Hobby

Hobby is not a word that comes across my proverbial desk and I do mean proverbial as I write in bed,  slouched back to protect my back or old car injuries manifest in haloes of pain.

Perhaps I take myself too seriously to consider hobby as a pastime.  Maybe gardening, but I'm too occasional a gardener. There are few sports I love, other than skiing and riding and my knees tell me otherwise, so that's in the past tense. Hiking is a passion, when I can do it, but again, the knees. I don't knit, scrapbook, or do anything on the hobby level, what is a hobby, exactly? Something done for fun. Well, maybe drinking latte and eating chocolate.

When I teach, I take photos, when I travel I take photos, when flowers bloom, I take photos. The camera is an extra eye, to recall what the eye forgot to record. Interestingly, my color poem was from a photo I couldn't capture...so memory had to suffice. 

Maybe reading pulp fiction counts as a hobby. It has no real use, other than escape. So does TV. Does Hulu count as a hobby? I am dry as bone, no poem will come... 

The IRS would like to think poetry and art are hobbies, but that's how I earn my living. Maybe that's a direction I could go in, in defense of poetry...

13  write a poems about a hobby

Teaching Conceptual Optics in the Classroom

Back in the 1990s, I saw several classes listed for kids at the Lawrence Hall of Science, and a school wanted a science unit for GATE (in Alexander Valley), so I created an arts based optics class combining several class write ups from the LHS...which was wildly popular... I taught it for years evey spring.

I never quite teach it the same way twice, I guess I'm teaching conceptual optics with a K as in Newton's Opticks. I have a certain, if vague fondness for Max Planck, Heisinger, and we can't forget Schrodinger's cat! I once held a letter Einstein wrote, after the Bonb, and I had a a 2nd cousin who worked on the Manhatttan Project—the math gene skipped me. And my grasp of physics is challenged but I can show how scientific questioning and hypotheses are related to artisitc inquiry.

It all started one day when I was throwing light around the room with prisms, and as we looked at the rainbows on the ceiling. a kindergartener asked me quite seriously, "Are you a magician?"

I often start with the EM scale and show kids where visual light lives on it. Such a narrow band. Then we explore and create a variety of optical illusions. Benhan rings, eye fatigue; we view an upside down world with magnifying glasses, we look at the retina as mirror (and that pesky flaw in the mirror, the optic nerve that forces the brain to create illusions like hotdog fingers), concave and convex (camera) lenses, we use fishing line sculpture for fiber optics, etc.

We make Dame Edna glasses, with one red and one green celluloid lens, color in geometric shapes, make contrasting color collages and look at them vibrate. Very 1960s acid trip kind of thing...the kids are all wandering around looking at the world with rose and green colored lenses, exclaiming, "Oh WOW!" it's a real scream. Sadly, I can no longer get celluloid, I'm eeking out my last few scraps (from Australia). Plasticwrap doesn't work. Can't see thru it.

We also do some really basic examination of eye structure, with partners, mirrors and flashlights...talk abiut how humans and other creatures see, and what colors we see vs. spiders & dogs. I show them how cyan, magenta and yellow dye can make every color. The main thing is that kids have fun while exploring a tiny portion of the optic realm.

We chase rainbows with prisms, CDs, crystals, Calistoga water bottles (the indentations throw rainbows) and bubbles. I've found that feather and snakeskin both have prismatic qualities. One final project is to throw sunlight at a right angle and create rainbows on a shadowed wall.

I think what got me interested in this originally was that when Newton's Opticks was published, it spawned a revolution in art and poetry...people had a new relationship to color and light. And I'm an artist and poet... I've a KQED SPARK grant at Cleveland ES during the day (painting on silk—see it's not paint, as in pigment but dye which stains the fiber—back to physics again). This is just extra. I'm still learning as I go.

Teaching Artist Toolbox: Integration Notes

“The Teaching Artist Toolbox: Connecting Your Art and the School.”

