Back to School

We started back today and I've already used so many ideas, concepts and materials from the CSUWP to plan and begin the first week!

I started today with Greg's I Wish I Weren't So... poems with my seventh graders and with the Where I'm From poems with my ninth graders. I used the idea of mentor texts as a bridge to writing and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY 120 STUDENTS WROTE A POEM! That is amazing. There are usually at least a handful of kids who can't ever seem to get started, no matter how helpful I think I'm being. The mentor texts, combined with the brilliant prompts, were just the ticket to give them the construct they needed in which to begin. Tonight they are decorating the covers of their writer's notebooks (thanks Sue!) and taping some of the quotes from Lorynda's demo on the inside front cover.

I am so grateful to the CSUWP for giving me such an incredible gift, and to all of you kick-ass teachers for sharing your blood, sweat and genius. Here's my latest poem (a bit different than the August anxiety ones that I've been posting lately), written after school today.

Infection

I am going to breathe verbs
all over your chair
and pour beakers of adjectives
on all the desktops.

I am going to rub the pencil sharpener
with nouns no paper can resist
and hang contagious phrases from the ceiling.

Your notebooks will run a fever
and your pens will bleed dry
in an effort to keep up with your
Brilliant Ideas.

Don’t bother washing your hands.

Antibiotics and tincture of echinacea
will only encourage me while
lowering your resistance.

This epidemic is airborne
spit-borne
piss-and-vinegar borne
and it doesn’t matter
what kind of immunity
you’ve built up
over years and years of
swimming around in
educational Petri dishes

because we are quarantined
and this condition is permanent
and the date to drop the class
was yesterday.


I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in September, so I can personally thank you and tell you again what a difference you've made in my life.

Cheers,
M.

Request

Any chance Tiffany would podcast and post the text of her Vitamin C poem? Gary and I went to the Mercury Cafe in Denver last night and heard the Denver poetry slam team in their last public performance before they head to Albuquerque for the national poetry slam competition. I though of Tiff, and I'd love to both hear and read her piece. Also, did you ever tell her about Hip Mama magazine? She should check it out. Kudos to Cindy, too, on her beautiful poem in the latest English Journal.

I'm still writing and blogging my poems, hoping to keep up the momentum and productivity through the school year. Looking forward to seeing everyone in September.

Podcast #17 -- Renee Esposito

Today's podcast is a piece of short fiction written by Renee Esposito. It'll blow your socks off. As always, send your feedback to the blog!

New Writing Project Blog

Our friends at the Southern Colorado Writing Project in Pueblo are now blogging. Stop by and say hello!
Also -- where'd everybody go? Enjoying the last few days of summer? Afraid to blog now that the institute's over? Here're a couple of ideas to get you started:
1. What's you do with the last of your summer?
2. What new stuff is going to go into your classrooms this fall as a result of your CSUWP work?
3. Any good writing going on?

Podcast #16 -- Nicole Herr

Today's podcast is from Nicole Herr. In the podcast, she reads a piece she wrote about a Semester at Sea experience. Enjoy.

Podcast #15 -- Craig Moyer

We're back. Podcast 14 is working through some personal difficulties -- so we're moving forward. Craig Moyer is an elementary school art teacher. In this podcast, he shares two very serious poems and a humorous story involving a dictionary and various states of undress. Enjoy!

Who qualifies?

I met a wonderful woman at a conference recently who is very interested in NWP training, but is not currently teaching, and hopes to teach at the university level when she finishes her dissertation next year. Can college professors do NWP training or is it available only to K-12 teachers, administrators, counselors, etc.?

Vacation

I'll be taking a week-long vacation beginning today. Podcasts will resume in full force when I return. There's lots of good stuff coming . . .please be patient!

Podcast #12 -- Kim Penn

Yup. If you've been paying attention, you've noticed that podcast 13 came before podcast 12. That's because of new math -- and because of the speed at which some files transfer and some don't.
Kim Penn is today's podcaster. She's perhaps the most polite of our group -- I especially love the "thank you's" at the end of each of her pieces. I know that you'll enjoy her writing, too.

