Write Now. Write Here.

I’m impressed.  They’ve worked like champs.  They sing like angels.  Their jokes make me laugh and their poetry makes me cry.   And the children of Room 204 work together.  Beautifully.  I love this class.

They raised well over a thousand dollars through raffle sales.  Every day a top seller would give the sales talk as the others listened.  They told how they set up shop in a coffee shop; or asked a trusted friend to take them around neighborhoods; or set up a lemonade stand and advertised free lemonade with purchase of raffle tickets.  They sold tickets in their parents’ restaurants.  They wrote thank you notes to “clients.”

The students in my class understand that working for the common good is part of being a good citizen.  We have talked about it all year long.  We can each do our part and we can do it in a way that is kind, fair, and responsible.  And fun.

We won the raffle contest.  And we won another contest, too:  we brought in the largest number of parent volunteers.  Any time I want to take credit for how amazing our class is, I pause for a little reality check.  These amazing children come from amazing parents.   They have parents who understand about working together for the common good.  They have parents who each do their part.  As I moved through the Strawberry Street Festival this weekend, I saw their parents everywhere.  These children have mothers and fathers who are kind, fair, and responsible.  And fun.

I hope the wonderful mothers of the children in Room 204 had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend.   I am lucky to know each and every one of you.

And very lucky to teach your children.

This weekend I emptied my pockets and found a poem.    It was by Edna St. Vincent Millay (one of my favorites) and was called Afternoon on a Hill.   The first line is “I will be the gladdest thing under the sun.”  The poem stayed in my pocket on “Poem in Your Pocket Day.”  But it didn’t matter.  Poetry was shared and recited and celebrated.  Each child had a poem in his or her pocket. Parents came and joined us for coffee, doughnuts, and joy.  They had poems in their pockets too. It was busy and boisterous.  It was poetry.  And I was the gladdest thing under the sun.

Driving down the downtown expressway this week, cars passed, rain splashed, and I mindlessly listened to All Things Considered on the radio.  That’s when I caught them together: bright sunshine and dark rain clouds.  That can happen on an April afternoon and when it does, you have to work fast. I checked my mirrors, scanned the sky and remembered the story.

On an April afternoon some years ago, a substitute custodian came into my classroom after school to clean.  I introduced myself and he told me that we’d met before.  And then he said there was something he’d always wanted to ask me.

“Are you joyful because you are made that way or are you that way because you choose to be?”

I was taken aback by this philosophical (and personal) question, but he was earnest; he leaned against the broom as he waited for an answer.  I looked out the window as I pondered the question and there they were: the bright sun and stormy clouds.

“Wait,” I said as I stood up and rushed over to the windows.  “I want to think about your question, but I have to look.”  I moved quickly from one wall of windows to the other.   I motioned him to follow.  “Come look with me.  The conditions are perfect for a rainbow!”   He stood next to me and looked.  And there it was.

“Whoa!”  He said.  “I get it!”

I don’t know that I ever answered his question, but I hear it every time I catch the bright sun mingling with dark clouds in the late afternoon April sky.  Or when a storm threatens the life or happiness of someone I love.  Or on a day that feels like a dark cloud looming.  I get busy and start looking.

May is just around the corner.  April showers bring May flowers and Mothers’ Day; baseball and barbecues; the Strawberry Street Festival and strawberry shortcake; picnics and porch parties.  And April showers bring, well, the May state-mandated testing of standards: the Virginia SOL’s.

If our third graders do well, the school does well.  And if the school does well, the school system does well.  That’s why they call it high stakes testing.

But I’m not worried.  And I’ve told the children they should not worry either.   We’ve worked hard. The material has been taught and learned.  Our review  will be a celebration of all that we know.  We will connect the dots and finish the seams; dot the i’s and cross the t’s.   We will continue to learn new material in math and science and deepen our lives as readers and writers.  We’ll be true to ourselves and true to our school.

Radiant light consorts with rain clouds on the horizon.  Come look!  The conditions are just right. I know there is a beautiful rainbow out there.

And if we don’t look, we’ll miss it.

I would like to give a special shout-out to the Academy of American poets for choosing April as National Poetry Month. April in Virginia is stunning and it makes sense that it should commemorate something beautiful and life giving and inspiring.  Poetry is a perfect choice.  It just makes sense.  I am not a poet, but I know poetry when I see it and I can see it everywhere in April.   It can be words on a page. A celebration.  A coincidence.  Virginia conspires with nature and sends us in search of the perfect words to name the poem that is April.

I had jury duty on Friday.  When the case was settled I decided to take the long way home. I lingered among the azaleas, tulips, and dogwoods at Capitol Square.  I walked by the Civil Rights monument and the statue of Barbara Johns.  Barbara Johns was a sixteen-year old African American student who led a student walk-out on April 23, 1951 that played a powerful role in ending segregation. There is a quote by Thurgood Marshall at the Civil Rights monument.

