Today’s guest blogger, Adara Robbins, is 8th grade teacher at YES Prep Southwest, a public charter school in Houston, Texas.
My students and I during after school study time.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
It’s a tough question. But imagine trying to answer if you didn’t know what your life would look like tomorrow – much less years from now. This my students’ reality.
My 8th graders at YES Prep Southwest face the constant stress of poverty. They can’t be sure where they will sleep tomorrow. They have to take care of younger siblings, leaving limited time for homework. They have few, if any, books at home. With so much uncertainty, it can take a lot of work for them to visualize a future where they will succeed and attend college.
But they will. By the time my students finish high school, 100% of them will be accepted to a four-year college – it’s a graduation requirement.
Many of my students come to me up to five years behind their peers academically. As their teacher, I guide them through a demanding curriculum that brings them up to grade level and inspires a genuine love of learning. Neither could happen without having great books to give them.
In the gym with some of my outstanding female students.
Because of First Book, my kids have the books they need to become strong, confident, enthusiastic readers. They’ve grown academically. They get along better with one another. They love and constantly ask for more books. My students are simply happier when they start their day reading.
They also work extremely hard. They attend school from 7:30am to 4:30pm, often staying late for extra help. Their tenacity and determination inspires me to do a better job every day.
All over the country, teachers like me face the challenge of helping kids living in poverty read, learn and succeed. Your support of First Book gives us the resources we need to help kids change the course of their lives. Please consider making a gift today.
The post My Kids Need Books appeared first on First Book Blog.
As for many of us who teach, my last day of school has come and gone and all that's left is the cleaning up. I have more cleaning up than most, since circumstances require me to box up all my classroom possessions--but it's a great relief that I finally know what to write on the labels! I'll be moving schools and teaching kindergarten full-time next year.
So, goodbye to a sweet & sour year, to a warm and wonderful school community that I really didn't want to leave, and hello to a whole new proposition...
On the Menu for School Today
Label planets
in our sky.
Learn how numbers
multiply.
Count coins.
String beads.
Shake bells.
Plant seeds.
Map constellations
dot
to
dot....
Decorate
a flowerpot.
Say a poem.
Spell b-u-t-t-e-r-f-l-y.
Shout hello.
Wave good-bye.
~Rebecca Kai Dotlich
from Falling Down the Page, ed. Georgia Heard, 2009
My summer goals are to work on a refreshed concept for an old group of poems (thanks to the inspirations and suggestions of my fellow conferees at David Harrison's workshop in Boyds Mills) and to post here at least three times a week. And also to really follow the folks I "follow"--I always get so much out of your posts.
"Thak you for bing mi tethr! <3 <3 <3"
Poetry Friday at Check It Out with Jone today, who has her own goodbye to say. Let evening come.
My novel DWEEB, silly as it is, touches on some weighty issues regarding education. Specifically, the role of standardized tests in the lives of the squeaky-voiced, acne-plagued future of our fair land. Look at the cover, for crying out loud. It’s a scantron sheet! I’ve never claimed to have any answers, however. Because I’m far from an expert. I only know that the anxiety surrounding tests can affect administrators, teachers and students alike, and undoubtedly shapes the lives of most of the people who walk through the front doors of our school houses these days.
Last week I walked through the doors of Manhattan Charter School on the Lower East Side of New York City. It was my first experience with a charter school, aside from watching Waiting For Superman and 60 Minutes. What I found there was what an author hopes to find in any school:
Welcoming, bright and hard-working teachers and staff, as well as enthusiastic, curious and friendly young readers. I was especially honored to meet Ms. Bennett’s 4th grade class. They had all read DWEEB but had held off on reading the last chapter until my arrival. I sat down and read it to them, then we talked about it book club style. Their questions were both astute and flattering. Many were curious about the possibility of a movie (Hear that, Hollywood? I personally think the talky, nerdy hi-jinks might be a good fit for Richard Linklater). They were all bummed to hear they’d have to wait until September for The Only Ones. To top it all off, they had drawn life-size pictures of each of the main characters from DWEEB, and those fantastic works of art are displayed in the hall of their school. Some of the pictures might have even have been larger than life-size. I believe the term is heroic-size.
I didn’t come away from the day with the answers to our educational woes, nor did I formulate a rock-hard opinion on the importance of standardized tests. But I did walk out of that building knowing that 9-12 year-old kids who get excited about books–ones they’ve read, ones they want to read–are kids who care deeply about their education, even if they’re not quick to admit it.
The Manhattan Charter School likes to “celebrate curious minds,” and I can’t think of a better thing to celebrate. Don’t listen to the old adage. Curiosity doesn’t kill cats. Cars, old-age and rabid raccoons do. And don’t ever think that success, in the traditional mold of wealth and prestige, means anything without a healthy diet of curiosity. You can’t possibly be happy and you can’t possibly change the lives of others for the better if you aren’t curious. The teachers and kids of Manhattan Charter School reminded me of that.
