Poetry Friday -- Some Days

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Some Days
by Philip Terman

Some days you have to turn off the news
and listen to the bird or truck
or the neighbor screaming out her life.
You have to close all the books and open
all the windows so that whatever swirls
inside can leave and whatever flutters
against the glass can enter. Some days
you have to unplug the phone and step
out to the porch and rock all afternoon
and allow the sun to tell you what to do.
The whole day has to lie ahead of you
like railroad tracks that drift off into gravel.
Some days you have to walk down the wooden
staircase through the evening fog to the river,
where the peach roses are closing,
sit on the grassy bank and wait for the two geese.




Some days when you have to turn off the news, you write. We've been having lots of fun with #haikuforhealing. Heidi said it best:

a fine kettle of 

hawks we have here, 

rising on hot air

Outsiders have joined in. There's been a poem in Turkish, and one from @broetry.

Tabatha's recent post seems very apt: Do the stuff that only you can do -- make good art.

Hey, we set a record -- the Poetry Friday Roundup Host schedule for January-June 2017 filled up in a single week! Thanks, everyone! Here it is. If you need the code, just shout and I'll email it to you.

This week, Jone has the round up at Check it Out.

I Shouldn't Be Blogging

I shouldn't be blogging.

I should be grading papers.
I should be reading students' blog posts.
I should be sending post-conference follow-up emails to parents.
I should be watching training videos for my new school laptop.
I should be deconstructing standards and digging into resources.
I should be reading so I have something to blog about.
I should be doing amazing things in my classroom so I have something to blog about.
I should be reading the blogs of our faithful blog readers.
I should be cleaning the house.

Okay. That helped. It always does. Best One Little Word ever.

Remember at the end of last summer, when we went to Vermont on a fly fishing trip...and didn't catch any fish? And how I vowed to "catch" a "trout" every day of the school year so that no matter what kind of picture the high stakes testing paints of my students, I will be able to look back on a year full of great moments of learning and joy?

I've got a "creel" full of fish.

We're 40+ days into the school year, and in my special little purple Moleskine I have 40+ "trout." Some days when I look back, they make me laugh, or swell up with pride. Some days I get a little teary.

At the exhaustion end of Parent Conference Night, a dad told about organizing his 30th high school class reunion, and how much it meant to him and the others who attended that some of their elementary school teachers attended. Even their first grade teacher was there. "You are making a difference in these students' lives, you know," he said. "You have no idea right now how the seeds you plant will turn out, but you are planting seeds for the future."

The next day, I got an email from a student who was in one of my looping classes 10 years ago. I helped to get her on an IEP back then. She's a junior in college now and she wanted to come interview me for one of her classes. She just switched her major. To education.

All the "I shoulds" will have to wait. I have some seeds to plant. I have some fish to catch.

Poetry Friday

How To Be a Poet
(to remind myself)

by Wendell Berry

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.




My One Little Word for this year is BREATHE. It's been a perfect word to remind myself to slow down, to notice all the good in people and in the world around me, to make space in my busy days and weeks just for me.

On a somewhat related note, if you haven't seen FALL LEAVES by Loretta Holland, get your hands on it asap. It is a poetry/nonfiction hybrid with gorgeous-GORGEOUS illustrations. (my review here)

And head over to Laura's place, Writing the World for Kids, for a peek at one of her new books and the Poetry Friday Roundup!

Poetry Friday -- You Are There

You Are There
by Erica Jong


You are there.
You have always been
there.
Even when you thought
you were climbing
you had already arrived.
Even when you were
breathing hard,
you were at rest.
Even then it was clear
you were there.

Not in our nature
to know what
is journey and what
arrival.
Even if we knew
we would not admit.
Even if we lived
we would think
we were just
germinating.

To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.

June and July have been travel months of for me: Indiana, Hocking Hills, Michigan, Colorado, and next up, Vermont. I like Erica Jong's answer to the question, "Where am I?" 

As Back to School ads and sales rev up and I feel like I should be thinking even more about the upcoming school year than I already am (no school nightmares yet, though...knock wood), I will hold onto that last stanza.

Sylvia and Janet have the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Poetry For Children. 

Breathe: Early Summer Edition

All around me, esteemed colleagues are reading and reflecting on professional books, tearing through #bookaday books that make them bubble with excitement, and taking coursework to advance themselves professionally.

I'm growing corn.

And carrots.

And swallowtail butterflies.

I haven't written any articles or many blog posts, but I have had a poem accepted for a new crowd-sourced anthology and I am pretty pleased with a new series of poems (code name "Wishes") I am working on for the Summer Poem Swap (and who knows what other venue).

I am healing,

celebrating good news about our test scores, and volunteering most days for our Summer Lunch program.

It's not like I've been sitting on the couch frittering my time away these past three weeks. I have to remind myself of that, remember not to beat myself up because my "did it" list isn't filled with the same things my esteemed colleagues' lists are, and continually celebrate every moment of my happy, busy, productive (on my terms) SUMMER!

Catching up on TED Talks

My goal of a TED talk a week with illustrated notes got sideswiped. I decided to give an hour or so of my snow day yesterday to get caught up.

One thing I'm playing around with in my notes is what kind of pencils/pens I use. I love my Crayola Twistable colored pencils, but they slow me down. I can't press very hard with them.

So I took some notes with just pencil, but they weren't pretty and fun.

I switched over to Flair pens, but the only colors I have at home are pink, purple, fuschia and black. I think I'm going to have to spring for a complete set of Flair pens. The bold colors really brought my thinking to life.

It's all about the writing tool sometimes, isn't it?

My first few videos were from TED-Ed. I'm still waiting to hear if my application to start a TED-Ed club has been accepted.

I began with my brain:
What Percentage of Your Brain Do You Use?





We are studying the rotation and revolution of the earth, so I thought this one was fascinating...and a little bit mind-blowing: How Fast Are You Moving Right Now?




Our fifth graders are just finishing up writing persuasive essays. I need to show my class Want to be an Activist?




Mandy asked me in a tweet how I choose which TED talks to watch. I told her that I don't really choose them, they come to me. The TED-Ed videos above came in an email newsletter. Here are a few more I watched today and where they came from:

Doodlers, Unite came to me from Lisa at steps & staircases. I have a student who will be very happy that I will no longer nag her to stop doodling all over her papers!

Joe Smith: How to Use a Paper Towel came to me from Charla Rae at school. Sadly, we can't encourage children to shake their hands 12 times in order to only take one paper towel, but if all the adults in the world would do this, we could save 571,230,000 POUNDS of paper every year. What do you think...can you try to reduce your paper towel usage by even one per wash? Let's be part of the solution...starting with paper towels.

And then I came full circle back to the mind with Andy Puddicombe: All it Takes is 10 Mindful Moments, which came to me from Franki. Yes, Franki, it does go with my OLW: BREATHE. What I'm wondering is -- does it have to be 10 continuous minutes? Can I get the same effect if I spread my meditation out over the course of a day, spending one minute at a time BREATHING and truly focusing on the moment at hand without rushing on to the next thing or the next thought? I'm going to try it!