“The legal system can force open doors and sometimes even knock down walls, but it cannot build bridges. That job belongs to you and me.”

That was fifty-nine years ago. In April.

I walked home on Main Street where on an April day in 1865, Abraham Lincoln walked with his son Tad. On that day the city was still smoldering from the final days of war.  The president walked the talk from a speech he’d delivered month earlier…

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

It was Tad’s twelfth birthday.  He and his father greeted the newly emancipated African Americans who lined the streets to see their president.  That was one hundred and fifty five years ago. In April.

Now April has been proclaimed as Confederate History Month.  We won’t be celebrating Confederate History Month in Room 204.  We are celebrating poetry.

And besides… we are busy building bridges.

What is your poetry story?  You have one.  You know… the moment when you decided you loved poetry.  Or hated it.  Someone gave it to you.  Or took it away.   Someone forced you to memorize a poem and you felt exhilarated.  Or scared. Or free.  Or like you were going to throw up.

I was a freshman at Mary Washington College and somehow got permission to take an upper level poetry course.  We had class outside on that first day.   I’d always loved poetry, but that first class discussion was held in an academic dialect I barely recognized.  That didn’t stop me from participating (but it should have).  I don’t remember what I said, but I remember the moment that followed: the air grew very still.  One girl blew smoke rings.  Another exchanged a meaningful look with the girl that sat across the grass from her.  And rolled her eyes. The professor gave me a sympathetic look.  A girl swathed in a dark shawl glared at him and said, “See? This is why they should not let freshmen in here.”  I bit my lip and fought back the tears.  My face was hot with embarrassment.  I was an outsider.

It all turned out fine.  I learned to read, speak, and write in that dialect of meter and form (when I had to).  I did fine in the class.  The girls became my friends. I declared English as my major. Lucky for me, that was not my first poetry story. Otherwise it might have been my last.

My poetry story started with my mother.  And yours did, too.  A mother’s heartbeat is the metronome that sets us up for life.  We lean towards that beat in nursery rhymes and in jump rope chants; in picture books and poetry; in the bible or Torah or Koran; and in storybooks made sacred with the cadence of a parent’s voice.

Favorite picture books are often poetry or prose studded with poetic elements.  Jane Yolen, Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown, Cynthia Rylant, Eve Bunting, Vera Williams, Faith Ringgold, and (more obviously) Dr. Seuss are all poets.

All through the year, I gently lead my children towards poetry with picture books.  With these books I teach that not all good writing is poetry, but most good writing has poetry tucked in—like berries in a thicket.   A writer of a science text might use metaphor.  Or alliteration.  Or personification.  Or simile.   These words are old friends by the time we celebrate April as National Poetry Month.

In honor of Poetry Month, we cast our regular homework aside.  Each  week in April,  every  child works on a poem of his or her choosing.  Poems are memorized and illustrated. Copies are made for classmates.  Friday comes.  We gather in a poetry circle.  One by one, each child takes his or her place in the center of the circle and recites a poem.  A moment of quiet follows while the student passes a copy of the poem to each child in the class.  In this quiet the poems are read silently. Twice.  And placed in the individual poetry folders: each a growing anthology built child-by-child; heartbeat-by-heartbeat; poem-by-poem.   A poetry story begins.

What is your poetry story?  Can you share a sentence or two?

Dear Jen,

In January, just when I thought Room 204 couldn’t possibly get any better, you walked in the door as our new student teacher.

I remember telling the children that student teaching is a threshold and that it was a privilege  for us to  join hands to help you jump across that threshold to become a teacher.   You’ve jumped and here is how I know:

Teaching is noticing the new shoes. Honoring the birthday. Celebrating the new. Marking the old. Wishing away the hurt.  Living the moment. Loving the moment. Teaching is blessing the light and cursing the dark.  Seeing the student.  Inspiring the learner.  Passing on the story of our world.

Teaching is an act of radical hospitality where your action shouts the message: You are welcome here.  You’ve got this.  You can do more.  You belong.  You make a difference.

Learning needs a witness. Teaching is stepping forward: “Here I am…I’ll be your witness.”

A teacher helps children know the difference between the right answer on a test and the right thing to do.  A teacher shows students that nothing is harder than taking the easy way out –and celebrates academic risk with academic support.

A teacher shows children how to command respect by demanding it.  A teacher shows children how to sit a little straighter and stand a little taller—that attentiveness is a life skill.

A teacher is worthy of the trust and love of her students.  And then a teacher is trusted and loved into realness.

