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By Cheryl Poage As an educator, I have always encouraged my students to go out of their comfort zone and challenge themselves—to reach out and stretch just enough to feel a little discomfort. Over the past 17 years, I became comfortable with my content, my school family and my students—quite honestly, I was perfectly happy in this comfort zone. So when my husband proposed moving back to his home state of Kansas, I heard myself telling my students to “challenge themselves and stretch a little”—and decided it was now my time to stretch! As I began my job search, one position that stood out to me was a Blended Learning position teaching high school English at Andover eCademy. I had never taught high school English, I had never taught online, and seeing the faces of my students every day was extremely important to me! So why choose this? Because it made me stretch…it was a limb I had never reached out to before. What type of educator would I be if I challenged my students to explore the unknown, but wasn’t willing to do that myself? I secured a position with eCademy and anxiously awaited my August 2019 start date. I knew there would be a learning curve on my end, but the challenge intrigued me; this opportunity would allow me to look at education through a new lens. I had so many questions about the Blended Learning Model and it seemed my list grow longer each day: How will I build solid relationships with students? How will I develop a learning community that will allow students to engage in discussion and share learning experiences? How will I give proper feedback when each student is working at his/her own pace? As the year progressed, I was able to eliminate many of the questions I started the year with; however, each brainstorming session with colleagues posed a new challenge—adding to my evolving list. eCademy is fortunate to have an administrator who encourages his staff to be innovative and allots time for collaborative brainstorming sessions. This practice inspired me to refine my craft and become more flexible and open to a new way of teaching and reaching students. Relationship Building The first day of school is always exciting! It is when I am able to put a face to each name on my roster and begin to build relationships. However, this isn’t necessarily the case when teaching virtually. Not every student begins class on the same day and many do not feel comfortable showing their face, so it is important to become creative with lessons and build trust. One modicication I made in order to “see” students in my reading class was to ask students to submit a “selfie” that incorporated a portion of their face with the cover of a novel they were reading. An adjustment I made in a writing lesson was to have students use audio to give a verbal reflection—allowing me to at least hear my students, if I could not see them. These were very small changes, but it allowed me a quick glimpse—it was a starting place. As the year continued, relationships grew through daily feedback, emails and phone calls; however, the most significant difference I saw was when CoVid-19 changed our world! I used the time for reflection and self-growth and revised my teaching even further. I took trainings that were offered, solicited the help of colleagues a bit more and found ways to personalize my lessons to allow student’s choice, time to reflect, and share more of themselves with me through “Motivational Monday” lessons. I scheduled individual and group Zoom sessions for students to work on assignments with me or with peers. I held daily Zoom check-ins with students who were struggling with motivation during the Stay At Home order. I began to see more faces and the trust began to build! CoVid-19 may have taken some opportunities away from us, but it allowed me the time to grow as an educator and it brought many of my students out from behind the computer screen and into a Zoom session! Although the road to building bonds looked different than it did in my previous years of teaching, I do believe the gradual growth was critical to form the foundation needed for solid relationships. Student Success At eCademy homeroom is taken to a new level. Each teacher has his/her own group of approximately 20 students to support. Teachers contact their students on a weekly basis to discuss grades, celebrate successes, and discuss a plan of action for those who may be struggling. In addition to working with our homeroom students one on one, we also have bi-weekly meetings with administration and guidance counselors built into our schedules. During this time we discuss each student’s progress and prepare a personalized plan of action for any student who may be struggling. Our roundtable discussions allow us develop a clear understanding of the overall student. During these meetings, It was inspiring to see how well the teachers, administrators, and counselors knew ALL students—both academically and emotionally. So often, in a Brick and Mortar it is difficult to allot time to engage in these valuable whole group discussions due to scheduling, teaching, non-teaching duties, etc. As a result of these meetings, we are able to focus on students who have consistent missing assignments and a lower than average GPA and create an engagement plan to help them succeed. Students, parents, and the homeroom teacher work together to develop this plan for success. I saw the impact of these meetings firsthand as I worked with several students, via Zoom, during second semester. Not only