Patchwork
“summarized in the coroner’s report[1]“
“one who can’t throw away a piece of wilted lettuce[2]“
“you infinitely portable god – a quiet god[3]“
“We were long over as a romantic couple.[4]“

“Even a worm is beautiful[5]“
“the necessity of killing and its regulation[6]“
“lullabyes from welfare, food-stamps, and nature[7]“
“No need to pay your taxes[8]“
“in formal rapture and cast hollow spirit[9]“
“splashed all over me.[10]“

“i stole
those images from a
wild girl’s mouth.[11]“
“I dont want to hurt her
–Of all people to hurt.[12]“
“Let the combination of morality
and inhumanity
begin.[13]“

“MAN IS INNOCENT & BEAUTIFUL & born[14]“
“stained with urine and excrement.[15]“
“How could I hold back the tears?[16]“
“it’s an awful job. But she never told me[17]“
“The face that moves in my mirror is huge and pockmarked,[18]“
“But One Night In The Tropics, I Saw What You Did.[19]“

“And while we intended to take[20]“
“The body in a tin can[21]“
“I wonder if he’s happy where he’s at?[22]“
“We looked around[23]“
“And instead of flowers or stones[24]“
“your face
when you’re suffering.[25]“
“and blow the dust off[26]“
“he used to carry his own weight[27]“
“they scatter your ashes[28]“
“on my tongue.[29]

“WAITING FOR THAT SIGH[30]“
“but it’s unrequited love.[31]“
“Like the ghost of a lover done wrong.[32]“
“Looking like poetry
or the secret of clay.[33]“
“For a few of the women who’d slept with him[34]“
“Long after the theatre lights went on[35]“
“as if I were as pure[36]“
“as death due to heart attack[37]“
“and a stainless-steel cross[38]“
“crushed on the floors of time,[39]“
“with the unfairness of weight.[40]“

[1] South Central Los Angeles Death Trip, 1982, Wanda Coleman
[2]Bike Messenger Leading the People, Dominque Lowell
[3] Cleveland: The Rectal Eye Exam, d.a. levy
[4] I Was With Her Long Enough To Change Brands of Cigarettes, Bucky Sinister
[5] Beauty is Everywhere Baudelaire, Jack Micheline
[6] It’s DUmb to be a Member of a Dominant Species, Alice Notley
[7] Check One, Regie Cabico
[8] After the Cries of the Birds Has Stopped, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
[9] Was Poe Afraid, Charles Plymell
[10] Murdered in the Middle of the Dance, Steven J. Bernstein
[11] Love is the Silence, Stuart Z. Perkoff
[12] 149th Chorus, Jack Kerouac
[13] Short Speech to My Friends, Amiri Baraka
[14] Revolutionary Letters, Diane DiPrima
[15] The Evening News, William S. Burroughs
[16] Lucky Strike No Strike Back, Marc “Slampappy” Smith
[17] Land of a Thousand Dances, Joan Jobe Smith
[18] Skinhead, Patricia Smith (weird, three Smiths in a row….)
[19] The Bride Goes Wild, Amy Gerstler
[20] Chicks Up Front, Sara Holbrook
[21] Ode to a Tijuana Toilet, James Dean
[22] Jesse James and His Boys, Woody Guthrie
[23]  The American Night, Jim Morrison
[24] Jukebox, Jim Carroll
[25] Just say NO to Family Values, John Diorno
[26] I Ate Fig Newtons Until I Puked, S.A. Griffin
[27] (some) people have enough problems, Q.R. Hand
[28] Poem – Miguel Pinero, David Henderson
[29] Certain Prostitute, David Roskos
[30] Career Move, Penny Arcade
[31] Ball & Chain Record Store, Ellyn Maybe
[32] Lost My Job & Wrote This Poem, Bruce Isaacson
[33] The Woman at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, Neeli Chekovski
[34] Jack Kerouac Returns to Lowell After 25 Years, Gerald Nicosia
[35] 7th Sound for John Garfield, James Ryan Morris
[36] Sing Sing Sits Up the River, Alejo Dao’ud Rodriguez
[37] South Central Los Angeles Death Trip, 1982, Wanda Coleman
[38] The Crucifixion of Johnny Carson, David Lerner
[39] Bagel Shop Jazz, Bob Kaufman
[40] Red Snappers, Carol Wierzbicki

Tony Romano and I were happy to see our friends Jodi Douglas Moeller and Douglas Jameson from Hazelwood West High School, and share our Writers Week programs with a roomful of energetic teachers on Friday morning. Thanks especially to Billy Lombardo and Theresa Christensen for generously adding perspectives on what it’s like to bring authors into schools.

