There are a few things I hope my third graders always remember when they leave my classroom in June.  First, that reading, writing, poetry and art can bring you great happiness. Second, that learning is hard – and it should be or you’ll never make your brain grow.  And, third, that you create your own reality.  (And, that I loved them dearly.)

Attitude is such an important part of life.  What we think is what we will most likely see. My kids have heard me say it so many times, I now am hearing them parrot it to me when I need my own attitude shift.

Rainy Mondays are perfect for examining your attitudes.

I shared the following poems with my third graders today.  We talked about what we noticed, felt, and what the author might want us to think.  Then, we compared and contrasted.  I asked my kids which poem was them today.  The hands were split-half and half.

More teaching about how our minds work happened.  We talked about how if we expect to have a bad day, we probably will, because our minds are prepped to notice all the bad things that happen, bypassing any goodness that comes our way. After our conversation, I took another show of hands to see if anyone changed their minds about which poem they want to guide them today.  Of course, many switched teams over to the Happy Monday side.

Seriously.

Why would anyone WANT to create a their own gloomy day?

Shari 🙂

Happy Monday
By Joy Acey

Lying in bed
just after dawn
the sleep of night

is suddenly gone.

I'm listening to doves
cooing away
as I lie here and think
of the coming day.

Monday is the start
of this new week.
There's lots to do
and lots to seek.

I'm making my list
of things to get done.
I'm counting blessings
for lots of fun.

I hope whatever
you have to do
this will be a
great week for you.

Monday Morning

I was happy this morning, as I woke up in bed,
Then realized it was Monday and I faced the day with dread,
For somehow, whatever comes my way, my temper is displayed,
Just mentioning ‘it’s Monday’, my nerves, they become frayed.

The day will be just a ‘ write off’, it’s no good me trying to do
Any sort of reasonable job, things won’t go right. It’s true!
It’s like a ‘cloud’ which hangs around and never let’s you be,
Whatever I attempt to do, disaster follows me.

If I could sleep through Mondays, then that would be just bliss!
Then Mondays wouldn’t have happened, I’d have given them a miss!

© Ernestine Northover

The Unchosen Poems

They sit and wait
hidden in books
some still scatter words
not yet crafted
to even live
as a poem yet.

All waiting
and waiting
to be chosen.

Pick me!
Pick me!
they cry
waving their arms
I have something to say!
The children. . .
they need to know me!

But, oh. . .
I squint my eyes
and shake my head
You are
too confusing
too long
and those rhymes?
no. . . I can’t even.
I don’t want the children
to believe that
poems
have to rhyme
you are fun
but. . . no.

Always
they pout
she chooses her pets
Wild Geese
A Snowy Evening
An Apology
What do they have
that we don’t?

It’s so unfair.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I like to believe that poems choose me and I don’t not choose them.  But, after this poem made it’s way out of my pen this morning, I realized that yes, I do have my favorites. They are chosen over and over to teach whatever I might need to teach that day.  My class pets that I pick on the most are my memorized poems.  They sit at the ready until I call them up for their duty.  I’m sure the unchosen poems think they are spoiled.

The neglected poems were screaming at me this morning, begging for attention.  “You are so lazy”, they cried.  “Give the children something new!”

Ugh.

When the truth speaks, it hurts.

I do rely on these chosen poems and yes,  perhaps they do need a rest.

And, those rhyming poems?

Personally, it was those bloody rhymes that damaged my own beliefs about what poetry really is.  In my classroom, I encourage students NOT to rhyme because immediately they are all trying to force feed these words into their poems just to make a rhyme.  Poems fall apart.  The rhymes take away the heart and meaning of what they are truly trying to say.  If a child is composing a poem about her dog dying, the last thing she should be thinking about is, “What rhymes with dead?”

Action Plan:  Branch out beyond what I already know and believe.  Use a poem I don’t connect with personally.  Perhaps it is meant for a child in my room and not me.

Play with rhymes, but not too soon.

And, for Pete’s sake, memorize some new poems.  Those Wild Geese and Snowy Evenings need a rest.

Shari 🙂

I’m participating in the 2016 NaPoWritMo (National Poetry Write Month) and hoping to blog about poetry for 30 days in April.  Please join me and others by visiting their site!

A Dog’s Sigh

I wish
I could read a dog’s mind
when it sighs so heavy.

Is it bored
wishing that it
could be outside
chasing squirrels
and playing tag
with dog friends?

Perhaps the sigh
is tiredness~
a sign that
it just wants
to sleep.

Or maybe
best of all . .
it’s contentment~
an inner peace
and happiness
that it belongs
to this family
and
can sleep
on
a
bed.

Really.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I didn’t always love poetry.

Honestly, I can’t say that like even described my feelings toward it through most of my years as a student.  Between the analyzing, confusion, rhyming, and assignments to produce haikus, sonnets, quatrains and filling in templates for acrostic poems , what’s not to like, right?

Ugh. . .

Poetry used to bring fear to my already befuddled mind.  Fear that I would not know what in the heck a poem was supposed to mean, fear that I was alone in this fear of being the only idiot that would not understand what the secret messages that poets were trying to tell us.

By the way, did you know there actually is a word that defines the fear of poetry?  It’s called metrophobia.

I do not make this stuff up.

A shift occurred in my late thirties when I was trained as a Literacy Collaborative coach at Ohio State University.  The introduction to Georgia Heard, Ralph Fletcher, Mary Oliver and Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge changed my entire vision of what poetry truthfully was. I learned that a poem can speak to me in whatever way I want it to.  We savored a line, or even a word and asked ourselves, “What does that say to you?” or “How did they do that?” I learned that before anything, a poem has to tug at your heart.  You have to feel it.  I learned that a poem does not necessarily harbor secrets that only the sophisticated- intellectual-well-educated-literary-geniuses can decode.

And, I also discovered, first hand, that when that first poem shakes you to your core, you are hooked on poetry for life.

It was also revealed to me that anyone could write poetry and it certainly did not need to follow a structure, especially a rhyming one.  Oh, how I despised having to restrict my words to a poetry form when those thoughts just didn’t want to fit into any poetry form.

The angst.

I came to adore free verse and in writing simply.  No polysyllabic fluffery for me.  If I desired to say the cat slept.  That’s what I’ll said.

I found freedom in free verse.

Although poetry lives in my heart and in my classroom all year round, April is a paramount month for celebrating poetry more than any other month of the year. April stirs my poetry senses, new notebooks need to be purchased for filling with poems, fancy new pens show up, and most certainly. . . a few new poetry books find their way to my shelves.

This month, coming down from the rush of the 2016 Slice of Life Challenge at Two Writing Teachers, I feel a tug to keep blogging onward.  What better than to take up a new challenge to write about anything poetry.

I may just a write a simple poem, like one about my dog, Sandy, and her heavy sighs.  Or, perhaps I’ll share an attempted lesson with my third graders. I certainly will brag about the inspirational poetry teachers who have walked before me.  Or, I could just take pictures of the poetry in our lives.

Whatever it will be, I’m on poetry alert.

Prepare to be swaddled in words of poetry this month.

Giddy-up~

Shari 🙂