Monthly Archives: November 2012

Let There be Joy

by Gabrielle

Instead of soil
let there be an amusement park
Instead of sadness
let there be joy
Instead of depression
let there be a big heart
instead of darkness
let there be a tower to Planka
Instead of broken glass
let there be tall trees to the moon
Instead of hollow ground
Let there be an elevator to
the clouds
Instead of disappointment
Let there be my great grandma
looking at me from the sky

A Letter from the T&W Staff

Teachers & Writers Collaborative is grateful to the individuals and institutions whose generosity makes our programs and publications possible. Recent supporters of our work include the following. (more...)

It is fairly safe to say that not every student is immediately open to poetry.  Especially at first.  We’ve all had the experience of coming into a new classroom and, after explaining the basic tenet of most poetry residencies – writing and reading poetry – receiving blank stares or less than enthusiastic responses.

One effective way to hook students’ attention and interest is to listen to poets read their work or watch poets perform, not only on that first day, but throughout the residency.  And thanks to the Internet and modern technology, it is now relatively easy to do that in the classroom, even when an author visit is not possible.

Charles R. Smith’s “Allow Me to Introduce Myself” is full of rhythm and musicality as he describes his abilities on the basketball court.  Students literally dance in their seats listening to it and want to hear it again and again.  It’s a great example of the use of hyperbole, description and show don’t tell.        

Writer and actor Daniel Beaty’s piece “Knock, Knock” details his experience growing up with a father who was in prison for most of Beaty’s childhood.  Not only is the piece itself powerful, but Beaty’s performance of his monologue is completely engaging and inspiring.

By starting off with an activity that students most likely do in their spare time—listen to music, watch videos—it can help demystify poetry and make it more accessible, especially for reluctant readers and writers.  It truly brings the poet’s words to life, right there in the classroom, in a way that is otherwise impossible to replicate.  This also models for students the significance of reading their own work out loud.  How the best medium for their words, their stories, their voice is actually themselves.

-Susan Buttenwieser

Susan Buttenwieser is a prose writer and T&W teaching artist.  To read more about Susan, go here.

The Teachers & Writers offices will close at 3 pm on November 21 for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will reopen on November 26.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Check out our Poem as Big as New York City page for a new lesson and new poem relating to the book! 

The Origins Poems lesson idea helps kids break down a place or a thing by tracing it back to its origins. It's a great way to work with kids to animate your city!

We've also added an additional poem by 7th-grade Brianna who writes about where she's from. 

Passionate, confessional, inspired and distressed, Anne Sexton (1928-1974) contributed to Teachers & Writers as a poet-in-residence in 1967, the same year she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Live or Die (1966). Despite her critical and public acclaim, Sexton felt nervous as a teaching artist in the classroom much of the time, and she struggled with whether she could teach as an expert in her craft. One of her students wrote in a letter to Sexton [published in Journal of a Living Experiment (1979)], “If you think you are a failure to communicate with the kids you are wrong…If you think that you are a failure because you cannot find out what counts to us, you are also wrong…You made the students care.”

Sexton’s work as a writer in the schools followed not only her Pulitzer Prize, but also the publication of multiple collections of poetry and her collaboration with Maxine Kumin on four children’s books.  In her 1967 artist diary, which was published in a Journal of a Living Experiment, Sexton wrote, “I’m interested in what the kids like because I want to be more in touch with my real audience. I write for kids. People who grow up, half the time, most of the time, they forget how to feel.” Sexton’s diary entries are full of vivid descriptions of the kids, how they made her feel and how she and the classroom teacher, Bob Clawson, helped them to learn. She wrote, “The naughtiest kids are the ones with the most intelligence and the most creativity. They’re creating a scene in class and they can create a scene on paper just as well.”

“[Bob Clawson] said I was a poet and he a teacher, and we would keep journals and we’d like [the students] to do so if they would. One girl asked me what a journal was, was it a diary. I said yes, only longer and more truthful. I didn’t know.” Sexton was honest in the classroom and tried to teach her students by trying to learn who they were. She also struggled with poetry’s place in the classroom.  She mused, “Teaching them to be original, will it help them to get in to college? Is originality a commodity that’s useable?”

"I’m just a practicing writer. That doesn’t seem to affect [the students] too much,” Sexton
wrote in another journal entry, which was published in Anne Sexton: A Biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook (1991), “They’re not too surprised about my writing. I don’t think they’re impressed, which is all right with me. I don’t want to impress them. I want to stimulate them.”

-Sally Stark

Sally Stark held an internship at Teachers & Writers Collaborative last spring as a participant in the Coe College New York Term (www.coe.edu/newyorkterm).

Due to the effects of Hurricane Sandy, the November 8th T&W Reading TELLING IT SLANT AND STRAIGHT with Susan Buttenwieser, Vanessa Mártir, and Ibi Zoboi  has been postponed. Please check back for its reschedule date.