It’s my job to keep myself curious. I can’t fall into the trap
"CONCLUSION [OF THE MARYLAND STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION]:
...because we find that the local board has failed to provide any rationale for its decision, we reverse and remand [the appeal case of
Global Garden Public Charter School ] so that the local board may reconsider its decision in light of the rulings we have made in this case. We expect that such reconsideration shall occur within 90 days of the date of this decision."
Well. Sooner than we expected, the school system reviewers and the Superintendent made their recommendation against approval to the Board of Education, and in a whirlwind of events our public charter school application was denied on Tuesday. There was no way to catch my breath in time for Poetry Friday--these are the last days of the school year, after all--so here I am today with a poem that reflects (not sure how, but it does) a little of the hollow feeling that lurks beneath a determination to try again.
Work Song
~ Joshua Mehigan
This fastening, unfastening, and heaving--
this is our life. Whose life is it improving?
It topples some. Some others it will toughen.
Work is the safest way to fail, and often
the simplest way to love a son or daughter.
We come. We carp. We're fired. We worry later.
That man is strange. His calipers are shiny.
His hands are black. For lunch he brings baloney,
and, offered coffee, answers, "Thank you, no."
That man, with nothing evil left to do
and two small skills to stir some interest up,
fits in the curtained corner of a shop.
The best part of our life is disappearing
into the john to sneak a smoke, or staring
at screaming non-stop mills, our eyes unfocused,
or standing judging whose sick joke is sickest.
Yet nothing you could do could break our silence.
We are a check. Do not expect a balance.
That is a wrathful man becoming older,
a nobody like us, turned mortgage holder.
We stay until the bell. That man will stay
ten minutes more, so no one can complain.
Each day, by then, he's done exactly ten.
Ten what, exactly, no one here can say.
There are good reasons (mostly relating to overload) that I haven't posted since April 23. I don't think there's anyone out there faithfully expecting to hear from me every Friday, but still I feel sorry about not meeting that expectation.
Oh, wait--there IS someone faithfully expecting to hear from me!
This surprises and makes me glad:
of course it is my mom and dad!
Below is the poem that should have gone into the charter school application (right around Academic Design Section 12.b, "Provide details regarding the school's plan to build and maintain appropriate home-school partnerships"). I knew what the poem meant but not what it said, so I couldn't track it down until I opened up my box of books about families and found the Trumpet Club poster I've had since the 80's. My first-graders are doing some work about family traditions, personal history and autobiography, so I put up the poster and we started reading. Most of them memorized it in two days--and I think I have too, finally!
Andre
I had a dream last night. I dreamed
I had to pick a Mother out.
I had to choose a Father too.
At first I didn't know what to do.
There were so many there, it seemed:
Short and tall and thin and stout.
Then just before I sprang awake,
I knew what parents I would take.
And this surprised and made me glad:
They were the ones I'd always had!
~ Gwendolyn Brooks
First I must express right up top my gratitude to Kate Coombs at BookAunt, to Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect and to Gregory K. at Gotta Book for their generous and careful attention to my work during this month of poetry festivities. Apart from anything else, I just love the feeling of being part of this community! Thanks to all who make it be.
My classroom is a little community in itself: surrounded by books (since it used to be the Reading Specialist's headquarters), I am one of four teachers who use it daily. I arrive as another, exemplary "Reading Initiative" teacher is finishing with her second-graders, and as I'm wrapping up my first-grade teaching session at 12:30, two ESOL teachers are preparing to conduct their small groups (often simultaneously!). We do pretty well at sharing our slice of real estate, and all this eavesdropping on other teachers is very educational. It's had other influences, too, and tomorrow morning I'll take the ESOL Praxis exam to become certified to teach ESOL as well as general education.
Meanwhile, as our public charter school Founding Group prepares for a Q&A session with the school district's review panel, I come to the section in our application on provision for students who are speakers of English as an additional language. Here's the poem by Gregory Djanikian that opens this section:
How I Learned English
It was in an empty lot
Ringed by elms and fir and honeysuckle.
Bill Corson was pitching in his buckskin jacket,
Chuck Keller, fat even as a boy, was on first,
His t-shirt riding up over his gut,
Ron O’Neill, Jim, Dennis, were talking it up
In the field, a blue sky above them
Tipped with cirrus.
And there I was,
Just off the plane and plopped in the middle
Of Williamsport, Pa. and a neighborhood game,
Unnatural and without any moves,
My notions of baseball and America
Growing fuzzier each time I whiffed.