I wrote this essay for a book that never made it to print. Or, editor Faye Stanley never bothered to tell me that my piece was rejected. Either way, I waited with baited breath for a long time. Time to post it. I think waiting seven years for a rejection letter is long enough. —7/1/2014

INTEGRATION NOTES

The success of an artist’s school residency depends upon receptive teachers, administrators and support staff who are advocates of the arts. I’ve found that working with parents—especially the PTA—is the most effective method to develop a long term, in-depth arts residency. In post Prop 13 California, despite recent funding, we are still ranked at the bottom of the national list on public arts and education funding. Most school communities are grateful to be offered any arts programming as credentialed K-7 teachers are not trained to teach art with their students. Many feel stymied by art, and they feel pressured because there’s not enough time in the day to teach the basics, let alone art. That’s where offering to integrating the arts into school curriculum comes into play. I tell them that Art is the fourth “R.” If an administrator mandates that all teachers MUST participate in a project, then I ensure that we have enough common ground so the teachers are supportive of the residency.

With school advocates, I often develop and co-write grants to fund arts residencies. I will also explore areas where we can utilize school site and discretionary funds. There are sometimes obscure pockets of funding that can be used for the arts—especially if the grantor’s goals is developing self-esteem, then the arts become the tool or vehicle to develop self esteem. It’s a matter of mirroring language.

When I develop an arts residency, I meet with teachers on campus to get a sense of their classroom environment and teaching philosophy. If I can arrange a phone conversation beforehand, I will ask what they are planning to teach during the next few weeks. Then I explain my areas of expertise. I show teachers a portfolio of my work and student work. I explain ways we can integrate the arts into existing curriculum. From there we develop a curriculum based arts project. I encourage teachers to actively partner and develop new lesson plans with me so it doesn’t become an art la carte, or a catered event where the teacher uses my time slot for extra prep time. I encourage teachers to sit down with the students to create art too—sometimes it takes a few sessions before they feel brave enough, but many do, and are as delighted as the students with their art.

Developing an integrated arts curriculum is in addition to my teaching philosophy of experiencing art for art’s sake. Foremost in my teaching philosophy, is that art is a process and from that process, we create a product. My goals are to teach students to learn to use new mediums, to develop new skills, to learn artistic terms, to appreciate each other’s work, to gain a sense of the history of art, and most important to create a portfolio of their own art—not make copies of the masters. I don’t want them to produce 20 van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” all in a row.

Before I approach the school site, I refresh myself with typical grade level specific curriculum in the California State education frameworks: the Visual and Performing Arts-, the Language Arts-, the ESL, and Science frameworks. Then I look for areas where my art residency will naturally intersect with the frameworks. Often the curriculum vocabulary is different in each framework, but the goals and objectives are similar. I have a stock of visual arts and language arts lesson plans I’ve developed over the years, so I am familiar with tailoring my lesson plans to meet specific site needs.

For example, I often integrate science with visual arts. The Science Framework—to observe and record the physical world—are really the same skills in the visual arts framework, only the language is different. I find it helpful to use a yellow highlighter and highlight anything that catches my attention, and taking the disparate parts, and specific vocabularies, to reshape my lesson plans. In some ways, we are decoding and translating the frameworks for the teachers. Drawing and painting from nature is easy to adapt to the science framework, whether it be the study of geology, of land forms, or water/weather/plant cycles.

I like to begin residencies invoking the ancient Greeks, I explain to students that the ancient philosophers (scientists) who were also artists and poets, divided the world into what they considered the four basic elements: air earth fire and water. This is the ancestor of our periodic tables. By 5th grade, most kids have had a brush with the periodic tables. This idea also ties in well with the Chinese way of reckoning the world, so I use this as a way to show convergent systems.

I write on the white/blackboard a list of the four basic elements. We each vote as to which element we think we are and we write/draw from that perspective. Because the list creates categories, I’m introducing thematic based art. I demonstrate to the students how to use a particular medium, but I want them to tap into their own creative ideas too, not just copy and regurgitate my examples. As models I use artists from around the world so kids are exposed to art in many forms. We often talk about what we see, what we like, etc., before I introduce the lesson.

