CPITS teaching journal, AVS

Friday the 13th. Today I taught five classes, itself, exhausting, and I read their poems, and typed some of them up. I usually type up about 10 poems per class, or a page’s worth, double column. But there were so many fantastic poems, I probably typed up 75 to 100 poems. It took me until 5:30 PM to get through all their journals, but I did it so that I could have a long break. Otherwise it’s harder to get through them all if I wait until later. Probably my personal best in terms of getting through a sheer amount of work. Usually I tank after reading two classes. TG the classes are small. But it’s still a marathon. 

I’ve sped up the entire reading/commenting/publishing process considerably by dictating kid poems to my iPad, and then emailing them to my MacBook. And the iPad dictation process to Notes really speeds things up, but makes the strangest mistakes, so extra proofreading diligence is necessary at the other end. The Apple speech to text platform is much more accurate than Facebook. But, still it’s a huge time investment. Some really strong poets, but I’ve been working with these kids since kindergarten. Such fantastic writers they are. This year’s poetry book will be extraordinary. 

The work is sometimes grueling, but so rewarding. A crazy job, who knew it would become my life’s calling, but I absolutely love doing what I do. It’s like being in the epicenter of magic. A symbiosis of creativity. I absolutely love what I do, but the prospect of financial insecurity is always looming.

I think the quality of their writing is related to how I pair and mix up the model poems. Currently I am using Dorianne Laux’ Heart poem paired with Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Ofrenda poem, the recalcitrant heart and unexpected gifts—and the synthesis produces amazingly insightful poems from 3-5th graders—in both urban and rural populations. One girl wrote a poem to her dead rabbit, and she burst into tears because she felt guilty for not being there, and I said, No, you are not to blame. Getting real. Obviously it was preying on her mind, but she had no outlet. She achieved some degree of resolution by the catharsis of writing.

I am always looking for ways to teach students to find their own authentic voices vs. parroting back the model poems. Of course, I also like to use Emily Dickinson’s Hope is the Thing with Feathers too. My current teaching trifecta. There’s a lot of improv too. For example, I threw in Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish because 3rd graders were raising steelhead trout to release into the river.

We’ve had a lot of Covid talk lately, the isolation, etc. What I’ve discovered across the board is that they’ve had no real platform to express their feelings around the isolation, and quarantine. So it arises. We keep it real. We share our stories and render it into poetry. The personal experience into the universal. At Berkeley, the next wave of Covid is rolling through the school, taking out students and teachers alike in droves. Sometimes just finding the through line becomes the lifeline. Sometimes we even find love along the way.

5/12/22 Alexander Valley School 

Electronic Teaching Journal, nothing new, hands recipe

Electronic Teaching Journal 5/12

Today I taught my newly reinvented hands poetry recipe that I developed from one of John Oliver Simon‘s lessons from Poetry Inside Out, but it was too simplistic, so I complicated the lesson up a bit, and offered more open-ended starter line options etc.

Then, when I was going through my teaching notes, I gleaned some of my old teaching files while looking for more support material. I happened upon an old teaching folder filled with drawings of hands, and exercises I developed from a workshop that Veronica Cunningham taught a long time ago, with California Poets in the Schools.

I had used that lesson and developed an art unit as well for Young Audiences. So, in a sense, the evolving lesson is part of the JOS teaching legacy because John was also there in Bishop, and that was my first time being with him on an extended basis after we broke up, so we were going through a lot.

But by revisiting the hands recipe, I had Inadvertently come full circle, and also paid homage to the beginning and the end. Call it the Alpha and the Omega if you will. The idea, that no matter how original we think we might be, there is always something that came before our latest brilliant idea. We are always holding onto, and beholden to the past. We all walk in one another’s shadows.

And that poetry recipe that I did on the backside of Sierra Nevada range in Bishop so long ago with Veronica Cunningham, developed into a full-blown art lesson that included symbolism and the origins of writing as well as picturegrams. I discovered that some of the poem recipes I was using from John Oliver Simon‘s Poetry Inside Out anthology have come full circle. Here I was, thinking I was developing a new lesson that was based upon an old lesson. But it was really the old, and the new colliding.

