A Year of Reading: November 2019

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Giving Thanks for Poetry Friday!

Thanku: Poems of Gratitude inspired my Thanku/Haiku-a-Day this month. I managed to get November 1-15 onto Twitter, and I'm back on Twitter with November 26-30. Here are the ones that were written, but never made it to Twitter!

11/16
Deer in the headlights.
Same spot: hawk swoops low with prey.
Blessings from the wild.

11/17
Step, step...mind elsewhere...
suddenly...no step...PANIC!
Floor, meet hands and knees.

11/18
Irresponsible.
Antiques Roadshow was a splurge
and I'll pay for it.

11/19
Final Prep Thanku
two days of sub plans
hours and hours and hours of work
then just walk away

11/20
Travel Day Thanku
For the traffic jam
NOT on our side of the road --
relieved gratitude.

11/21
Award Selection Day Thanku
A day of hard work:
laughter, talk, perspectives shared.
Not just the books won.

11/22
Presentation Day Thanku
Bad sleep, up early,
back-to-back schedule ready.
Right now--calm. Quiet.

11/23
Almost the End of Conference Thanku
complete exhaustion
sleep wraps you in its blanket
cradles you gently

11/24
Driving Home Thanku
Ridge top silhouette--
bare November trees, silo.
Evening sky--one star.

11/25
Words Spoken Upon Releasing Into the Garden the Spider I Captured on My Office Wall
Dear Tiny Spider,
Life has infinite value.
For yours, I give thanks.

Bridget Magee at Wee Words For Wee Ones has the Poetry Friday Roundup all the way from Switzerland this week! I'm EXTRA glad to be back after my longest absence ever.

The call for roundup hosts for Poetry Fridays January 2020-June 2020 is also ready for dates to be claimed!

Poetry Friday -- Call for Hosts

It's that time again. Six months have passed since last we queued up to host the Poetry Friday roundups.

If you'd like to host a roundup between January and June 2020, leave your choice(s) of date(s) in the comments. I'll update regularly to make it easier to see which dates have been claimed.

What is the Poetry Friday roundup? A gathering of links to posts featuring original or shared poems, or reviews of poetry books. A carnival of poetry posts. Here is an explanation that Rene LaTulippe shared on her blog, No Water River, and here is an article Susan Thomsen wrote for the Poetry Foundation.

Who can do the Poetry Friday roundup? Anyone who is willing to gather the links in some way, shape, or form (Mr. Linky, "old school" in the comments-->annotated in the post, or ???) on the Friday of your choice. If you are new to the Poetry Friday community, jump right in, but perhaps choose a date later on so that we can spend some time getting to know each other.

How do you do a Poetry Friday roundup? If you're not sure, stick around for a couple of weeks and watch...and learn! One thing we're finding out is that folks who schedule their posts, or who live in a different time zone than you, appreciate it when the roundup post goes live sometime on Thursday.

How do I get the code for the PF Roundup Schedule for the sidebar of my blog? You can grab the list from the sidebar here at A Year of Reading, or I'd be happy to send it to you if you leave me your email address. You can always find the schedule on the Kidlitosphere Central webpage.

Why would I do a Poetry Friday Roundup? Community, community, community. It's like hosting a poetry party on your blog!

And now for the where and when:

January
3 Carol at Carol's Corner
10 Sally at Sally Murphy
17 Catherine at Reading to the Core
24 Kat at Kathryn Apel
31 Jone at Deowriter

February
7 Laura at Writing the World for Kids
14 Linda B. at TeacherDance
21 Cheriee at Library Matters
28 Karen at Karen Edmisten*

March
6 Rebecca at Sloth Reads
13 Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme
20 Michelle at Michelle Kogan
27 Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference

April
3 Heidi at my juicy little universe
10 Amy at The Poem Farm
17 Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone
24 Christie at Wondering and Wandering

May
1 Liz at Elizabeth Steinglass
8 Michelle at Today's Little Ditty
15 Jama at Jama's Alphabet Soup
22 Linda at A Word Edgewise
29 Mary Lee at A Year of Reading

June
5 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
12 Irene at Live Your Poem
19 Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect
26 Karen at Karen's Got a Blog!

Disrupting the Myth of Thanksgiving

Our current read aloud, INDIAN NO MORE, has given us lots to think about and discuss. INDIAN NO MORE is historical fiction. It tells about how, in 1954, the US government stripped the tribal status from the Umpqua people, proclaiming them to no longer be Indians. Our conversations are centering around the stereotypes we have about Native people, empathy for what it would be like to have an important part of your identity taken from you, and appropriate responses in a democracy to laws that are unfair.

Looking at Thanksgiving from the perspective of Native people has disrupted the commonly told story of the Pilgrims and Indians. Along with our read aloud, we have watched several videos in which Native girls address stereotypes about Natives and about Thanksgiving, and one of our teachers brought all the conversations to life (literally) when she came and talked to us about her perspective on Thanksgiving and American History as a registered member of the Sioux tribe.

One of the things I love most about teaching fifth grade is that 10-11 year-olds are developmentally ready to consider multiple points of view. It is my greatest desire that my students will leave my class questioning "truths" that they are taught from a single point of view, and that they will constantly ask, "Whose voice is not being heard? Which perspective is not being included?"

With that, I will wish you an informed Happy Thanksgiving -- not one that honors the story of the colonization of our country, but rather one that traces further back to the greater human history of giving thanks for food and family.