She is three sitting by me on the couch open book in her hands head bent so intent in her study of detail in the picture
She is three and I see a reader coming to light
and very possibly an illustrious illustrator of dawning intensity
even though she’s three.
My granddaugher, Micah. I’ve read A Bad Case of Stripes to her over and over. She anticipates events in the story now and comments on the drawings. She studied this page a long time.
Her first sketch of her dad.
She made her dad tie a cape on her. “I’m Batman, she told him. “Read to the Batman.”
******* with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the annual March Slice of Life Story Challenge. This is my ninth year participating alongside fellow teacher-writers.
with thanks to Anna J. Small Roseboro, today’s Open Write host at Ethical ELA, for inviting teachers to write poems of reflection on the past school year and projections for next…my thoughts came out this way, and so I’m calling it a prose poem.
For Love of Reading
Reading and writing were the great loves of my childhood…for birthdays and Christmas, I wanted books. And more books. I never thought about them as keys to unlock life’s doors. In retrospect I see that books were my lifeline, keeping me afloat in a muddy sea of existence. I would read and find myself in another world, another life. I didn’t think about reading as amassing riches in my mind. My family didn’t have wealth but I was rich, rich, rich in books. They were my greatest treasures.
I never planned to be a reading teacher. I didn’t pursue the vocation; it pursued me. My professional role changes every year depending on funding and the current trend for helping children learn to read. For many the struggle is great. The battles waged by the Educational-Powers-That-Be are great. Year to year the sands shift, the tides of research turn, blame is passed, and verbal artillery is fired. I have served in ranks wearing armor that didn’t fit me, using approaches that didn’t dovetail with desired outcomes… furthermore, we are not talking about war. We are talking about what children need.
Every so often, the winds of war abate and through the smoke blows a bit of fresh breeze. Let us name it Opportunity. It comes offering me a chance to recruit volunteers from the community to read with students each day. It comes with a whole new library that I inventoried and archived in preparation for next fall, a wealth of beautiful books that are windows and mirrors for our young students to pick from, with their volunteer readers. It comes with taking donations of books to give to students to keep at home. It comes with redecorating a neglected space in the building, with an astounding gift of bright new seating from the PTA, to make this space special for our students. This is a sacred space. Here people will give of themselves to others, here relationships and lives will be built, here love will be born…
My reading soul rejoices.
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with thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge —writers need community. ❤
So it was, while I was skimming about for a photo of magical waters (never mind why), I stumbled across this illustration from a book called The Wonder Clock: Or, Four & Twenty Marvellous Tales, Being One for Each Hour of the Day.
Enchanted, I dug a little deeper and learned the tale of a wood-chopper’s son who, in spite of his father’s insistence, didn’t wish to be a wood-chopper himself and went off to school instead where he studied and studied and became the cleverest student in all the world…thumbnail version: with a bit of magic and much transformative wit involving hawks and fish and ruby rings, the Clever Student leaps into the basket of a princess who’s collecting seashells by the seashore. He ends up revealing his true self, marries her with the blessing of the King, and goes home to collect his wood-chopper father to live the rest of his days in comfort by the warmth of the stove in a fine home.
Key line: “And that is what comes of book-learning.”
—Gold.
Illustration from The Wonder Clock, Howard Pyle, 1887. Public domain.
Today on Ethical ELA Jessica Shernburg invites teacher-poets to find 1-3 short texts to read and annotate or texts that we’ve previously annotated (“examples you have modeled for your students, your responses to student work, books you have marked up, etc.”). The idea is to use your own annotations in creating a found poem.
This is the kind of thing that could keep me busy for days, weeks, infinity…
My annotations come from an eclectic mix of professional development, research, an old but much-loved novel, and the Bible: Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students (Zaretta Hammond), The Power of Moments (Chip and Dan Heath), The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (Patricia A. McKillip), and John 16.
Might I violate the expectation of an experience with the right amount of tension keeping the rubber band taut
bearing in mind that there must be trust enough for productive struggle
risking vulnerability even as a disciple unprepared for the terribleness of what is to come
imagine tapping inner power to call creatures with ancient magic unto myself
Discovering people who love Narnia is the closest thing there is to actually waking up and discovering you’re in Narnia. From the time I was ten I felt the same longing of those fictional English schoolchildren who found their way in though several different portals between that magical world and this one, that constant desire to return, to see Aslan again…
So when my children were born, I set about imparting a love of Narnia (and books) in their hearts.
My oldest loves books to this day. Narnia, however, never seemed to hold the same Deeper Magic for him that it does for me.`
Until recently.
He began reading the series to his five-year-old daughter last year and Narnia pulled him in. All the way in.
That is what Narnia does.
He would text me at different points on his adventure, the same adventures I’ve had over and over all my life. The snow. The lamppost. The thaw. Talking Beasts. Dr. Cornelius. Bree the Horse. Boarding the Dawn Treader. Meeting Reepicheep. The royal line of kings. Falling in love with Aslan, over and over and over again…
At the beginning of The Last Battle, this text: It’s heartbreaking.
