Write Alone, Write Together

Hale’s 6-8th grade’s poetry club spent our time this week heavily in brainstorm mode as we prep for a group performance at the end of the month. Unfortunately, the Hale community was affected by gun violence in February and thankfully, students were unharmed. Our group was asked to perform at a school assembly, so we spent our Wednesday drawing inspiration from other poets who’ve written poems about community safety. After reading “The Street of Broken Dreams” by Minnie Bruce Pratt and “Safety” by Grace Cavalieri, we reflected on February’s incident with visuals. Some students drew a timeline of the events and others drew images of people, places, or items that remind them of safety. On Thursday, we laid out the overall structure of the group poem. Stay tuned next week for our finished product and check out some of our sketches below.