did these students go from failing grades to passing all subjects, but they also developed a more positive mindset and sense of confidence as they watched their GPA and comprehension of each subject improve. Community What sets eCademy apart from many other online schools is that we follow a Blended Learning model. This is what truly interested me about eCademy and what, I believe, brings in such interest from families across the state. Blended Learning allows students the opportunity to be a part of a school community, while learning at his/her own pace. Andover eCademy offers students numerous opportunities to be a part of a learning community at all grade levels. Students participate in Live Lessons with their teachers and classmates, attend field trips, and participate in clubs or in-house days offered at our Andover campus. In-house days may include group activities, team building, study sessions, guest speakers, or collaborative work. This time allows for students to build community and gain a sense of belonging. High school students have their own special spot nestled inside the eCademy building called the eCafe. The eCafe is situated similar to a coffee shop where students are able to study, collaborate, socialize, and develop friendships. It is monitored by a different high school teacher each hour, allowing students to work personally with the teacher on call. High school students also have the opportunity to plan socials, participate in Science Labs, attend field trips, and a select group also serve as mentors to our middle school students. In an effort to give out of town students the opportunity to build community, we also offer a Mobile eCafe. Once a week a teacher travels to a different library in the surrounding areas and students are invite to come in for a study session. This allows us to meet students who might not be able to travel to Andover, but would like to build relationships with their teachers and peers. Grading/Feedback Giving student feedback is a big portion of each day at eCademy. All lessons are loaded at the beginning of the semester and the courses are self-paced, so we receive various assignments from numerous students in several different classes at any given time. Although the amount of assignments coming in can sometimes seem overwhelming, there are a variety of assignments being turned in which keeps the grading fresh and interesting. Detailed feedback is critical when teaching in an online environment. Since we do not hold daily face to face lessons, feedback is a dedicated time to give each student the guidance needed to master a concept and communicate clear guidelines for students to reference when revising assignments. We offer feedback in several formats: verbal, written and face to face. I have found that since students in a Blended Learning environment are self-paced, they do not experience time constraints that are sometimes found in the classroom. This results in resubmissions and revisions that demonstrate improved execution, comprehension and overall grades. As year two begins, I feel reignited as an educator. The past year allowed me to experience one of the greatest learning adventures of my career. I learned it is okay to start small and grow gradually. I learned that even if a student isn’t right by your side, remarkable relationships can still develop. Most importantly, I learned that education isn’t about being comfortable…it is about change, challenge, and having the confidence to climb out of our comfort zone and STRETCH!  About the Author
Cheryl is beginning her 19th year of teaching. In addition to English, Cheryl has taught AVID and served as an AVID Coordinator for eight years in Florida. She is currently a College and Career Elective teacher at Andover eCademy. Her passion is building relationships with her students and changing “I can’t” mindsets into “I can.”
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By Dr. Katie Cramer As a teacher educator, I have been preparing future middle and high school English teachers—first in Georgia and now in Kansas—for more than a decade. Since 2007, I have used position statements from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) to support my professional practice, particularly my decision to center sexual and gender diversity in my curriculum. When NCTE passed the Resolution on Strengthening Teacher Knowledge of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Issues in 2007, I was able to further defend my curricular inclusion of sexual and gender diversity in my English methods class against resistance from a small but vocal minority of my teacher candidates who argued that …
Aside from expressing my dismay at each of these claims (and my absolute horror at the last one)—as well as my relief that I’ve not heard teacher candidates express these views in the past 10 years—I will not belabor them. In fact, I have written about these challenges before, including in Kansas English (Mason & Harrell, 2012) and more recently in a chapter in Incorporating LGBTQ+ Identities in K-12 Curriculum and Policy (Cramer, 2020). Instead, in this piece, I want to remind all of us that we can be even more powerful in our teaching for social justice when we seek out support from our professional organizations at the state and national levels. What are position statements? For the past 50 years, NCTE has published position statements on a number of issues that guide and support our professional practice. According to NCTE, position statements “bring the latest thinking and research