For example, when I introduce tempera paints and color mixing, I use large calendar landscape photos for models. What the images all have in common is a plethora of triangular and rectangular shapes. Even kindergarteners can find and identify those shapes. We trace the basic shapes with our fingers, and then we make do simple “baby” drawings on a small piece of paper. (I demonstrate this on the board). Usually it’s only 5-7 simple contour lines, but it’s recognizably a landscape. Because I choose mountain with reflecting water images, it’s easy for kids to find the horizon line or water line and they build drawings from the middle out. In this exercise I’m teaching them to see land forms with a geometric basis, sometimes with the older kids I talk about fractals and math. The shape of coastlines and oak tree limbs.

Sometimes we even draw landscapes with our arms, incorporating kinesthetic movement, big sweeping ranges, tall mountains, swirling water. Then I reintroduce how to use the art materials and we paint gorgeous landscapes in tempera using only the three primary colors (cyan/yellow/magenta). I use an ice cube tray as a palette and I explain that all the colors of the world live in that ice tray. When they look skeptical, I ask them if they’ve ever seen an inkjet printer.

With a stockpile of ideas based on the basic elements to develop art lessons, I have kids design templates for silk hoops based on the four elements. Or they might write poetry as an element. I use a special medium—silk, silk dye, and gutta, but it could be adapted to painting too. Painting on silk especially lends itself to exploration in the scientific realm. Osmosis, surfaction, absorbtion….once you find the right vocabulary, the possibilities for integration are endless.

Another neglected area in the care and feeding of an arts residency is increasing community awareness. Sending students home with an arts portfolio isn’t enough. I coordinate my flashier arts projects such as silk painting, to coincide with public events including Open House or thematic school events. I also invite the press. This led to the uncovering of a new arts funding source, our local PBS television station! We’ve received arts funding from KQED’s SPARK arts education fund.

Another area of integration is to create an arts specific event. A new tradition at one school I work at in Oakland, CA, is our annual PTA Fall Art Auction/Spaghetti Feed. We showcase student art, produce poetry readings and we have a silent auction of student art and silk hoops and group banners displayed on the walls. The art auction raises enough money to pay for food and art supplies. Parents are more willing to directly contribute to specific fund drives, join the PTA, and generally support the arts when they too are part of the arts process.



(Faye Stanley, I have jpgs too… I could go on, explaining specific lesson plans, or I could conclude with a synopsis on how to integrate a residency…)

Educating the Imagination

Maureen Hurley on Censorship
McCarthy in the Classroom?

Censorship has always been present in the classroom. As teachers and teaching writers, we are used to choosing which poems are appropriate for the end-of-the-year anthology, which story we will have a child revise for Parent Night. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s true. At its most harmless, censorship can operate to maintain equilibrium and respect. But since Columbine, and even more prevalently after the events of September 11th, censorshop and subtle forms of censure have begun to hinder educators in their efforts to teach creative writing.

One California teacher I spoke with expressed her concerns that school administrators (in conjunction with the courts) are gradually becoming the “thought police” of student writing. Write a scare story or a dark poem, and go to jail. The case of California student George “T.” is a compelling example. A San José Supreme Court appeal case this fall will test First Amendment rights when the court decides whether or not the 15-year-old student’s dark poetry constitutes a crime. The bizarre case of George “T.” is not an isolated one. Since Columbine, there has been a rising number if iuncidents in which school authorities and courts have arrested children for their art.

Homeland security and jingoism have only exacerbated the pressures on teachers. Since the war in Iraq began last winter, censorship has played out in myriad ways. One writing teacher in the Bay Area told how a colleage at his high scholl prohibited any student discussion that was critical of President Bush’s policies. The end result? A host of student poems containing retaliatory pro-war rhetoric. On a similar note, another teacher said her principal objected to the idea of student peace songs being a part of their annual spring concert, for fear that some parents might object.

While I have not encountered outright censorship in California schools, I noticed something more subtle occuring in my own writing residencies—in a word, self-censorship. For two year now, I have found myself walking on eggshells in order to assure school administrators that I am “safe.” But my students are scared of terrorism and war, and naturally their concerns emerge in their writing. And it is not merely fear they express, but pacifism. I have frequently been caught in the double bind of wanting to please school administrators on the one hand, and on the other— wanting to offer a safe haven for students to express themselves.