Tony, Lee Ann Spillane, and I were excited and actually sort of surprised by how many people attended our presentation “Zapping Apathy: Creating Community in English Classes.” Those of you who were there know that it was max capacity. I wish I’d known people were being turned away at the door. I would have come out and dealt with that situation.

Zapping Apathy at NCTE 11 in Chicago, November 18, 2011 (Photo courtesy of Vanessa Alander)

Although we heard a lot of great feedback after the session, I’m curious about what lured so many people to our session in the first place. This is what the program said:

“This is boring!” Anyone who hasn’t heard that line has probably never been a high school English teacher! We love writing and literature, so why do our students not love them too? Find out about research on engaging students, and strategies guaranteed to zap the apathy in any English class.

Many teachers are sensing growing disengagement in their students, and I hope we helped with that. But then I think about the elementary school students that I see fairly regularly who are almost jumping out of their skins in order to participate in class and show their interest in what is going on around them. What happens to that enthusiasm as those kids approach middle school and high school? Is there something going on developmentally that makes it harder for them to engage? Or is something about the current “accountability culture” turning students off? Or maybe it’s us.

If it’s us, we can fix that. If it’s the educational climate in our country right now, we can make inroads against that in a variety of ways. If it’s developmental in our students, we can accommodate and adapt to work around biological factors. The important thing is to look at our classes through the eyes of our students from time to time.

One of my favorite moments happened while Tony and I were having lunch at Corner Bakery an hour or so before our session. It was pretty crowded. As I walked through the restaurant, this phrase came floating through the air and into my right ear: “We love writing and literature, so why do our students not love them too?” That sounded familiar. (See program description above.) Sure enough, a couple of teachers were looking through the NCTE convention program, talking about what sessions to attend that afternoon. I stopped and asked if they were talking about Zapping Apathy. They looked at me, maybe a little startled. After I showed them my name tag that matched the program description they were looking at, we talked about what the presentation would be like, if it fit their needs, and sure enough, they came to the session! So, thanks, Corner Bakery people! I wish I knew your names to say a better thanks for trusting your instincts on that.

We were excited to see poets and literacy educators Sara Holbrook and Michael Salinger sitting in the front row, and we appreciate Sara providing everyone with a poem. Thanks also to everyone who volunteered and played along with us.

Thanks to the teacher from Aurora, Illinois who tried to get more copies when we ran short. She was generous and resourceful. To whoever said no to her request … thanks anyway. The handouts and other information are attached, described, or uploaded here.

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or stories about the activities as you try them and adapt them.

And again, really, thanks for spending some time with us at NCTE11 in Chicago.

Here are the handouts:

• “Writers Week: A Platform for Building Community”:  NCTE11 Writers Week
• “Zapping Apathy: Creating Community in English Classes”:  NCTE11 Zapping Apathy
• Zapping Apathy Prezi with Contact Info

Grades 8, 11 and 12 poetry lessons in maths

Poetry week at UNIS had two visiting poets from America. Our wonderful librarian, Joyce, sent out an email to see if anyone would like a poet in their class. Perplexed at the possible relevance, but knowing it was probably enjoyable, I went to chat with Joyce. Would they come into a mathematics classroom? Sure. Grade 11, not just grade 8? Sure.

I decided against my grade 12s as we were finishing the course and getting ready for the IB Diploma May exams. That changed after the first class with my grade 11s. What an incredible review lesson and so much fun. My year 12s were booked in immediately.

At the beginning of each class the poet or poets worked with students to create a class poem about the topic we had just finished.

What it is and what it isn’t

After that they broke off into pairs and chose a key word to work with.
Students worked together to form their poems. Listening to them using mathematical language and argue about what it meant was amazing. I’d say that my grade 12 students are all comfortable with the characteristics of a horizontal inflection now.