So it was not impossible
I got so inspired by all the April festivities in the Kidlitosphere that I've imported "Thirty Poets, Thirty Days" into my first-grade classroom. Of course we've been enjoying poetry all year, but now we're riding the poetry wave! On April 1 we were on Spring Break, so I had to choose the first six poems to catch us up. I took them all from Poetry Speaks to Children and have put the CD that goes with that gorgeous book in the listening center. Now, however, the children are each taking a turn to choose the Poem of the Day--a power which they deeply dig! So far Katana has shared "Covers" from Nikki Giovanni's The Sun is So Quiet and Vivian has selected "ME I AM" by Jack Prelutsky, collected in My Song Is Beautiful by Mary Ann Hoberman. I'll keep you posted on what else goes up onto our Poetry Calendar in the hallway!
Here in the D.C. area the weather has been a little extreme. Not that many weeks ago we were buried under more than two feet of snow, "proving" in the minds of some folks that global warming is a myth. Now, for the past few days the temperature has been near 90 degrees, which sounds like climate change to me (although my brief research shows that in years with 90* April days, we do tend to get more snow...I wonder how that works?). Right now in my yard are blooming simultaneously forsythia, daffodils, periwinkle, tulips, hyacinths, weeping cherry, bleeding heart, dogwood and even some of the azaleas! Makes me want to sleep outside--except for "Marlon," the suburban raccoon who's hanging around and apparently aspires to becoming our pet. It's a little creepy.
In the spirit of unpredictable weather, I offer up this poem by David McCord, which was an ideal opening for the public charter school application's section on Special Education.
Snowflakes
Sometime this winter if you go
To walk in soft new-falling snow
When flakes are big and come down slow
To settle on your sleeve as bright
As stars that couldn't wait for night,
You won't know what you have in sight--
Another world--unless you bring
A magnifying glass. This thing
We call a snowflake is the king
Of crystals. Do you like surprise?
April 1 is a very important day for me and it has nothing to do with National Poetry Month--or it has everything to do with National Poetry Month! Back in 1999 I was faced with the fact that while I seemed to be very good at growing a baby, I was not going to be good at pushing a baby out. Although it was disappointing to think that I had been carrying around those child-bearing hips since age 12 for nothing, it was fun to choose my daughter's birthday, and if you can choose April Fool's Day, why would you pick March 31 or April 2?
Thus arrived our little April Fool, two weeks late and by appointment--and shortly thereafter, following a hiatus of 15 years, I felt the urge to write poems again. (More on this funny twist to my writing life in my interview later this month with Tricia Stohr-Hunt at The Miss Rumphius Effect). This year, on April 1, when I might have been posting for Poetry Friday, we were with our shiny new 11-year-old in Charlottesville, touring Monticello, eating outrageous desserts and swimming in the hotel pool.
Today I post the next two poems inserted in the public charter school application--the ones about reading and writing. Just see who authored the poem I chose to open the section on the place of writing in our school's curriculum...
The First Book
Open it.
Go ahead, it won't bite.
Well...maybe a little.
More a nip, like. A tingle.
It's pleasurable, really.
You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.
Sure, it's hard to get started;
remember learning to use
knife and fork? Dig in;
you'll never reach the bottom.
It's not like it's the end of the world--
just the world as you think
you know it.
~Rita Dove (who, in a superb coincidence, is a professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville)
While Writin
"Explain how the curriculum is aligned with Maryland Content Standards and the voluntary state curriculum."
Hermanadad / Brotherhood
Soy hombre: duro poco
y es enorme la noche.
Pero miro hacia arriba:
las estrellas escriben.
Sin entender comprendo:
tambien soy escritura
y en este mismo instante
alguien me deletrea.
~Octavio Paz
I am a man; little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
~Octavio Paz / translated by Eliot Weinberger
"Most of what we learn--about ourselves, about the physical world and about our place in it--we learn through our relationships with or in the company of other people. At GGPCS social studies holds a special place in the curriculum, because its focus on people and their relationships with each other and the environment mirrors children's learning through their interaction with people in the environment...."
Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at The Drift Record with Julie Larios.
Happy Poetry Friday: share the love at Some Novel Ideas, a middle-school focused blog that I'm happy to discover.
Since my last post I've participated to my great benefit in two poetry stretches and the public charter school application has passed the Technical Review--and of course, while the district was doing their checkthrough to see if anything was missing, so were we. I-yi-yi we found some glaring omissions! So yesterday I stood in the Asst. Superintendent's office with one of the stalwarts of the project and replaced or added to 20 binders eight pieces that had gone wrong somehow, and crossed out a really important "not" on every page 95.
More interesting for you all in the Poetry Friday audience is page 29. Here is where I included the following perfect poem by Countee Cullen, a move which many considered too risky for a charter school supplication (which may be a better word than application, since if approved we would be the first public charter school in our district ever).
Incident
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue and called me, "Nigger."