During the course of research for this article, I discovered that I was not alone. Several writing teachers expressed an almost palpable fear, an unspoken code for teachers not to mention the “unmentionable.” And while these fellow educators assured me that they were not being censored, their actions spoke louder than words. With the exception of one teacher who plans to retire this year, not one would allow their names to be used in this article, for fear of future repercussions from both their school administrators and from parents in the community.

HAND JIVE: SYMBOLS OF YOUR LIFE, REAL & IMAGINED (Past, present, future) poetry & art lesson

HAND JIVE    SYMBOLS OF YOUR LIFE, REAL & IMAGINED  (Past, present, future)    Maureen Hurley

OVERVIEW: We will trace our hands, fill them with symbols of our lives (real and imagined), then color them in. We can turn them into broadside posters, or make cards. I will show you all the steps first.

1. With a pencil, lightly trace one or both hands on a piece of unlined paper. You can have them overlap or touching. You may need help tracing your non-writing hand. Then with a felt pen, trace over the pencil outline and fatten up your lines. It’s OK to change the outline. You can give yourself fingernails, jewellery, watches, etc. Try and make a bold, solid line. Hold a chisel felt pen sideways to the paper to get a thicker line.

2. Fill your hands with symbols of your life.  See the list below. You might want to use your right hand for your real life and your left hand for your imagined life. Your right hand could hold your imagined future. Your left could be you in an alternate universe or a time warp. You could be s superhero, a famous person, etc. But save that for later. If you want to start by using a pencil to sketch in some of your ideas, that’s fine. But remember, we’ll need to erase ALL pencil marks as we’re going to copy these hands and then color the copies.

3. Create symbols from this LIST (No western alphabet or English writing allowed—Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Greek, etc.,  is OK). I will also give you 2 handouts (4 sides) of Chinese, Japanese and Indian/Native American  symbolic language sheets.

• What element are you?    Air/wind    Earth     Fire     Water    Think about your personality & choose one or more. You can draw a picture of something that has your element in it. Fire: sun, stars. Water: clouds, river, rain, snow. Earth: mountains, trees, etc. Use your imagination or use my sheets to tell your story.
• You could also add your star sign, your Chinese birth sign. I am a Sagittarius so I could use an arrow or a bow and arrow. I’m born in the year of the Dragon so I could also add a dragon (or use Chinese character).
• What is your favorite: hobby, sport, foods (fruits & vegetables too), thing to do, place to be, etc.
•  What wild animal do you most resemble or admire? You could have a totem animal or an animal helper. You could think of it as an animal guardian or spirit helper, the way Native Americans do. It could be a wolf, a coyote, an eagle, a ladybug. 
• You could also have a special ceremonial object, a crown, a staff, a wand, a ring, a good luck charm, an amulet or a talisman as well. What special gift or superpower do you have or possess?
• What musical instrument do you play (or would you like to play)?

These next questions are about your hopes and dreams.

• What three jobs will you have in your lifetime? Think of symbols for them. A doctor could be a stethoscope, or a caudicus (that staff with the two snakes on it), a teacher could be an apple.
• Where do you want to live? Where do you want to travel to? What places have you already been?
• What about your family? How many brothers and sisters do you have? What about your future family when you grow up? How many kids will you have? Think about family traditions and customs too.
• For your other hand you can use these same questions, but you’ll need to add a historical element if you’re a historical figure, or a superpower if you’re a mythical being. 

Now fill your hand drawings with symbols. This is sort of like getting your hands hennaed. Then, using the drawing, write your poem.

FOR THE POEM HERE ARE SOME STARTER LINES

My hand`        In my hand I hold          

Inside my hand  is/are   
In the palm of my hand     In the hollow of my hand          

My hands hold       My hands tell of,     they speak to              

In one hand/palm         In my other hand       

I have the gift of             

I have the (super)power of             

I have the wisdom of        

Once I was         

I have been       I have been to    I have done          

I have traveled to    I have journeyed to           

I dream of          

I carry my ancestors’ dreams    hopes   wishes           

My hands will  (future)         

Don’t forget to use the symbol questions above for inspiration as well: especially musical instrument, animal, talisman, ceremonial object, jewellery.