There were poems on GDCs (graphic display calculators),

Helene and Wen Wen deliver a poem about Cleopatra’s struggle with bivariate statistics with her one variable:

Calculus including Jorgé, The Horizontal InfleXion by Robin:

and the poignant Minimum, by Lauren

Ruan’s Hypotenuse

Jonatan and Sagar – Pythagoras The Man

The poets were Michael Salinger and Sara Holbrook.

Both have written books on using poetry in classrooms. They have activities for really small kids right up to the big kids. Sara told me that I was the first mathematics teacher to say yes to a class above grade 6.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. Initially it was to be a bit of fun to break up the usual routine for my 8s and 11s, but as I said before as a review of content, concepts and key vocabulary, it was fabulous.

Will I use it again, without the poets there to run things? Definitely!
UNIS had a poetry slam on the Friday and a large crowd turned out. A really great week.

Funny thing is—I don’t really remember a lot of poetry as a young child, just nursery rhymes, the songs and hymns at church…and of course, Dr. Seuss.  The first poem I recall studying was “Paul Revere’s Ride,” which I had to memorize.  All of it.  My attitude toward poetry was very much like Jack’s in Love That Dog by Sharon Creech, but unlike Jack, my attitude stayed that way until I was an adult.

I discovered the delightful world of children’s poetry when I had my own children.  One week when my son Alex was three, among our stack of library books was Jack Prelutsky’s Tyrannosaurus Was a Beast.  Alex loved the rhythm and the vocabulary and, of course, the dinosaurs.  And for the first time, I found poetry to be fun!  I ended up buying the book, and we still have it, though the pages have been taped again and again—a sure sign of a much-loved book.  (I was thrilled when Mr. Prelutsky was named the first Children’s Poet Laureate in 2006.)

Three brand-new poetry books about animals are sure to delight kids. In Birds of a Feather, Jane Yolen’s poems about birds are written in various styles and forms and combined with gorgeous photographs taken by Jason Stemple.  Katherine B. Hauth’s humorous verses in What’s for Dinner? : Quirky, Squirmy Poems from the Animal World describe the gruesome and gross ways that the animal kingdom follows the natural law, “Eat or be eaten.”  An excellent title for both upper elementary science and language arts lessons, At the Sea Floor Café : Odd Ocean Critter Poems combines fact-filled and vocabulary-rich poems about sea animals and habitats with informative text; Poetry Notes at the end describe the form and style of each poem.

In The Great Migration : Journey to the North, Eloise Greenfield describes the anxieties and fears—and hopes—of those African Americans who migrated north between 1915 and 1930, trying to escape racism and find jobs. The final poem relates her own family’s story of journeying north when she was just a few months old, and the front jacket flap explains that the illustrator’s parents were part of the Great Migration as well.

Weird? (Me, Too!) Let’s Be Friends not only contains poems about friendship, but it is also an idea book to help the reader create his or her own poems.  In the introduction, author Sara Holbrook says that poetry is personal, and that, for her, a good poem is one she can identify with.  I found much to relate to in Sara’s poems—especially  Girlfriends:  “Such a private / conversation / that words would interfere… / The eloquence of touch— / a language / only girlfriends / understand.”

Bob Raczka has written a book of poems created from single words in Lemonade and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word.  The title of each poem is a single word, and its poem uses only the letters found in that word.   One of my favorites is Earthworms: “A short storm / worms here / worms there / wear shoes.”  The poems are also interesting to look at, because the letters in each poem are lined up under the same letters in the title.

Click here for a more comprehensive list of new poetry books at Mackin’s website.

Bibliography:

At the Sea Floor Café : Odd Ocean Critter Poems by Leslie Bulion. 2011.

Birds of a Feather by Jane Yolen. 2011.

The Great Migration : Journey to the North by Eloise Greenfield. 2010.

Lemonade : And Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word by Bob Raczka. 2011.

Weird? (Me, Too!) Let’s Be Friends by Sara Holbrook. 2011.

What’s for Dinner? : Quirky, Squirmy Poems from the Animal World by Katherine B. Hauth. 2011.

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