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
~Countee Cullen
This poem leads the section about how, in addition to "what children know and can do," our schools must address what children feel, value and demonstrate as attitudes towards each other and the planet. This, to me, is what reading is for (among a few other important things), and what poetry is particular is useful for crystallizing.
"But, the word "nigger"?!" some said.
I said, "That's precisely the point."
On Monday morning my partner-in-charter Janet and I drove to the Central Office to deliver 15 binders, each full of 350 pages of public charter school application. It was finally completed at 11:30 the night before with the substantial participation of about 40 teachers, parents and general citizens and included 100 pages of public support letters and petition signatures. Working on this project was an exhilarating experience of grass-roots collaboration, and yet what kept me going as the "lead writer" on the project (I came as close as I ever will to "pulling an all-nighter") was working some carefully selected poetry into the Academic Design section.
Here are the first two: an epigraphical gem that opens the whole application, and a really fine, serendipitous summary of what it is we want children to learn at our school--a poem from Marilyn Singer's Footprints on the Roof.
Lyric from Ancient Arabia
Our children
are our hearts
developing feet
and walking.
~Hattan Ibu Al Mu'alla
Home
(incorrect formatting; I still haven't learned to make blogger obey my indents)
Ask me where is home
and I will tell you
a house
a street
a neighborhood
a town
Someplace safe and solid
where I eat
I run
I sing
I nap
Someplace I can pinpoint
on a map
But what if I were an astronaut
with the world dangling below me
like a yo-yo from a giant's hand
and home was the whole planet?
Would I be wise enough to understand
the worth
of my new address: Earth?
~ Marilyn Singer
Wallow in the delight of Poetry Friday today at Anastasia's 6-Traits...
I've decided that if the point of our public charter school proposal is a school that is, well, FUN, that the application should be too: full of concrete examples of what children and adults will actually be doing in our classrooms, and written using serious, appropriate educational lingo punctuated by POEMS. (We'll see what our consultant says about this wisdom of this decision.)
So I'm on the lookout for short poems that express our philosophy about education and public schooling in the era of global citizenship (all suggestions welcome). I've chosen poems so far by Ruth Krauss, Octavio Paz and Eve Merriam; last night I discovered this beauty by Robert Frost. I'm beginning to think that my early poetry education was sorely lacking; I keep "discovering" famous poems by famous poets that everyone else seems to know already. But even if I'd read this in high school, I'd want to be revisiting it now, approaching but well in advance of 50.
What Fifty Said
When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.
Now I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung.
I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.
I go to school to youth to learn the future.
~ Robert Frost
I wonder what beauties I can scare up for the Finance & Facility section of the application?
Last week Poetry Friday passed me by entirely as I attempted to plan for the next 3 months, during which I will be writing (not entirely by myself) an approximately 200-page charter school application--all in a revolving series of poetic forms, beginning with the following limerick:
A girl with too much on her plate
begins before it is too late
to "publish" a school.
Is she a fool?
If not, the result will be great!
Just kidding--the application won't be written in poetic forms, but I hope there will be some poetry ribboning through our vision for a small K-8 school--Global Garden Public Charter School--that aims to educate the whole child in a way that our huge, factory-model public school system doesn't.
But what I really want to do this morning is start following the advice of Lee Bennett Hopkins, who wrote to me this week after we met at the NCTE Poetry Party in his honor. (He interrupted my cherishing of his tribute book and his autograph to say that he would cherish MY book and MY autograph--fancy that!)
So here's a little poem that's been around for a few years, visiting with children whenever I do workshops at this dark time of year. I've thought it was right just as it is, but Lee has got me reconsidering the "and"s and "the"s...
We Light a Candle
see how the wick waits
cold and curled
hear how the match scrapes
hiss and burst
see how the flame leaps
tongue leaf horn
now how the light creeps
comfort is born
Those "empty connectors" are important to the rhythm, but I'm going to try reworking the poem without them and see what happens. What is it with me and the challenges?
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A fulltime kindergarten teacher sounds perfect for you. Congrats! I can't wait to hear all the details. I'm also excited about your 3 times a week posting schedule and look forward to lots of good summer blog reading here.
Happy to hear you'll be teaching full-time in the Fall! Have a great summer :).
Best wishes with your new adventure for next year! Lucky kindergarteners. And a perfect poem to share from Rebecca, whose wit and wisdom we all soaked up at our retreat here in Georgia last weekend.
Congrats on knowing what you'll be doing in the fall! I hope things will be a bit more settled. Great rhythm in that poem.
congrats on the assignment. always so much better to enter the summer knowing what the fall will bring.
looking forward to your 3x/wk postings!
Thanks for the post on my blog. This must be one of those "small world" moments. I enjoyed your selection.
Congrats again!!
Good to know what's on the menu so you can decide how much to heap on your plate!! Looking forward to your summer postings!