Later: I got to the part where Cair Paravel has fallen and Tirian says Narnia is no more…am weeping…
Later still: Just finished The Last Battle. It broke me.
I learned from my little granddaughter, who whispered in my ear: “He cried so much that I told Mama we should be really nice to him. His eyes were all red.”
My boy, my boy. Once Narnia gets a hold of you, it never lets go. It’s in your blood, forever and ever.
Trust me.
It is but the beginning.
For Christmas he gave me this necklace with Lucy and Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Holidays over first day back to school we heard it might snow what we get is gale force winds diagonal rain and utter darkness (oh, those kids waiting at bus stops…) which is why so many don’t come there are just four kids in one room, six in another, and so on not to mention that at home the power went out before I could get ready hardly an enchanting winter morn except for candles…
when I finally arrive at work my family texts it is pouring snow here, pouring but when I look through the windows don’t see any of it not any just cold cold rain collecting in huge puddles on this dark dark day until I pass a teacher in the hallway leaning out of the glass door, scouring the iron-gray sky –are you looking for snow? –oh yes, if it starts, I am bringing my class out here in the hall to read Snowmen at Night…
just then, we see the first flakes of white…
all over the building children run to the windows for every little bit of magic they can find
or perhaps it’s more a matter of letting the magic find you
or maybe even a determination to make the magic yourself
for it is in yourself just as it is in every single falling crystal
and most certainly in books.
Detail of a magical mask design a colleague made and happened to give me today. You will have caught the book connections in the first two photos; can you catch the last?
with thanks to Barb Edler who posted the prompt for #VerseLove on Ethical ELA: “Consider the challenges you’ve overcome, the celebrations you can rejoice, the way you may miss something that you never realized you missed”…as inspiration for a “things I didn”t know I loved” poem.
When I returned to college later in life, after having had a family, I was asked to write an essay on “My Most Memorable Teacher.” I’d never thought about this before and was unprepared to write on the teacher who came immediately to mind…but I did write.
I had to.
On Day Nine of National Poetry Month, I give it to you in poem form.
For Mrs. Cooley
You terrified me, you know looming large an immovable mountain in pearls and heels casting your dark shadow over my fourth-grade days
The topography of your years etched deep on your face your eagle eyes piercing my very existence
The fear and trembling of math drills— Dear Lord save me from subtraction!— I look up and there it is in your expression: You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip
I did not know that many years later when I’d be asked to write of my most memorable teacher that you’d spring to mind clear as day overshadowing all others
and that what I’d recall is how you read Charlotte’s Web to the class
I did not know I could love a spider so
and then how you read us Old Yeller
My God my God I almost died with that dog
I did not know that you were the one who made me love reading for there is a difference in being able to and it being the air you breathe
I could not believe how worried you were when I fell on the playground that day how you cradled my distorted left arm all the way to the office and waited with me ‘til Daddy came
I never dreamed you’d come see me at home when I had to stay in bed propped with pillows ice bag on my cast
I saw you and the tears came— I am missing the last two weeks of school I won’t pass the fourth grade
I did not know you could CHUCKLE that your sharp blue eyes could go so soft and watery and I never heard that phrase before: flying colors you pass with flying colors
Would you believe I am a teacher now it isn’t what I planned but here I am
I never knew until Daddy told me years ago that you’d passed how much I’d long to see you again to ask you a thousand things maybe even to laugh
but more than anything to thank you with all my heart
so I do that now in hopes that you and Charlotte and Old Yeller know that my love lives on
Photo: Girl reading. Pedro Ribeiro Simðes. CC BY – reminds me of young me
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Thanks also to Tabatha Yeatts for hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup
With special thanks to Kim Johnson, who invited participants to write around “second grade pain” on Ethical ELA this week. She modeled with a form of poetry, the pantoum.
I knew right away what my poem would be about…
2nd Grade Trouble Pantoum
I’m in trouble for reading My little heart bleeding For I hid during math with a book When Teacher came to look
My little heart bleeding To numbers, conceding When Teacher came to look In my cloakroom nook
To numbers, conceding Warrior Teacher, succeeding In my cloakroom nook Oh, treasured book, that the pillager took!
Warrior Teacher, succeeding For I hid during math with a book Oh, treasured book, that the pillager took! I’m in trouble for reading.
*******
Note: A pantoum doesn’t have to rhyme, although mine does. It is a form comprised of repeating lines in this pattern:
Begin by writing four original lines. 1 2 3 4
REPEAT lines 2 and 4 and expand ideas in lines 5 and 6: 2 5 4 6
REPEAT lines 5 and 6, expand ideas in lines 7 and 8: 5 7 6 8
FINALLY, repeat lines 1, 3, 7 and 8 in the following order: 7 3 8 1
The annual Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers is underway, meaning that I am posting every day in the month of March. This marks my fifth consecutive year and I’m experimenting with an abecedarian approach: On Day 18, I am writing around a word beginning with letter r.
Also shared for Poetry Friday this week; many thanks to Linda at TeacherDance for hosting the Roundup!
lit bits and pieces 