually works


10. Elemental Trace Analysis

icky sticky gooey glue
green grass green leaves
rain water mashed peas
playdough paint
pencil shavings
pumpkin vines
squishy brains
mucky gunky sticky mud
ooey gooey green gum

that's what oobleck's made of


11.  Standards-Based Grading

I am P for Proficient--
independent and efficient

I am I for In Progress--
I can get it, more or less

I am N for Not Yet--
more time to let my jello set

HM 2013 draft

MyPoPerDayMo catch up

Daisy hit 12,000 words on Wednesday and continues her quest to write 50,000 words in a month.  Speed challenges seem to helping her--she races against a friend for 5 or 10 minutes (not that she's competitive at all).  I just don't think that strategy is going to work for me, even if there were another poet who wanted to race me...



6.  Live Rock Show

I found a little rock
white with fuzzy green
I'm going to leave it out
in the rain so it can grow

(did you know
my brother is 14 and
my dad is 23 and
my mom is 13?
and I weigh 51 and
my little sister's catching up
and she weighs 62)

Some rocks are very small
but also rocks are big
or even huge like cars
I'm going to give it water

and watch my rock grow


7.  Watercolor Cinquain

why would
I put this paint
on the paper when I can
dip and dunk and swish it in the
water?

8. Swimmy Does Math

This greedy tuna is
Greater Than.
See its ziggity zaggety teeth
waiting to chomp that big fat nine.

This hungry tuna is
Less Than.
See its beady greedy eye
searching for the juicy round eight.

Look at skinny little one.
He gets away!

HM 2013 drafts
*************************
The roundup today is with Diane at Random Noodling.  Yee-ha!

MyPoPerDayMo 4 & 5

(two in the voice of the teacher)

Mr. B.'s Busy Day

Two doors down, the sound
of drilling:
Ms. Solomon's file cabinet
opens again.
Now she can pull out
an onslaught of
Thanksgiving.

Just outside, the sound
of mowing:
colorful shreds of
grass and leaves
confetti the windows--
an onslaught of
the autumn.

In our bathroom, the sound
of splitting:
the toilet seat has
cracked in two!
The broken piece sits in
an onslaught of
flushing.

Thank you, Mr. B.

***********

Primer

ABC is for
apple, bat and cat?
Oh no. 
Not here.

A is for
antecedent.
B is for
behavior.
C is for
consequence.

FBA is for
write it all down:

C is for
center - independent.
E is for
transition - ending

DG is for
demands gratification.
NP is for
not preferred activity.
CT is for
attempts to take control.

SPT is for
offer support.
IGN is for
planned ignoring.
ADM is for
call for help.

Now let's spell
FATIGUE.
The only missing letter is
U.

HM 2013 drafts

MyPoPerDayMo 3

"What did you do over the weekend?"

Over the weekend
    Saturday   Sunday
Over the weekend
    Sabado   Domingo
What did I do?  What did I do?

I climbed over
the fence of Saturday
I climbed over
the wall of Sunday

I climbed over
the weekend
like the sun climbs over the day
and back down under the night

I take a stick from Saturday
I take a stone from Sunday
I bring them to school on Monday

HM 2013 draft

MyPoPerDayMo 2

Finally Frozen

Is it my turn yet?
Is it my turn to share?
Is it my turn yet?  My turn to share?

It's my turn to share!
I'm scared.

MyPoPerDayMo 2013

Most reading this will have heard of NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month. It takes place every November, and I'm thinking about it this year because my 9th grade daughter, who went off to high school and promptly joined both newspaper staff and creative writing club (*fist pump YES*), has announced that she will be writing 50,000 words this month. This is something like 1600 words a day, for a final novel similar in length to The Great Gatsby or Slaughterhouse Five.

Although Daisy allowed me to participate in plotting her novel (for which she has a pretty cool concept), there's no way I could commit to that goal myself. I have, however, twice attempted to write one poem per day for the month of November--once mostly successfully and once not at all. For many of you poetry bloggers, a poem a day is no big thing--you do it all the time as a matter of habit. But for me it requires a lot of discipline, and since my teaching life at the moment requires even more discipline, and since fundamentally I'm not a very self-disciplined person, committing to try for one PoPerDay for a month is a big deal.

I'm going to go in, inspired by Laura Shovan's novel-in-verse project, with the plan of writing all the poems from inside a classroom, which might just coincidentally be mine. I also might cheat by reusing poems I've already written since the start of the year. And if my undisciplined mind suddently writes a completely unrelated poem, I'll allow it and worry about connecting it or cutting it later. I'm pretty sure MyPoPerDayMo will be an unlovely rag of a thing, but it will be 30 poems instead of 5 or 6, and that's always worth doing, right?

****************************************

The Other Kind of Toast

My mask hurt my nose.
The parade was long.
Back in the class the table was longer!
Plates with cupcakes, cookies, grapes!
But we couldn't eat yet--hands in laps.
The teacher made us toast.

"To the Fearless Frogs!" we all said.
We bumped our cups--GENTly, GENTly--
we didn't spill a drop.
"Cheers!" we said, and then we drank.
Then Angel said, "To Halloween!"
And Jashawn said, "To loose teeth!"
Camilo said, "To Ms. Friedrich's Class!"
"Salud!" "Chin-chin!" and "Prost!"
And then we got to eat.

HM Nov 2013 draft
*Fearless Frogs doesn't come close to Mighty Minnows, but it's best I can do for now/ Also please see Frederick by Leo Lionni.

OIK: academic vocabulary

Outside, during our daily 5-minute run-around:

Me:  "Look up and notice the clouds.  First they were over there and now they're over on this side of the sky.  How do you think that happened?"