Three model poems:
VERONICA'S FATHER, and MR RAUTIO'S HANDS — 2 poems
MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS

POETRY TEACHING NOTES: Naming Califia

POETRY TEACHING NOTES

This place we call home is much larger than just where we live. I like to use local history and heritage as a place to begin gathering information for the poetic process. To develop a sense of place, and from there, to explore our global connections. Where we live and who we are profoundly affects our culture and art. We are all immigrants; we've come from distant shores to sink roots down into the soil called California.

    

California has always been a multi-cultural state, if not a state of mind. It began long before California was "discovered" by the Spanish. No one is sure what the Native American names for California were, but the Coastonoan Ohlones of the San Francisco Bay region have left us one small clue. All that remains of an entire culture's mythology and culture is this fragment, Dancing on the brink of the world.   

The multitudes of Native American languages and dialects in California  number into the thousands. According to anthropologists, this phenomenon could only have happened over a long period of time—say 10,000 years or more—by infiltration of new groups coming across from the Bering Sea, and by groups so stable, their common dialects became separate languages over vast tracks of time. But there are also cultural and linguistic connections between the Pomos of Sonoma, one of the oldest groups in California and the Mixtec of Oaxaca, Mexico.

When Hernando Cortés sailed to the Americas in 1535 from Spain, he was looking for a mythological land of gold. The naming of California began long before California was "discovered." When Cortés sighted the lower tip of Baja, he named the "island" California after an amazon queen Califia, from a novella, The Adventures of Esplandian. Perhaps it was the fabulous pearls in La Paz that made him think this was mythological California, or maybe in bitter irony, he named the bleak vast desert "California" as a joke. But he wasn't so wrong, because in 1849, gold was discovered. One student wrote: Califia summoned the mountains,/She summoned the trees, the winds, the streams/And the hills as well... (1)

More and more teachers tell me their students seem to lack in self-esteem. Could I include something on self-awareness? This becomes my focal point. I like to start out with an autobiography. "Auto" means "self," "bio" means "life," and "graphy" or "graphics" means "picture." Self-life-picture. 

I ask students to write me a letter about where they were born, where they've lived, who they were named after, their nationalities, what languages their families speak, do they have any famous ancestors, any family stories, traditions, etc. I brainstorm with them. Do they have a secret place? 

What do they want to be when they grow up, what do they think they'll be instead? What places would they like to travel to? Who are they, what do they dream of?

By the year 2000, the dominant population will be the so-called "minorities" with the largest group being Latin American, followed by Asian, and Black populations. This variety of cultures becomes a fertile ground for the writing of poetry. The students' own family history can be incorporated into their writing.

Notes: this is a list of ideas, rather than a lesson plan. (See Nuts & Bolts for more details). I usually meet with a given class one hour a week for ten sessions. I cover a wide range of poetic ideas and styles, some of which are included here.

To break the ice, metaphorically speaking, I start poetry writing classes with bi- or tri-lingual decks of word-cards or phrases. Pick approximately 600 words and parts of phrases from poems, or have students help design a deck. I often have them do the translations. My word-cards are in Spanish, Russian, Chinese as well as English—students are fascinated by different languages. 

Shuffle the deck, pass out five word-cards to each student. Choose five words from their collection to do a demonstration poem on the chalk board. Ask for synonyms, homonyms and antonyms for each word and write them down. Build a poem using words from the clusters—include tense changes too. Add as many other words as needed. 

Include a comparison, a feeling (without naming it), make sure it's a image (a painting with words). Student Matt Melodia wrote: A young deer/occasionally came/and ate the rich apples./They taste like a dream. (2)

Limit the poem to 3-5 words per line. Do revisions, give it a title. Have students make their own poems. When they've used their five words (or related words) give them five more, etc. They can add onto the first poem or start a new one. Lie under a tree/Sadness/Watch it flower.  (3)   

Poems can be as serious or as silly as they want. A variation, try word-card haiku inspired by Impressionist paintings. Each line becomes a brush-stroke. Dense morning/Pulling the sky down/Clouds fighting again.  (4 )

Word-cards help students break out of predictable writing patterns, forcing them to taste words they wouldn't normally use in a poem. It stretches their vocabulary and opens new doors of expression. Look up a word sometime in a good dictionary. 

