My Thoughts on Poetry

Honestly, I'm still warming up to reading and writing poetry. I like the idea of it, but I'm still growing in my comfortability. I have always loved to read, but never had much exposure to poetry as a kid. I can't remember receiving poetry exposure in elementary school, I guess it happened, but it wasn't memorable. I do remember several of my friends being in AIG and sometimes they would have poems that they wrote and entered into contests, but I never received that experience myself. I can remember being asked to write poetry in middle school after reading some of Shakespeare's Sonnets, but there was no inspiration provided so I felt like a bad poem writer. Throughout the rest of my education my experience were pretty similar to the one in middle school. The teacher might show us the work of a poet and then we were just asked to write a poem, no idea collecting, no inspiration. There was one time in my elementary school years that I wrote a poem I was proud of (If I ever find it, I'll add it to this post). I was in fifth grade and my Bama (grandma) had recently passed away. The granddaughters were asked if there is anything we wanted to say, share, or do at her memorial service. I have no idea what made me decide to write a poem, but I did. Maybe it felt more attainable, maybe it was a way for me to process losing her, and maybe we were working on poetry in school. I honestly can't say, but I do remember being proud that I was able to do that to honor her. I didn't read it myself, my great aunt took care of that for me. Aside from that moment in my life, I haven't felt like I was a decent poem writer until this semester. I have learned so many tools to help me find inspiration and strategies that help me refine my writing and make me feel proud of what I have created. This semester of Grad School is probably the most I have EVER written or read poetry. I am probably most proud of my Where I'm From poem. My mom found out I wrote it and shared it with my family and they all loved it. It made me feel so good and like I was a good writer. Overall, I'm new to this whole poetry thing, there's a lot I'm still learning, like how to collect it. I'm in search of my favorite poem, so if you have any recommendations, send them my way! I do enjoy Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga and The Crossover by Kwame Alexander. Both of those books are novels that utilize narrative based poetry to tell a story. What can I say, reading narratives was my first love. I'm still drawn to read that style of writing, but I'm excited to read more poems and find my favorite poet.

As a future teacher, I hope to provide my students with opportunities to explore, write, and read poetry. I want these opportunities to be the opposite of how I experienced poetry as an elementary, middle, and high school student. In my future classroom I hope that reading and writing poetry will be a regular part of our week. This video that features Jason Reynolds perfectly describes how I want my future students to feel about reading, specifically poetry. I want them to see poetry as something comforting to read, attainable to write, something they want to share with each other, and a tool for sharing their voice with the world around them. This won't happen without putting in intentional work to incorporate poetry into my teaching. The North Carolina Extended Content Standards English Language Arts K-12 don't provide many guidelines for teaching poetry, across grade levels it uses it as a mode for working on comparing and contrasting, and representations. BUT it doesn't take the time to let our students learn what poetry really is and what it can be for them. There is a standard about rhyme, but not all poems rhyme. The standards unfortunately do not encompass all that poetry is yet still expect students to understand them and use them to represent ideas. So how do we fix this? What can we do? As a pre-service teacher my response is fill your shelves with books of poetry, use them in read alouds, utilize them to teach descriptive writing, find ways to work them in to the current standards.

all the small poems and fourteen more

I enjoyed all the small poems and fourteen more by Valerie Worth, way more than I ever thought I would! Like I mentioned earlier in the post, I'm still new to reading poems for enjoyment. So, I was a little doubtful that I would enjoy reading 194 pages of poems. Surprisingly I found so many poems that I could connect to my own experiences and memories. Some of my favorites are displayed above and pictures from memories they reminded me of. The poem "Tractor" reminds me of the tractors sitting in my Granny and Pawpaw's field, the words Valerie uses so perfectly describes the image in my mind. "Duck" reminds me of when me and my roommates and I went walking at Moses Cone, we met a swan, named him Steven, and definitely considered trying to take him home with us. "Barefoot", reminds me of running barefoot through my Granny and Pawpaw's grassy yard and Chaco tans in the summer time. There's something about looking down and seeing a Z patterned tanned into my feet that makes me smile. The poem "Mud" reminds me of playing in the garden with my cousins Sunday after church at my Granny and Pawpaw's. We would make mud and have the best time "making pies". There were so many sweet connections that I never imagined I would find reading a book of poems.

Firefly July

I read Firefly July about 3 years ago for a Children's Literature class and hadn't looked at it again until this week. The first time I read Firefly July I still hadn't had much exposure to reading poetry or how to use it with children, so I definitely got more out of the book reading it this week. I even found a few poems that could serve as a mentor text for students. My examples is shown here! I went along with the seasonal theme of the book and chose rain, but you could have students select an idea from their 100 things I like/love page in their Writer's Notebook and write a "Uses for..." poem about it.

Meet the Author of all the small poems and fourteen more: Valerie Worth

She does not have a website or social media accounts due to her passing in July of 1994, but you can learn more about her here. Valerie Worth was the 1991 winner of the Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children.

Meet Natalie Babbitt, the illustrator of all the small poems and fourteen more

She does not have a website or social media accounts due to her passing in October 2016, but you can learn more about her here. Natalie Babbitt was not only an illustrator, but also an author.

Meet the selector of the poems in Firefly July, Paul B. Janeczko

He passed away in February 2019. This was his website. You can learn more about his life here. In his lifetime he published over 50 books! Paul B Janeczko was the 2019 winner of the Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Here is an interview he did with TeachingBooks.net

Here is my classmate Kelsey's blog where she provides more information about the poets featured in Firefly July.

Meet Melissa Sweet, the illustrator of Firefly July

Check out her website and Facebook. Follow her on Instagram! She has illustrated over 20 books and has written her own book, Some Writer! here is an interview about her inspiration for her book.