together to help define best practices, offer guidance for navigating challenges, and provide an expert voice to back up the thoughtful decisions teachers must make each day” (NCTE Position Statements). They begin as resolutions, crafted and submitted by a group of at least five NCTE members and reviewed by the NCTE Committee on Resolutions before being discussed and voted on at the Annual Convention and later ratified by NCTE membership. NCTE notes the value of both the process and the product on its resolutions page: “When a resolution is ratified it signals to members and the wider education community that these issues are top concerns. Most resolutions also come with research about and suggested solutions to the problem. As such, a resolution is a tool you can use as an educator to advocate for these issues, knowing you have the backing of a national organization in your stance.” (NCTE Resolutions) The oldest position statements NCTE lists on its website were discussed and voted on at the NCTE Annual Business Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1970 and include fascinating and still relevant resolutions on …
More recently, NCTE membership has ratified statements that center sexual and gender diversity. During LGBTQ Pride Month, let’s turn our attention to two position statements that support our efforts to recognize and affirm sexual and gender diversity in our schools and curriculums. Resolution on Strengthening Teacher Knowledge of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Issues (2007) NCTE’s Resolution on Strengthening Teacher Knowledge of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Issues was ratified in November 2007 at the beginning of my career in teacher education, and it has provided the support I needed to center sexual and gender diversity in my teacher preparation curriculum. It states that “effective teacher preparation programs help teachers understand and meet their professional responsibilities, even when their personal beliefs seem in conflict with concepts of social justice” (NCTE, 2007). It advocates for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ studies in teacher education programs, even going so far as to advocate that accrediting bodies recognize the importance of the study of LGBTQ+ issues in such programs. This resolution/position statement not only strengthened individual faculty members’ rationales for the inclusion of sexual and gender diversity in their coursework, it also led to positive changes within the NCTE. Less than two years later in March 2009, English Journal published its first themed issue on sexual and gender diversity, and more recently, the NCTE formed the LGBTQ Advisory Committee on which I am currently serving my second term. Statement on Gender and Language (2018) In 2018, NCTE members ratified the Statement on Gender and Language, which evolved out of NCTE’s previous position statements on gender and language from 1978, 1985, and 2002. The most current iteration of this statement “builds on contemporary understandings of gender that include identities and expressions beyond a woman/man binary” (NCTE, 2018). This 12-page document—one of the longest NCTE position statements I’ve encountered—features a plethora of information to guide teachers’ understanding of gender diversity. It defines gender-expansive terminology; describes research-based recommendations for working with students, colleagues, and the broader professional community; and includes an annotated bibliography of resources to help us “use language to reflect the reality of gender diversity and support gender diverse students” (NCTE, 2018). Stay Tuned … This summer, I was invited by the NCTE Presidential Team to collaborate with colleagues across the U.S. to revise three statements on gender and gender diversity. Two of the statements are 25 and 30 years old, respectively, and they need considerable updating as conceptions of gender and sexuality—and the language we use to describe them—have evolved (and continue to evolve). This committee, under the leadership of Dr. Mollie Blackburn, is currently planning to address both sexual and gender diversity in curriculum design in our revisions, and we hope to have one or more statements ready for discussion and vote at the 2020 NCTE Convention, which will take place virtually this year. Your Next Steps I invite you to take some time this summer, as you reflect on your curriculum design and prepare for the next academic year, to engage in the following activities:
Alongside our state affiliate the Kansas Association of Teachers of English (KATE), NCTE’s vision is to empower English language arts teachers at all levels to “advance access, power, agency, affiliation, and impact for all learners” (NCTE About Us). NCTE’s position statements are just one of the many ways the organization enacts that vision. References Cramer, K.M. (2020). Addressing sexual and gender diversity in an English education teacher preparation program. In A. Sanders, L. Isbell & K. Dixon (Eds.), Incorporating LGBTQ+ identities in K-12 curriculum and policy (pp. 66-111). IGI Global. Mason, K. & Harrell, C. (2012). Searching for common ground: Two teachers discuss their support for and concerns about the inclusion of LGBTQ issues in English methods courses.” Kansas English, 95(1), 22-36. NCTE (n.d.). About us. https://ncte.org/about/ NCTE. (n.d.). Position statements. https://ncte.org/resources/position-statements/ NCTE. (n.d.). Resolutions. https://ncte.org/resources/position-statements/resolutions/ NCTE. (2007, November 30). Resolution on strengthening teacher knowledge of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues. https://ncte.org/statement/teacherknowledgelgbt/ NCTE. (2018, October 25). Statement on gender and language. https://ncte.org/statement/genderfairuseoflang/  About the Author