Julee:  "Maybe the clouds collaborated together to travel through the sky."

***********************
wind and
clouds
collaborate
circulate

wind and
clouds
accumulate
elaborate

nimbly swim
across the sky

clouds
somnambulate

the dishwasher of my mind

This is going to be one of those posts where I attempt to connect and convey quite a few overlapping ideas; luckily all teachers in Maryland have the day off in case they want to attend the state NEA convention, so I have some extra time today.  I'll be spending it with you all on Poetry Friday and in the Garage, but getting a late start, because sometimes a girl just has to sleep in.

Yesterday I heard this fascinating piece on NPR about new research regarding the role of sleep in animals, including humans.  Why we need to sleep is a question that has puzzled scientists, because in terms of the survival of any species, sleep is costly--way too many opportunities for an individual's entire genome to be snapped up off the face of the earth in the dark of night.

It's beginning to look like the function of sleep is to shut down other processes of the brain so that it can be flushed--literally flushed--by an influx of cerebral spinal fluid that washes away the toxic waste proteins accumulated during a day of learning, thinking, problem-solving, remembering.  In fact, brains that don't have an efficient sleeptime plumbing system to remove proteins like amyloid-beta are brains which have neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer's.

This question of sleep is on my mind too, because as in many school districts, we've been having a push to Start School Later, especially for adolescents, whose sleep cycles shift with the onset of puberty.  When a kid's melatonin (the sleepy hormone) doesn't kick in until 11pm or midnight, and then she has to get up at 5:50am to catch a bus to high school that starts at 7:25, a kid is routinely missing out on 3-4 hours of the sleep time that allows her brain to perform that essential cleansing process.  Here's some info on what other effects this ritual abuse of our young people can have on them and on the rest of us, courtesy of the national organization Start School Later.

Here in Montgomery County, MD, a surprising thing recently happened--the newish Superintendent of Schools read all the findings of our SSL Work Group and recommended that we actually move towards doing it!  Start time for high school would be pushed back to 8:15 and middle school would stay roughly the same at 7:45. Elementary schools would start at 8:45, as now, but have the school day extended by 30 minutes to allow the staggered triple school bus runs that we currently depend on.  I have high hopes that we can work this out over the next year--it's a win-win and a good step towards better aligning the  schedules and calendars of working families and schools.

But, you may ask, where is the poetry in all this?  Well, on Wednesday I spent 3.5 hours in chair reviewing and planning the entire kindergarten curriculum for Marking Period 2 at high speed.  By the end my head was spinning and I thought, "This is what our kiddos feel like every day!" We have a highly compressed kindergarten day in which we attempt teach a huge mass of concepts, skills and indicators without sufficient time to balance it all with a relaxed lunch, sufficient recess, or indoor creative play. At the end of our meeting, our Staff Development Teacher acknowledged that we had been "jambarded" by information, and a poem was seeded.  (Thanks for the great word, Joelle Thompson!)

The last thing you need to know is that this year our school serves universal breakfast in the classroom, which is a great thing with a lot of unintended consequences for instructional time and also tabletop cleanliness.

************************
The dishwasher of my mind


Happy happy Tuesday
I've been up since 6 o'clock
the password at the door is like
this is how we walk in line
(does my name contain a b?
what to choose for lunch?)
after breakfast and announcements
(read the job chart, pledge allegiance,
total rainfall and respect)

the plates
in my brain
are already
jambarded
with
"whole grain" cinnamon buns
sticky bombs of how-to-do-it
protein packs of need-to-know
jammy wraps of chant-it-fast
but

morning meeting, hello greeting
(say the rhyme sit down stand up)
plans and practice sounds and spelling
Quiet Reading all four steps and why
why do we quiet-read?
(shaky egg the Teacher Table
reading groups fly in and out)
she won't know unless I read it
date it draw it what's my center?
now clean up

the bowls
in my brain
are filled to
overflowing
with
maple syrup-flavored pancakes
fudgy sauce of mix-and-fix
fatty folder-fill-it worksheets
spicy soup of story time
and

now it's time for lunch.
It's loud.

I need a chance to wash my dishes,
rinse and scrub and scour my brain,
clean off all the dried-on layers,
greasy gunk of what I learned,
sizzled residue of thinking.

Can't I lay my head inside a
shiny box with glowing buttons,
start the cycle,
take a nap?


~Heidi Mordhorst
    draft 2013

*******************************
The Poetry Friday round-up today is with Cathy at Merely Day by Day.  I see her Teachers Writing badge, and I'm glad to have the chance to be one!

mortimer bounces back...

...to answer this question:

"What poem do you wish you had written?"

Oh--do you mean the one that came to me at a crucial moment in the development of a healthier, looser grip on, well, everything?  You mean the one that I printed out in turquoise and taped to the inside of the mug cupboard, so that I see it every morning whether it's a tea morning or a coffee morning?  You mean this one, by my friend Liz Steinglass?  This little miracle poem, packed with images both fresh and nostalgic? This one that reminds me that there is both celebration and shatter in every day, that flow takes practice and that laughter is the last word?

"Yes," says Mortimer, "this one."

*****************************************************

Pool | Liz Steinglass 

Cool me.
Soothe me. 
Paint me blue and lose me.
Hold me.
Enclose me.
Show me how to flow.
Celebrate
My crashing,
Shatter
Into splashing,
Collapse in waves
Of laughing.
When I’ve gone,
Sit still.

Thanks for letting me share this, Liz, and thanks for asking, Mortimer.
Go get splashed by more poetry with Dori today over at Dori Reads.