In honor of National Poetry Month I am dedicating today's blog post to poetry. In December when we were going through boxes in the garage I found this book. In it are poems I wrote as a teenager. Most of them are truly awful! A few of them are decent. None of them are good. But, they are mine and they came from my heart.
I'm not really a fan of poetry as I find most of difficult to comprehend. If, when I am reading something, my brain keeps saying, "WHAT?", then I find it a waste of my time and energy. Having said that, there is some poetry I enjoy...many of the Psalms, songs, Dr. Seuss.
Ten years or so ago I spent two years teaching 8th Grade US History. When I was first assigned to teach it I was not at all pleased, nor was I sure it was a good subject for me to teach. Although my first choice is always to teach 7th grade Math/PreAlgebra I found myself enjoying teaching stories from our country's past and connecting them to who we are as a people today, and created several research projects for my students to complete. One of those projects was to research songs (poetry) that were written as a result of any wars/conflicts in which the USA had taken part, and then to write a poem/song about the current War on Terrorism. As any good teaching project should, this one taught me as much as it taught the students. I was amazed and humbled by what my students produced; the poems ranged from light and funny to deep and full of pain. Some made me laugh, some made me think, some brought tears to my eyes. The discussions that came from sharing the poems were some of the best discussions we had the entire year - full of raw emotion and honesty.
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