Katherine Mason Cramer is a former middle school English teacher and a professor of English Education at Wichita State University. She has been a KATE member since 2010 and an NCTE member since 2000. She serves on the KATE Executive Board, and has served as Editor of Kansas English since 2017. She can be reached at Katie.Cramer@wichita.edu. By Amanda Little  Robert Frost is quoted as saying “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found its words.” It is cryptic quotations like this one that often make people run from poetry screaming. While I identify with Frost’s quip as an amateur poet and an aesthete myself (full confession, I had to look that word up), I can understand why poetry has a tendency to scare off students and teachers alike. One of my main goals, however, is to bring a love of poetry back to my students. Or at least make it so they don’t groan in anguish any time someone utters the word. I have used various methods in the classroom to try and make poetry more accessible for my students. Aside from reading a poem a day out of the critically acclaimed Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, I try to disarm the word daily. When I start talking about poetry in depth, which is usually sometime around National Poetry Month, I often hear one of two things: “Really?! Ugh!” or crickets chirping louder than those found on a pastoral night in one of our beloved Kansas prairies. But I then ask my students if they enjoy music. Usually, most hands go up or heads nod in assent. Then I drop the bomb. Music. is. poetry. (Wait, whaaah???) I remind my juniors of our Native American Literature unit, of the fact that the oral traditions of most cultures were often first sung around a fire, set to a rhythm to bring it to life and to help them remember their sacred legends. I explain to them that the iambic foot is so widely used in poetry because it mimics our own heartbeats. duh-DUM, duh-DUM, duh-DUM. Poetry is a part of our very being and body. I assure them that most poets aren’t trying to hide a “special” or “deeper” meaning in the words of their poems. That readers connect with some poems and poets more than others. That to a certain degree, a reader gets to connect with each poem in their own unique way. And I comfort them with the knowledge that all a poem is is an astute observation about a microscopic slice of life. Finally, after we’ve taken the fear out of poetry, I introduce them to poet Taylor Mali’s poetry game: Metaphor Dice. Because many teenagers either lack the words or the experiences to put life into lyrics (well, most of us adults do, too, for that matter), Mali, former-teacher/SLAM poet/advocate himself, invented a game to help us identify and connect words with life. He has a starter set and the new “Erudite Expansion” pack. I stumbled across these as I was fan-girling and stalking Mali’s Facebook page—Mali has been a favorite of mine since discovering him in college. (And I continue to follow him. #Noregrets!) You might know Mali for his poem “What Teachers Make” found in his collection, What Learning Leaves. I usually use Mali’s dice as a brain-storming activity for our summative poetry project in which the students must create their own “book” of poetry (usually between 6 and 9 poems depending on the time we have). I give them choices, examples, and mini assignments to help them build different styles of poetry like haiku, concrete poems, acrostic theme poems, and traditional forms (like sonnets). I also let them explore mimic poetry, using an excerpt of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” as the mentor text. I’ve even let them explore slam poetry after viewing a student edition of SlamNation (a 1998 documentary by Paul Devlin). They have quite a bit of freedom balanced with guidance to choose forms and create the poems that will express themselves best. My goal is to help them find their own way to voice their own experiences. And this is where Mali’s dice come in. The way the dice work is simple. In the original edition, there are 12 dice, 4 red (subjects), 4 white (adjectives), and 4 blue (objects). When you roll the dice, you see which subject, adjective, and object make a metaphor that you can identify with. Sometimes you get remarkably insightful ones: Home is a burning kiss. Other times you get hilarious ones: Your mother is a desperate party clown. And still other times you can mix it up by using negation: The world will never be a bright trophy. Once you have found the metaphor that strikes you through your heart, you know you have a poem started. Then the work becomes putting into words why that metaphor is true. Here’s a finished product of my own: Fronts of the Mind Regret is an obstinate odyssey relentlessly pursuing the pursuer memories attacking blindly-- a cyclops, wounded, livid, afraid (but hind-sight is only 20/20 if the view remains unskewed) escape only possible for those with the tools the wherewithal the means still forfeiting friends in the chimerical front that is the mind labyrinthine, snare-filled busy Regret is the perilous sojourn we choose for ourselves knowing we eventually come to the fork in the road realizing we must take the path of self-clemency (the path less traveled) for the sake of our