Cleveland Elementary School Day 10, teaching notes: Offerings, Colors, journal

Today we talked about final expectations and how many finished poems (3-4) students needed for the upcoming poetry book. I noticed that some students have not written anything in their Google.doc folders. I said, that if I don’t have their poems, then I cannot make a poetry book. That this is Day Nine (actually it’s Day 10) that they should have about 18 poems total, including freewrites, for me to choose from for the poetry book. 

Ms. Loeser contacted the students who didn’t manage to get their work recorded in their Google.docs folders and hopefully that will be ameliorated soon— otherwise several kids won’t have any work at all. I’m concerned about that because it’s something I haven’t been able to keep track of because I have not been able to access their folders. I’ve been locked out since the beginning.

There are several students whose files I still cannot access. Ms. Loeser said she will copy and paste their work, if needs be. I’m kind of panicking for Emily‘s sake because her poems appeared, and disappeared, or rather there were only three poems when I opened her file, and then suddenly there were a lot of poems, and then, there were only three poems again. I know she’s been writing a lot, she is one of my star poets. I may have copied the full file and saved the ephemeral poems, but I have the wrong computer with me, so I can’t tell if I have saved them or not.

So, to reiterate, we discussed expectations, then we did a freewrite, then we went onto the day’s lesson, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Ofrendas, or offerings—our hands could offer up gifts, or offerings. A good followup to last week’s Dorianne Laux heart poems. Some great poems came out of the process. Hopefully students are beginning to make the heart and mind connection in their writing.

I love the whole process of the Zoom chatbox, as an alternate form to reading aloud, as students can post their favorite lines or entire poems—it really does work. As they post lines directly to me they appear on the screen and I make verbal comments. I asked them if it’s OK to read online and they say yes, pleased, which is very cool. So I’m able to give them verbal feedback as we go. Positive feedback and recognition  is so critical to the teaching of poetry writing. We all take risks every time we write. And we learn follow those strange pathways, those segues, gathering courage to follow the poetic voice to a place where we might not have traveled to before. another country.

For my freewrite, I wrote:

I am offering this day filled with fog and sunlight. 

My hands holding the air up to the sky. 

The pine trees whisper such secrets 

that the cat climbs up the trunk in search of lost youth. 

The birds scold her for her transgressions. 

And she retreats, having nowhere else to go, but down. 

Only the sky overhead, but it is overcast today. 

I love you said the sky to the clouds. 

I love you said the wind to the trees 

and they whispered back secrets to each other 

which I could not translate. The sun breaks through, 

warming the bones of the old cat 

and she is grateful for this gift, this day.

Then we wrote color poems and their homework was to invent brand new colors. Never before imagined colors. Like on Mars. I read poems from Otto Raul Gonzalez’ 10 new colors. Or they could talk about the meaning of color within their cultures. Why the Chinese wear red to a wedding, and never yellow and black to a funeral. Lively discussion about color in their various cultures arose. Japan, Korea, Mongolia. It was a simultaneous chat fest and I just let it go, I did not try to harness their energy because what was happening in time present was more important than the lesson itself.

I wrote:

Blue verging on violet 

dreams of distance skies, 

twilight on the horizon, 

the stars arriving all out of breath, 

with tears in their eyes. 

The moon decides what gown 

to don for the midnight ball.

She is wearing a mask made of diamonds and light 

and she dazzles us with her raiments.

But the dawn arrives dressed in indigo

pale lavender fire 

The moon’s glory fades, 

she saves her finery for another night.

What strange times we live in. Today I taught my class from the passenger seat of my car, as the only place I could get a decent Wi-Fi connection was outside my friend’s house because she lives in a mobile home and the signal is blocked by the metal walls. There’s a strange metaphor embedded in that, for sure. I have become a Jedi master hunting down Wi-Fi signals, portent of things to come.