On Friday, trusted and loved into a real teacher, you will be done with student teaching.  In Room 204, we know how lucky we are that we got to be the ones to help you jump! And I will always be proud to have been part of the process.

Love,

Annie Campbell

When I look at the stars on the American flag, I see children. I see children I know and children I don’t.  I see children who have lived here for generations and  I see children who have just arrived… whose real point of entry into this country will be the public schoolroom.  I see generations of children with their stories stitched in place against the dark blue background—the color of promise.

On Friday new sand was dumped in the sandbox on the playground at William Fox School.  This was a big event for the children who rushed from every corner as whole classes crammed in.  As crowded as it was, there was room for everyone. It was citizenship in action.   When the children stood up they glittered with this new sand. They sparkled like the stars that they are.

Throughout the year, parents and guests have come to our class to share the customs and traditions of their ancestry.  Earlier this year, a speaker from Tanzania helped us see that many American customs (along with much of our music) have roots in Africa.  Adriana’s mom shared traditions and music with roots in Eastern Europe and Russia.  Last Tuesday Bella’s mom brought in Irish Soda Bread and read Irish stories and poetry to us.  Julia’s mom showed us how to make Celtic knots out of paper.   On Wednesday, Anna and her father played Irish Music.

On Friday afternoon Xon’s mom came and shared her own very personal “Coming to America” story from Vietnam.  She shared a photograph snapped by a Newsweek photographer.  We peered at the brave four-year old Vietnamese girl in the picture who grew up to be Xon’s beautiful and gifted mother sitting before us.

As a tapestry of American Diversity emerges in our classroom, we can see that this country is at its best when it is like the sandbox at Fox.  People come from all corners.  There is room for everyone.  And together we glitter like stars.

I reach to name that which bubbles in ready laughter and stands still in tears that don’t fall, but I can’t. There is a story being lived out everyday in our third grade that can’t be pinned down in words. It is a song with unwritten chords that leaves a trail of notes in the air, sung and unsung, all at once. It is a poem with the last word missing that keeps us waiting. Hoping. Longing. Reaching. The bass notes are found in couplets of call and response.

I’m sorry.   I forgive you.

I’m taking responsibility.  That’s who you are.

Let me help.  I know you will.

I’ll include you.  No one is left out of the circle.

I’ll do it.  I’ll help.

A hidden curriculum exists that can’t be laid out with blueprints or spiraling objectives or benchmark tests… and mastery  takes a lifetime.  Teachers create the space that is broadened and deepened through inquiry, interaction, and the interruption of real life.

There is no record, except for whatever it is that bubbles up in easy laughter and stands still in tears that don’t fall. I stop in awe. And then I give myself a shake.  I have objectives to teach.  And miles to go before I sleep.

Toward the end of his life, my father came to Richmond for a visit.  We knew there would be no more treatments.  We knew there wouldn’t be much more time.  But on that day he felt good and the weather was beautiful and we knew we were lucky. My Aunt Martha and my Uncle Roy and my mother and Ben and I took a family walk to Libby Park. Once there, we stood together looking out at the James River, but I knew we weren’t really looking at the water.  Each of us was seeing a different slice of the story of our life together.

My father broke the silence. “I’ve loved my life,” he said, “And today is a Lucky Strike Extra.”

I knew about Lucky Strikes.  He’d told me that he’d quit smoking them the day I was born.  And I knew about the Lucky Strike Extra. When he was a teenager, Lucky Strike sponsored the Hit Parade on the radio.  The Lucky Strike Extra was an unexpected song that wasn’t on the charts, but deserved to be played.

That whole day was important, but that moment, standing together on Libby Hill, looking at the water, is a moment that shimmers and sparkles like the river did that day.  That moment was our Lucky Strike Extra.

A year later I stood on the same spot.  I realized then that he’d seen something on the horizon that day that prompted his allusion to Lucky Strikes.  There it was right in front of me, left over from Richmond’s tobacco factory days: the Lucky Strike smoke stack.  I must have seen it hundreds of times, but I’d never noticed it.

We can look without seeing.  We can hear without listening. We can live a day without a letting a single moment come fully to life.  But it is less likely if we write.  Writing is about noticing.   I have invited the children to join me in a month long “slice of life” challenge.  Those who join me will write a short “slice” everyday.  I made it clear that it was optional.    But every child signed up.   This is a helpful process in developing cognitive skills, writing fluency, grammar, and style.  It is helpful in helping us meet the national and state standards for English.  But that is not all…

Friday afternoon, as we  were celebrating Avery with birthday brownies, we were celebrating our lives together by sharing our writing.   When the bell rang for dismissal, no one wanted to leave.  We were holding on tight.  It was right there and we hadn’t missed it   It was our Lucky Strike Extra.