own survival for the sake of survival the sake of sanity the journey of regret must cease and only we choose that for ourselves If you didn’t notice it, my starting metaphor was regret, obstinate, and odyssey. I related to that in my own thought patterns and redemption to create my poem. Many of my own students, especially the ones who thought they hated poetry, have found the days that they played with Mali’s dice to be some of the most fun of the year—I have survey answers to prove it! I have limited sets, so my students work in groups, passing the divided sets from one group to another throughout the class time, which only adds to the conversations and fun. I also pair the dice with Rory Story Cubes to help students brainstorm ideas for their own poetry projects. This year, I am heartbroken that the pandemic is stealing yet another experience from my students, one that this year’s juniors won’t even know they are missing. I can’t wait to get back in my classroom and inspire my unwitting poets next year. In the meantime, I am focused on writing my own poetry. I’ve never been published before—at least not professionally, so I am looking forward to submitting some work and getting valuable feedback from publishers. I find poetry so cathartic, and I hope to inspire that feeling in my students as well. I encourage you as teachers to let your students play with words. We often times are so focused on the analysis and scholarly study of poetry, that it’s easy to suck the joy out of it. And I postulate that poetry should bring joy, both to the reader and the poet. If you are interested in exploring Metaphor Dice for your own classroom, you can find them here or on Amazon. If you would like to know more about my own poetry project, please feel free to contact me via email. I will happily share my resources. About the Author
Amanda Little is a mother of two and a native Salinan who has been teaching ELA and Public Speaking to juniors and seniors at Ell-Saline MS/HS for the last 7 years. She earned her bachelor's degree from Kansas Wesleyan University and recently earned her masters through the summer MA program at Fort Hays State University, graduating Phi Kappa Phi. When she isn't at school serving her students, she is serving through the church, scrolling Facebook far too much, reading books that are past due from the library, and writing poetry. Her first publication was published in the local newspaper when she was in kindergarten, a short poem about Christmas trees. You can contact her via e-mail at alittle@ellsaline.org. By Matthew Friedrichs  As a second-year ELA teacher, there are so many things that I don’t know. One thing, however, that seemed intuitive when I entered the classroom after nearly 20 years as an editor, was the tie between images and words. Great readers effortlessly form mental images as they dance through the words on the page. Unfortunately, many of my eighth-graders, and even some seniors, struggle with that mental animation. At the same time, my photography students in grades nine through 12, often scuffle when asked to translate visual information into words. As a result, I’ve worked hard with both groups to bridge those communication gaps by juxtaposing and connecting visual and written artworks. During the fall 2019 KATE conference, Deborah Eades (@DeborahEades10) presented about using portraiture in the ELA classroom. I could only shake my head up and down in violent yeses as she provided a framework for many of the methods I have tried. Eades shared what she had learned during a Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery training on the topic of stimulating nuanced student conversations guided by pictures. One example of a portrait Eades shared that would spark great conversation in a classroom is Roger Shimomura’s, Shimomura Crossing the Delaware. The painting references the famous image of General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Close study could be paired with art and/or history classes. The image mixes traditional Japanese styles with pop art and more realistic depictions, and also draws upon Shimomura’s personal history of being imprisoned along with other Japanese-Americans during World War II. Including this painting in my teaching excited me, for while it offers strong, cross-curricular ties, it also offers a deep Kansas connection. Work by Shimomura is on display throughout the state. I am a firm believer that standing in front of art often is more transcendent than looking at an online or print image. Thus, Shimomura, who taught at the University of Kansas from 1969 to 2004, is a great painter for close study and first-hand lessons. These nearby museums hold his works:
In early November, my photography class encountered a Shimomura painting during a visit to the Beach Museum. Martin Cheng: Painter and Fisherman, acrylic on canvas from 1991, fascinated them. They were drawn to the juxtaposition of fishing items, odd text (1+1=3), painting paraphernalia, and the subject’s garb (underwear instead of the mawashi a sumo would wear). Eighth-graders would undoubtedly find it weird, too, a perfect hook for the strangeness they often describe to me in their bewilderment when they read poetry. While I haven’t tried pairing this image in the classroom, the possibilities are infinite. Numbers by Mary Cornish does the math: “I like the domesticity of addition -- / add two cups of milk and stir.” Kansas poet Kathleen Johnson redraws that state connection and highlights the role of sight. “Nothing prepared me for evenings blue