English has collected a portmanteau of words from most languages of the world, not just from the Indo-European tree. The Oxford English or the American Heritage dictionaries include the meaning and origin of words. "Conspiracy," to breathe together, is related to inspiration which means to breathe life/creativity into; as from the godhead. And other words: perspire, respire, respite are related. We are a conspiracy of poets breathing together as we write.

Another lesson idea might include the tracking down of a family history, looking up the origin of your names and writing about them. This is a good place to introduce narrative poetry that tells a story. Who were you named after? What's in a name? An entire thumbnail sketch of history. 

I make copies of several baby name books and pass them out. Sometimes students can find their last names too. Harrison is Harry's or Harold, the army ruler's son. Aguilar is of the eagles. Don't forget nick-names and baby names. Memory, history and origin combined.

Use information from your birth sign, stones, flowers, etc. What element are you? Air, earth, fire or water? Write a poem from that perspective. Gary Snyder's "As For Poets" is a good model poem. Are you a mind or a space poet?  

How about giving yourself another name, a totem or clan name, a secret name: place, season, animal, direction, color, etc. The naming of people, places, animals, and things goes back to our ancestral beginnings. The cave paintings of Lascaux, France and Altamira (to "look up" in Spanish), Spain, whether the art work of Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal man, invoke the animals of the hunt. A naming.

One of the oldest European poems 2,000 to 3000 years old, an Irish fragment attributed to the bard Amergín (also the Welsh Taliesin) is a mnemonic naming of knowledge, coding of information. It is also an incantation. The metaphoric naming of things and ideas. I am the salmon of the seven leaps.  Who but I...  (Robert Graves, The White Goddess).

ON A HILL WHERE POETS WALK

I am a wonder among flowers

running on a hill where poets walk.

The feel of fresh grass under my feet

where tears of the sun are falling,

where every head is guarded by a shield,

I am a young flower blooming,

but I am free to do anything; to go anywhere.

If I am free; am I the blaze on the hill?

     Roxanne Nelson (5)

  

You could bury an acrostic message spelled down the page—your name, your secret animal, place or thing name... Or bury a code word associated with your name as a skeleton by which to hang a poem from. Take the letters of your full name. How many other words can you compose from it? Make a list and use as many of them as you can in a poem.

Bring in mirrors and write about yourselves and family. The past, the present, the future, an aspect of time. Read selections from David Meltzer's Two Way Mirror. David said: Poetry is a two-way mirror. The outside looking in; the inside looking out. A reflection is a reverse image of yourself. No one knows what they really look like as others see them. The camera unveils us as the rest of the world sees us; face-forward. 

What does it mean to see yourself backwards and not as others view you? How about when you look into multiple mirrors and infinity stretches out like a green lake—what happens when you enter into that world? Follow up with improvisational mirror exercises, where students pair off and slowly mirror each other's movements. 

Have them write about the process. Have them do a contour drawing of their partner without looking at the paper, then write a poem about looking into their partner's eyes. What do they see? What else?

Writing comes from pictures. The Phoenician seafarers (modern-day Lebanon) invented modern "Roman" writing to keep track of goods. A was aleph, the ox. See its two ears and horns? B was beth, house or temple,      C was gimel, the ship of the desert (can you guess it by its shape?),  and D was daleth, or door.   The Greeks came along and borrowed the alphabet, renaming the letters, alpha, beta, etc. Hence the word Alphabet comes from ox and house. Another naming.

Write a fragment of a lost epic poem. "Translate" the inscriptions of Minoan Linear B, the story boards of Easter Island or an Aleutian skin story from Technicians of the Sacred, by Jerome Rothenberg. Decode the message while listening to the song of a humpback whale. Do fake translations, or transliterations from poems in Russian, Japanese, Chinese, etc. However the poem is deciphered is correct.

"The painter Gauguin, exploring his own French/Peruvian roots, and disturbed by the destruction of the Polynesian concept of paradise wrote on his most famous painting, Who are we and where are we going?   

