One of the benefits of controlling dominating operating the laminator at work (besides being drunk with the power of coating things in melted plastic) is to see what students have been working on in the classroom. My favorite thing to laminate is student poetry. They always run the gamut of ridiculously hilarious to sublime and profound. One of my most favorite poems started off like this:
OHMYGOD IT’S CHRISTMAS.
I really feel that one line right there sums up everything I feel about Christmas: The excitement. The dread. The panic. Someday I should go back, way back, through my twitter feed because I used to tweet the very best lines I came across. A few this year were so good I wrote the whole verse down. Two of the poems I liked so much were haiku and two were acrostic, the goal of those were to spell out the word, “POETRY.”
Adolescent poetry isn’t normally something I get excited about, but I like these and I think you will, too.
**************
GRASS
The grass is awesome
Emerald stalk grows longer
Just doing its thing
**************
Pulling from your
Outermost reaches of imagination to
Etch
Timeless words about what is
Right to
You.
**************
WOLVES
Wolves howling at
The dazzling, bright full moon
Joyfully yet sad
**************
Part
Of
Endless
Tireless
Relentless
Yearlong work.
One of the best haikus that I ever had (from one of my third graders, years ago) was:
it’s great to go to
but, at the end of the day,
it’s great to leave too
The subject? School.
I feel you, eight-year-old. I really do.
Kids really have an amazing perspective. This is why I love working with them.
Those were pretty great. Kids are so amazing sometimes. And I say sometimes, because they are absolutely terrors a lot of the time
I’ve been working with kids for only the past 8 years, but the thing I’ve seen over and over and over again, is this…
Kids are ONLY terrors when there is poor leadership. A kid that is perfectly fine in one class could be a hellion in another. I don’t think teachers are adequately prepared in classroom management to be perfectly frank. You either have to learn on the job or have that natural gift. It’s the same with parenting. I mean, all kids have bad days and throw tantrums and I’ve been in a store with Isobel while she’s yelled her head off, BUT, she is not a terror all the time, and if she was, it would be my fault.
Gee. I guess I’ll climb down off my soapbox now…
Holy god, that grass haiku is the most awesome thing I’ve read all year.
The girl who wrote this is so truly gifted. She has her issues, but she is a smart little firecracker.