Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Two Writing Teachers
Today began
a short poetry unit in my reading and writing workshops. In writing class we
began by immersing ourselves in the words of poets. After sharing a few of my
favorite books with my students, I let them loose to read any poetry books they
desired – alone or with a partner. Imagine my happiness when I glanced up after
a few moments to see my normally chatty class quietly enjoying the world of
poetry.
We spoke at
length about the Ted Kooser quote I have hanging on my wall stating that you
need to read 100 poems before attempting to write one. My students are well on
their way.
In reading
we are studying figurative language. The mentor text I am using for this unit
is Sharon Creech’s Hate That Cat. To begin our unit we visited the poems
in the back of the book – the ones Miss Stretchberry will reference throughout
the book. We also read a few from Love That Dog.
In each of
my three classes I cried twice. Once when I read the poem from Love That Dog
where you learn what happened to Sky. We shared how brilliant Creech is that
she is able to invoke such emotion in so few words. I felt the tears come again
in the beginning of Hate That Cat because of a simple sentence, “you
understand my brain.” I shared that the eight graders – the class I looped with
– used to tell me that. After two years together, I truly did.
And then I
remembered kids from the current seventh grade class and students from my class
last year. Faces flashed in my mind, scenes from our time together raced through
my memory. It has been awhile and I miss them terribly. I looked up at the
final class of the day, my homeroom, and smiled. I knew that next year I would
be thinking about them. I shared with them that I am always astounded by the
power of words and story to make us remember, reflect. I dried my eyes and we
moved on.
At the end
of the day I began straightening up our carpet area after the last student was
gone, picking up our pencils and pillows. I glanced up at my laptop in the
front of the room and noticed a blue post-it stuck to the keyboard. I grabbed
it to toss it in the trash when I saw the writing, “Dear Mrs. S., please move
with us to sixth grade. You understand our brains.” Yowza. There it was –
another moment, another relationship growing. Thanks, Sharon Creech for
reminding me of what is important and for giving my students the chance to
connect to a poem, a story, and to me.
