Hello Class! Hello Mrs. C! Hello Poetry!

I met some of the students at Dubois Elementary a few weeks ago when I went to meet Ms. Dydo, the teacher I will be working with, and was immediately impressed by them. There was a fire drill and the uniformed classes exited the building like an organized community, carrying me in tow. Some waved at the new comer or said hello, and one student boldly asked me when I was coming back (to begin the class). On November 10, when I met the 6th, 7th and 8th graders, whose classrooms I will work in for the next 20 weeks, I was taken by that community once again: their declarations of their friendships with their classmates, their cooperation and willingness to help me (a stranger), to start the business of us getting to know one another and poetry. On the precipice of our nation’s change, they were energetic, kind, passionate and open-minded. They are ready. And I am excited and encouraged, not only about our class, but the fact that they welcomed me and poetry at a time when we all need each other and the power of emblazoned words so, so very much.

On our first day, we introduced ourselves, I to the students and them to me. Together we read Pablo Neruda’s poem, Poetry, and discussed some definitions of poetry.

The 7th and 8th grade classes shared some of the things they liked to do and ways that they expressed themselves. The 6th graders were to complete the sentence…Poetry is…There were not formal attempts; I kind of tricked them into writing poems on the first day, buy they all quietly took to the task of sharing, and since there is poetry in all things…in their answers to my questions, I found these.