as topaz … There’s nothing not stained with color,” she writes in Summer. Finally, since there isn’t space to muse on every line in the canon, Phillis Levin’s Cloud Fishing describes the curiosity that is at the heart of what I teach. “Take care or you’ll catch yourself.” Physical field trips with our students are regrettably shut down right now. However, we do still have the ability to explore both art and poetry. Some of the most famous art museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, could serve as a graduate program in history, archaeology, sociology, and even art! for the intrepid and curious person willing to read through the galleries over the period of months necessary to closely scrutinize the tiny portion of its holdings. In addition, artists’ sites such as Shimomura’s, and The Gordon Parks Foundation’s are informative. In this digital age, finding images that contextually pair with readings, literary or historical, has never been easier. Since we shifted to online courses at Marysville Junior-Senior High School, I have been utilizing these online resources to compose a daily email to my English and photography classes. In addition to the links for assignments and our next video class, I connect excerpts from readings, images, Tweets, Instagram posts, and links. As I would do in class, I layer poems, artworks, and my own experiences within these emails in order to provide students a glimpse of the academic path ahead. I supplement the primary materials with some background, usually chosen from details that I think will catch students’ attention. On April 7, I provided a link to a painting by David Inshaw (found on Twitter), which is an illustration of this Thomas Hardy poem: She did not turn by Thomas Hardy She did not turn, But passed foot-faint with averted head In her gown of green, by the bobbing fern, Though I leaned over the gate that led From where we waited with table spread; But she did not turn: Why was she near there if love had fled? She did not turn, Though the gate was whence I had often sped In the mists of morning to meet her, and learn Her heart, when its moving moods I read As a book—she mine, as she sometimes said; But she did not turn, And passed foot-faint with averted head. Like the speaker in this poem, students are consumed with unvoiced longing for a certain classmate to turn their way, to meet their eyes. Our forced seclusion only heightens desires for close companionship, a common denominator of our humanity in all writing. The evocation of an averted head provided hope, to me, that one or more teenagers in the email audience might read and want to know more about the author and painter. As much as students struggle with poetry, when they find the words, the images that resonate with their personal experiences, they embrace the revelation and work to uncover additional meaning. To the reader intrigued by this poem -there’s so much more to explore! Hardy studied architecture and clambered through ruins (which I noted for my blue-collar seniors). I read Tess of the D’Ubervilles, one of his most famous novels, in college but retain only an impressionistic memory of bleakness (a bit of self-deprecation that acknowledges for the “but I’m not going to be an English major” students that even their English teacher doesn’t retain all of the material). Although Inshaw paints the Wiltshire Downs near Devizes, England, not the Sunflower State, we as Kansans recognize open, furrowed fields; the expansive, dark sky and rainbow combination of thunderstorms; the grassy lane with tracks worn by wheels; and a slightly leaning building. Is the painter as pessimistic or sad as the writer? These are symbols, Inshaw’s site says, “not simply of despair, but also of a hope based on a belief in the depth and permanence of all loving human relationships.” Once we return to our classrooms and are cleared for trips, I encourage you to take your students to local museums. Katherine Schlageck and the staff at the Beach Museum work well with educational groups. If artwork you want to see isn’t currently on exhibit, they might be able to pull it from storage. They arranged for us to view photos by Parks -- another Kansas cultural and historical touchstone -- for a visit we made in spring 2019. In the interminable interim, consider what inspires you and your students. Then follow a path similar to the one I walked from Inshaw to Hardy. Search for art that matches your favorite literature and vice versa. What connections do you make? Does an Emily Dickinson poem sprout life when watered with Victorian imagery? Does a Parks photo add depth and nuance to the study of Muhammad Ali? Are there other Kansas artists and writers who foment revolution in your thoughts? I’d love to see the tendrils that intertwine your teaching. Share below your favorite poetry and artistic combinations, the lessons we can learn from them, and what makes them so powerful to you and your students. About the Author
Matthew Friedrichs teaches eighth-grade ELA, senior English and photography at Marysville Junior-Senior High School. He is a 1995 and 2000 KU graduate who is currently a transition- to- teaching graduate student at FHSU. Before teaching, Matthew worked as an editor at ESPN.com and newspapers for almost 20 years. By April Pameticky  I am a poet and a writer. It’s taken me years to take ownership of those words, in large part because I so often considered those activities somehow frivolous, self-indulgent, or superfluous. I saw them as ‘extra’ to my other roles: teacher, wife, mother.
