Thursday, February 15, 2007

Who signed up for "Poetry?" I thought this was "Myths!"

Valentine's Day was Literacy Day at the middle school. One of the grade 6/7 teachers asked if I could come do a poetry session with a group of students. The format of the day was pretty nice - the kids could sign up for things like "love story writing" "scattergories" "improv" and "myths." My presentation was poetry.

Last year I was fortunate to book slam champions Barbara Adler and Brendan McLeod to come with me to do the presentation. They had the kids on fire with a combination of performance, discussion and exercises. There was definitely some magic happening. My presentation was a bit closer to teacher/mom style, because that's who I am, but I think they had fun, and they did write some pretty good stuff.

Here are a couple of impressions:

  • If you love math, "The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides" is poetry.
  • my apple smells like secrets
  • sometimes it's hard to remember all of the five senses
  • the word "loins" is funny to 11 year olds
  • the noisiest, unruliest kids wrote the most poetry and some of the coolest lines
  • if you are a grade 6/7 teacher on a day filled with chocolate and budding hormones, you are a very hard-working person
  • I like kids
The kids also shared their impressions of Canada with me, as I gather ideas from lots of Canadians for my CBC poem.

Fifteen minutes into the hour I was sweating. By the end I felt very satisfied. Next year I hope I can book some slam heroes again. That would be fun to do one more time.

question: where do you find poetry?

mompoet - I found it in a room that smelled like stinky running shoes

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yesterday, there was poetry at the end of the line.The old guy who bagged my groceries, separated the wine and chocolate from the regular stuff. "This the one," he said, handing it to me like an egg, whole face scrunched in a grin.What could I do but nod and wink?
~karen g.

Unknown said...

My son told me that he would have happily taken part in the poetry had he known you were teaching it. He was very disappointed in what he had to participate in. The choices were slim and he said he would have also enjoyed Improv if it had been offered to his POD.

What a wonderful experience for you to share your passion! I know how that feels and it makes the subject much easier to teach.

Anonymous said...

That sounds like a pretty cool day and setof discoveries.