You could explore environmental and ecological issues which reach across racial boundaries. Writing from pictures; a before and after. Many students are concerned for the future welfare of the earth. Look for patterns to emulate, moving from the smaller picture of self, to the larger issues of the world.

Cycles and systems—why it's important to preserve the place where we live. Building on prime farmland, waste management, air pollution, and recycling are issues that affect us all. Minnesota poet Thomas McGrath wrote in Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Write letters to the earth, the sky, the ground, the sea, a tree, the ozone layer, the rain forest, endangered species, etc. Show the interconnectedness of things.

The environmentalist John Muir who was responsible for founding and preserving our national parks, (Yosemite, Yellowstone, etc.), said everything is connected to everything else in the universe. A prime example of habitat destruction are the feral non-native Russian boars in Sonoma County. In 1811, the Russians who colonized Fort Ross had no idea the pigs would plow whole hillsides devouring everything in their path including rare wildflowers and small animals and ground nesting birds.

Build writing ideas on curriculum already developed. Science, social studies, geography, sociology, etc. Since fourth grade focuses on California history and the missions, one could write about a day in the life of a Pomo or Coast Miwok sighting the first ship...A white bird filled with pale ghosts rose from the belly of the sea,  or life at the mission, or Vallejo's adobe. 

Try to paint a vivid picture of how life was lived. Visual and tactile stimuli are often a good place to write from. If Califia were here now, what would she say?

Bring in role models from other cultures. Not just poems, but people who can share their heritage with students will invoke interesting writing, especially if you already have students writing poetry about themselves. Remember a poem is an image with rich comparisons and feelings. Think of the fragment, Dancing on the brink of the world as part of a letter to an unknown friend. The possibilities are endless.

*                  *                  *

Nuts & Bolts—We each our own methods of teaching poetry—we've all gotten ideas from each other and refined and modulated them to fit our styles. Every time I teach the improvisational process may change but the philosophy doesn't. I encourage teachers to write in the hopes that they will invent their own teaching form, and not take mine into the classroom Monday morning. But I've included a basic teaching format that works well for me.

I divide my one-hour block roughly into four 15 minute segments: The first 15 min. we read typed poems (about 1/3 of the class) from the week before, review last week's lesson, make in-class corrections, typos, delete words, etc. As a warm-up exercise, students may underline five words from the typed poems and use them during the five minute freewrite, or they may revise a typed poem. They must write non-stop for five minutes about anything. Often they have a poem they've been wanting to write, or classmate's typed poems generate new ideas.

The second 15 min. segment is a lecture. I introduce new poetry idea, sample adult poems, and do a group poem on the board if there's time. I write on the board what I want them to cover: image, metaphor/comparison, & feeling/emotion, etc. Most students finish up in 15-20 minutes, but this format gives students about 30 minutes to write. I circulate around the room and read work in progress, make suggestions, etc. If they finish one poem, they should add onto it or write another. About 10 to 15 minutes before class is over, we read aloud poems from the lesson or from freewrite.

Students use bound Classmate journals for the poetry workshop and  date each day's work. I read the journals and write comments after each workshop. I type up the best poems (about 1/3 the class) as role models which inspires new student work. At the end of the residency, they'll each have a large collection of writing to choose from for the anthology. I give them a computer print-out of all their typed poems (at least two or more per student). We meet individually and in small groups to edit and review possible poems and make final revisions for the book.

***

1. Matthew Keough, 4th grade, from Still Writing on Rocks, Matanzas School, Santa Rosa. 2. Matt Melodia, 6th grade, 3, 4 ,5.  Gabe Silva, 3rd grade, Brandi Gordonoff, 3rd grade, Roxanne Nelson, 5th grade, from The Power of the Reckless Sleeper, Mark West School, Santa Rosa. Edited by Maureen Hurley.

        

5/22/1990?
Probably originally written in the mid-1980s for a CPITS anthology, (I was working with John Oliver Simon at the Oakland Museum during that time). My oldest file is dated 1990. (It's a dead Unix executable fire box...I finally figured out that executable means to kill your file, not that it's functional.)I will post this in December of 1990 so I can easily find it.