But I find there is nothing ‘extra’ about engaging the world as a poet first; that it’s the lens by which I measure and experience everything. It’s how I reconcile injustice and how I make sense of the senseless. Poetry is how I find my way home, both spiritually and metaphorically. And it’s often how I reflect on my every day, ordinary life. While I loosely studied poetry in college, my primary focus had always been fiction. It was only about ten years ago that I started exploring and studying poetry on my own. The irony, of course, is that as an English teacher, didn’t I always love poetry? The answer is No. More often than not, I believed that Poetry [capital P on purpose] was actually somehow lofty and above me. Poetry was for the ascetics and more ‘literary,’ not for me, who read trashy urban fantasy novels all summer long. But while pregnant with my oldest daughter, I found myself nesting in unexpected ways, drawn to more creative expression, and reading in ways I had never bothered to before. It helped that some friends put more contemporary poetry in my hands. Today, I take comfort and solace in poems: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. 23 Psalm Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Do not go gentle into that good night –Dylan Thomas Poetry reminds us of perspective, like in the lines from Rae Armantrout’s “Thing:” We love our cat for her self regard is assiduous and bland, for she sits in the small patch of sun on our rug and licks her claws from all angles and it is far superior to "balanced reporting" though, of course, it is also the very same thing. Poets respond to the world with humanity, giving word to our fear and unrest. Rattle maintains the series Poets Respond, and poet Francesca Bell touches on our collective anxiety in her poem “Love in the Time of Covid-19.” She writes I held my hands steady in the water’s reassuring scald, trying and trying to save you. As teachers and educators, we have the opportunity to either spoil poetry for our students, or introduce them to something that will be their companion through life. My concern is that we often want to ‘unlock’ a poem, somehow divine its key, and then we expect our students to do the very same thing. We approach a poem as a Biology I student might a formaldehyde frog. I love how Elizabeth Alexander defines poetry with such concrete detail in “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe:” Poetry is what you find in the dirt in the corner, overhear on the bus. While poetry is both a craft and an artform, and there are certainly ‘rules’ and ‘conventions’ that apply (as anyone who has ever had to coach students through their own poetry revision process can attest), poems are also this wonderful opportunity to live with ambiguity. To grieve that we are no longer in our classrooms, but to celebrate that we are still teachers, that we can provide comfort and care to our students. So as we enter April and National Poetry Month, I want to encourage my fellow educators to give your students an opportunity to really engage with poems. The internet can be an amazing resource, even if an educator feels they don’t quite ‘get’ poetry. Take some direction from Dante di Stefano’s award-winning poem “Prompts (for High School Teachers Who Write Poetry” when he says Write the uncounted hours you spent fretting about the ones who cursed you out for keeping order. For those teaching remotely, the Dear Poet Project 2020 [Poetry.org] is an awesome opportunity to engage directly with poets. Students are encouraged to write letters after viewing the poets’ videos—two of my favorites are participating this year: Joy Harjo and Kwame Dawes. Poets read and discuss their works, and students can then respond. For educators wanting to embrace their inner poet, here are a couple of prompts to consider, but don’t feel you must limit yourself! We at KATE would love to read what you come up with. I want to encourage you to embrace your inner poet and to not strive so much for perfection or that ‘A’ poem. Instead, respond to where you are each day. There are some prompts provided below, as well as some further resources for inspiration. Prompts:
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Message from the EditorHello! My name is Michaela Liebst, and I am the editor of the KATE Blog. I am very excited to see the connection and inspiration that take place here. If you are interested in being published on our blog, or have any comments or questions for me, please email me at kansasenglishblog@gmail.com Archives
September 2020
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