Podcast Vacation

Just a quick note to let you know that I've been on a bit of a computer vacation. Podcasts will resume tonight or tomorrow.

Chillin' in Telluride

I am here in Telluride with my family (my husband works at a theater company here in the summers). On Saturday we leave him here and head southwest to LA for some grandparent time. It is breathtakingly beautiful here, of course, and (along with Crested Butte) was the site of origin for much of my poetry last summer. I am not writing a poem a day anymore. My muse is so complicated in motherhood, daughterhood, wifehood. I've written some, but the lack of structured writing time (not to mention daily prompts and sources of inspiration) makes it harder. I also feel some guilt about abandoning the daily poem practice...that's the thing about a practice, I guess. When you DO it, it's great and when you don't, it isn't. My poetry blog is attracting readers, though (come read if you haven't yet) and having an audience is a great motivator. I hope everyone else is finding some down time and resting those teaching muscles. It's hard to relax on vacation while being so inspired (post-institute) about teaching at the same time.

M.

P.S. Julie's still posting on the E-Anthology. Check out her rewrite of Laundry Day.

This'll only take a second

This is too good not to share. Hope y'all are up to good things -- come and blog about them!

Podcast #13 -- Rebecca Fox

In today's podcast, Rebecca Fox shares a series of unfortunate dating experiences. You'll enjoy it, I promise.

Podcast #11 -- Julie Meiklejohn

In today's podcast, Julie shares two poems. You'll enjoy how she plays with words.

Poetry in your classroom

Check out Billy Collins' website that highlights a poem a day for use in high school classrooms. I found it on the CLAS site. He is a featured speaker at next year's conference...see you there?

A little slow, but eventually I get there...

I just realized that the list of calls for manuscripts at the side of this blog are calls for manuscripts! Wow, what a great resource and a generous thing to compile and share, Bud. Muchas Gracias.

Good Questions

Clarence is a Canadian educator. I read his blog regularly. Today he writes:

Knowledge is something that many students think is a compiled mass of stuff that they need to memorize and fill their heads with. It is not necessarily something they feel they need to understand, expand upon, or comprehend. To many students, it is finished.

Science Magazine has compiled a list of 100 questions that science needs to solve. 100 big questions for this century. Interesting. What else is interesting is this essay they have posted In Praise of Hard Questions.

The essay explains how hard questions, many of which seem unanswerable push us forward. They push us towards novel ways of thinking, new ways of looking at problems, and ask us to stretch what we feel we are capable of. This would be valuable reading for students (if of course I was not enjoying my second day of summer holidays :) ).

As is equally true in classrooms as in a hard science research lab:

"Unsolved mysteries provide science with motivation and direction. Gaps in the road to scientific knowledge are not potholes to be avoided, but opportunities to be exploited.

"Fundamental questions are guideposts; they stimulate people," says 2004 Nobel physics laureate David Gross. "One of the most creative qualities a research scientist can have is the ability to ask the right questions."

Science's greatest advances occur on the frontiers, at the interface between ignorance and knowledge, where the most profound questions are posed. There's no better way to assess the current condition of science than listing the questions that science cannot answer. "Science," Gross declares, "is shaped by ignorance."

The idea of classrooms being learning communities, where students are pushing the boundaries of their knowledge, and of knowledge in general is one we need to pursue. Classrooms as places of research, of dialogue, of knowledge creation is powerful, gives education relevance, and moves ideas to centre stage in classrooms.

It would be interesting to compile a list in a classroom with students of what they feel the gaps are in their knowledge are. Would they feel there are gaps, or does schooling knock ideas of creativity and curiousity out of them?

NWP E-anthology Participant Survey

Here's the link to the participant survey for CSUWP participants. It'll be up for two days.

UPDATE: Two days came and went. If you'd still like to participate in the survey, log onto the e-Anthology.

Tired

Tired
Originally uploaded by Bud the Teacher.

Tired. But almost home. Hang in there, gang -- two days to go.

Sock Puppets

Couldn't resist posting this short video from Craig's log today. I like sock puppets. I hope you do, too.