Here’s a sample of one of the features at our poetry cafe. YOURS will be so much better, (but I’m a bit proud that I pulled this together). The “Photos for Class” widget is one of the most useful tools ever—not to mention Animoto
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Lullaby
Last night we celebrated Earth Hour from 8:30-9:30 p.m. at our home in New Jersey. What did it look like, you ask? It looked dark, the flickering of a sage-scented candle the only light bouncing on the walls. (Electric light seldom bounces; that alone is a reason to turn them off.) Alright, I confess, I headed up to bed at 8:20, after a bit of bingeing on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, (Thanks to Matt and James who initiated me to the zany wonder of a resilient spirit!), and remembered as I settled in for the night—“Oh, my gosh, Earth Hour.” This gave me the excuse I needed to place Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, albeit reluctantly, aside and call down to my husband, “Hey, honey, it’s Earth Hour. Would you turn off all the lights, and the t.v.,too?” Being the best spouse ever, he complied, leaving Kimmy on hold for another day, and moved into the living room to practice guitar.
As I drifted off to strains of “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” and “Facist Architecture,” I realized we need a lot less light and a lot more music!
The World Awaits
This week’s Student Blogging Challenge focuses on the celebrations held in countries world wide. I will be highlighting the same international celebration as the Challenge administrator : EARTH HOUR to be celebrated from 8:30-9:30 p.m. this Saturday, March 28. The activities we conduct this week will focus on this holiday. A calendar of some international celebrations is included here. The list is not exhaustive. Spend some time searching for other countries’ causes for celebration; what we celebrate, we value. What do holidays tell you about “We, the people,” and I mean ALL of us, everywhere?
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Stay Gold
How many of you have read S.E. Hinton’s classic The Outsiders? If you haven’t, you must. You won’t be sorry; ask anyone who has. During the course of this tense and powerful novel about a group of boys in an unnamed town in Oklahoma, the main character Ponyboy Curtis and one of his best friends Johnny are hiding out from the law. Johnny has an opportunity to recite the Robert Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” It is an example of the perfect words in the perfect order at the perfect time.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold;
Its hardest hue to hold.
Its early leaf’s a flower,
But only for an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poetry Contest
All eighth graders will be submitting their best poem to the competition named in the link below. We are thinking all things poetry as the month of April, National Poetry Month, approaches.
Student Blogging Challenge
Here it is, the information we have been waiting for concerning this year’s Spring Student Blogging Challenge.
I am asking that each student register this week. After you have registered YOUR BLOG, then follow the directions on the information page. I will be involved as a mentor for students other than my own and am eager to join in this global community. I am committing to this; I want you to commit as well.
They Might Be Giants Hating the Villanelle!
For all you do, eighth grade villanellies and villaniles, here’s a sweet song for you!
Kids (and Teacher) at Work
In November former students Sarah Takash and Bridget Savage spent the afternoon with eighth graders and me. They had asked if I would be amenable to acting as the subject of a video assignment for a class they were taking at Communications High School.
Just last week, they sent me the link to their finished project, and I am thoroughly impressed and humbled. These girls captured me, engaged with some of your children, in a pithy, nuanced film that makes me proud, not just of them, but of what I have chosen to do with my life. I cannot thank them, and all my students, former and current, enough.
“‘His work says little that is new’
According to one slick review
But the pupils are his masterpiece.”
from “Writer and Teacher” by Seamus Heaney