But what I really want to talk about is that prepping lessons for the process of electronic teaching has gotten me to go back into all these old files that, in some cases, haven’t been touched in two decades.

It’s a trip down memory lane to see my old self and the future self all at once. We are living in a post coronavirus world, nothing will ever be the same. So now is a good a time as any to let go of the old, so that the new ideas may come in.

I was talking about the teaching process with one of my teachers, Colleen Flores, about how difficult it was to teach via Zoom. Here we are all huddled around a tiny screen looking at each other, we’re insect-sized facsimiles of ourselves. I realized how much I rely upon my body, the dancing that I do in front of the classroom does not translate across the mediums. I am limited to my face being in the spotlight.

To teach with only your face as the only throughline, and knowing how self-conscious I am about all the strange and funny faces I make, I realized anew that teaching is more akin to acting, and stand-up comedy than ever. Because all that we are, we are merely talking heads.

I have to plan in advance so that students can see my hands. Forget about the rest of my body—it doesn’t exist. I only exist from the neck up. And God knows I’m trying to hide my neck it’s a frightening sight to see it on the Internet like that. And on it goes.

5/12

Deluge, teaching journal, Alexander Valley School

Unbelievable buckets of rain, it’s a freakin’ deluge in Alexander Valley & I only have summer duds with me. Ides of May? A couple more deluges this morning. Sheets of rain in Healdsburg and in west Marin. A half an inch of rain in Santa Rosa, my ass! Somebody needs to clean out the rain gauges.

Of course I only brought summer clothes to teach in..... I am freezing.

The internet is slower than molasses, I'm trying to save time by dictating kid poems for the poetry book (final edit, 2 classes done, 2 more to go), and I'm thinking of calling it quits, and crawling off to bed. This gig is pretty labor intensive. I’m so tired I can’t rest.....

Four classes a day, three days a week, is a challenge. I actually was so tired I crawled into bed at 8:30, just to get some down time. I taught MTW, then work for Sam in Forest Knolls tomorrow, I’m off Fri &  Sat. Work again in Forest Knolls on Sun, drive back to Healdsburg on Monday to produce a kid book. Monday is art, Tuesday is pasteup and runoff, then the big Open House readings for four classes, then we celebrate. Then fun may commence with Alexander Valley wine.

CPITS teaching journal

I always tell the kids I can teach you simile, but I can't teach you metaphor, it has to come from within you. That's the real poet's work. Then Josiah wrote: Our friendship is a rope that can't be cut. I about died. Today's poem. Hot off the press, as it were. If I can't get original language from them, then what am I doing teaching them?

One first grader was lost in daydream-land, I got tired of prompting him and threatened to have a tantrum like a baby kicking and screaming. And the class began to chant: do it! do it! do it! Teacher threatened to join me. I laughed so hard. Stand-up comedy for first graders. A tough crowd to please. Kids were rolling in the aisles laughing.

The daydreamer came through with flying colors & finished his poem. Wrote a second one. I guess the thought of us screaming away on the floor was way too visual. The things we do for poetry.

Beyond knackered, I am. I've read, commented upon, and typed up 3 classes' worth of poems. But can't seem to begin the 4th class. Frog brain. Ribbit.
 

Firestorm of Words reading in Healdsburg

I'm still feeling a bit under the weather, after a week of intense headaches and earaches. Smoke inhalation takes its toll. Trying to muster energy to drive to Healdsburg for our big Firestorm of Words reading at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts, organized by Penelope la Montagne to honor Brian’s dad,  Monte Kervin who died in the Tubbs Fire. 

Bea & Fran Hawkes in the 2017 anthology, Singing the Feathers of Freedom. 

I was almost about to cancel, but as Sean Folsom flagellated me on Facebook, and said, The show must go on. So, I girded my loins, I rallied the ponies and had a great time. My Alexander Valley students were stellar. A good reading all round, and I wasn't as tired! I went back to Nicasio and spent the night there, as Sinead was driving. Emotional times.

Alexander Valley School students in both California Poets in the Schools 2016 & 2017 poetry anthologies!

Historic Alexander Valley Schoolhouse by Frances Hawkes, 1st Grade