Laura Purdie Salas has been a writing mentor in my classroom for years now. Her books and poetry speak to children ( and to this adult). A few weeks ago she posted this poem on her blog. I used it with my students for a beginning-of-the-school-year writing prompt. I did not require the precise rhyme and rhythm pattern; they got the gist of making a list of favorite things.
I, however, took on the challenge of getting into the right meter and rhyme-scheme. I don’t think I’ve nailed it (I’m missing a verse and one of the rhymes is too slanted) but each revision gets closer to it. Rodgers and Hammerstein were musical geniuses. I played a video of this favorite scene from The Sound of Music, a classic that many children are unfamiliar with. They know this version better–the Lays commercial with Anna Kendrick. It’s fun to watch, too.
My middle daughter’s son, my middle grandchild, turned 2 yesterday. “Mamoo” (his version of Mamére) bought a set of bubbles and wands for his family birthday party. It’s fascinating when a child learns to blow bubbles. Often the blow is too fast for the bubble to form. The bubble set came with a variety of instruments for making bubbles. I hit the Walmart $5 Jackpot with this set. “Tuffy” (the nickname Thomas gave to himself) was able to blow more slowly through the pipe and watch the bubble form. This helped him blow with the wand. Bubble success! Then he was on to something else.
I, however, stayed focused on getting a photo of a bubble. I am posting the best of the bunch. I find the colors magical.
Photo by Margaret Simon
There is a rainbow of magic inside a bubble blown by a boy learning to blow.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Another week of writing from The Quickwrite Handbook by Linda Rief. I have two pieces of writing I’d like to share today. The first was a prompt after Cynthia Rylant’s When I Was Young in the Mountains. Linda Rief wrote a mentor text “When I Was Young at the Ocean.” I wrote “When I Was Young at Purple Creek.”
When I was young at Purple Creek, I dangled my toes in the trickle of water and watched minnows dart around them, sending tickles and goose pimples all the way up my skinny white legs.
When I was young at Purple Creek, I buried my Barbies in the sand, played Treasure Island on the wrip-wrap shore, and let go of the leash so Loopy could wander and explore, bark at the squirrels.
When I was young at Purple Creek, my fear of snakes was on high alert. Brother shouted a warning just to see me jump. We gathered treasures in a tin bucket (rocks, broken glass, colored leaves, mimosa seed pods, a baby frog).
My flip-flop feet toughened on summer days when I was young at Purple Creek. The trickle was my ocean. The shoreline my cave. The pine trees my towers. I was queen of Purple Creek.
The next text we read and wrote from was an Excerpt from The Terrible Two by Mac Barnett and Jory John.
That Kind of Teacher
On the first day of school, you can decide what kind of teacher you want to be. You can be the smiley teacher, the one who greets everyone at the door with “How are you today?” You could be the fashionable teacher, the one who turns heads with her new outfit each day. You could be the kind of teacher who knows everything about the new reading curriculum guidelines. The teacher who decorates her classroom in rainbow colors and files everything in matching color-coded binders. You could be the teacher who stands at the board and takes roll, who finishes her report cards on time. Or you could be that teacher who works as hard as her students. The curious teacher. The open-minded teacher. The teacher with a lot of stickers on the chart. When the school year starts, you can choose what kind of teacher you will be, the kind of teacher you will be for the rest of your life.
Margaret Simon
And here’s 6th grader Chloe’s poem response for “I’m the Kind of Kid Who”
I’m the kind of kid who leaves at the end of class, new kids asking why. I say “Guess” to hear what they think.
I’m the kind of kid who always does their work or finishes their homework in class so they have nothing left to do.
I’m the kind of kid whose teacher lets them eat in class as long as she doesn’t see me.
I’m the kind of kid who writes every day. If you don’t know what I mean, I’m doing it right now.
I’m the kind of kid who is ready for the weekend and is actually ready to come back to school.
Chloe
Adelyn, 3rd grade, wrote about her sister and posted it here on FanSchool.
What was I thinking when I challenged my Inklings writing group to write a ghazal for this month’s challenge? Woah, who knew there were so many rules/ guidelines? I had attended the Poetry Foundation’s Summer Teachers Institute and watched a presentation about using repetition in poetry. The presenter talked about two poetry forms, the villanelle and the ghazal. So I said to myself that in order to teach these forms, I needed to write in these forms.
The ghazal is an ancient Arabic and Persian language poetic form. It has couplets (two-line stanzas) that end with repeated end words or phrases. You can also add that traditionally the author’s name appears in the last couplet.
Looks easy, right? Well, this definition was somewhat incomplete. At Poets.org, there is this more complete definition. And Molly directed us to this guidance on Tweetspeak. The most help, as always, came from the Inkling group’s dedication to the craft of poetry and to each other. Their critique was invaluable.
I wanted my poem to say something, to express my longing as a grandmother for the grandmother I never knew. This portrait of her was painted in the 1940’s when my mother was a young girl. It now hangs in my dining room, life-size.
Grandmother’s Song
She never held me in her arms long to sing. Death took her breath–she was not wrong to sing.
Within her eyes a lullaby still stares from a frame to invite me along to sing.
Her portrait-hands caress violin strings; Like the songbird’s voice, they echo strong to sing.
Now I wonder if an angel sings to me. I want to know whose song to sing.
I have her name–Margaret–a spelling tune, like a young child, I know I belong to sing.
Margaret Simon, ghazal, all rights reserved.
Click on the links to read more ghazals by our amazing poetry group.
Spiritual Journey First Thursday posts are being gathered by Karen.
Spiritual journeys, like life, have their ups and downs. I think I’ve been in a low for a while now, without realizing it. Nothing like a major disaster to come along as a wake up call. God whizzed by and said, “Hey, look what the force of nature can do. Blow off roofs. Shut down power systems. Upend trees. Disrupt our lives. But I’m still here if you need me.”
Karen Eastlund asked us to write about virtue. She sent us a long list of virtues. I have been thinking a lot about Grace. Grace kept us safe from the storm. Grace allows us to be a safe haven for our family. Grace is the virtue that gives freely without asking for anything in return.
My family is filling up my house. It’s usually just me and my husband, dog Charlie, and cats Fancy, Mimi, and Buzz. Today my home includes 4 more adults, 1 toddler, 3 dogs and a cat. My school secretary commented, “Simon Family Zoo.” But I prefer another friend’s comment. He said, “Like Christmas!”
In Grace and with Gratitude, I open my heart and my home to the ones I love. We will get through this and likely become better people.
God, grant me the grace to be the calm in the storm, love in times of trouble, and faith when things look bleak.
I almost forgot it was Wednesday. Yesterday was the first day of my work week because we had Monday off for Hurricane Ida, which thankfully did not impact us directly. When I walked Tuesday morning, this beautiful cloud led me. I held my phone up high to capture this photo. Clouds always draw my eye, especially ones with the sun within them.
Yesterday there were ten minutes of class left before the bell rang, so I challenged my student in a game of Metaphor Dice. We rolled 3 dice and wrote a poem in one minute (her idea). It was a great way to keep our brains active. I am using a revised version of mine as a small poem today.
Silver lining by Margaret Simon
Metaphor Minute
My birth is like a bright meadow– like stars on the path to a grand castle, like diamonds strung on a silver string, walking in clouds lined with sunbeam.
Margaret Simon, draft
Join me in praising the clouds and the spirit of all things. Leave a small poem in the comments. Support others with encouraging words. Thanks for being here.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
I want to thank all of my readers who were praying for me and all of South Louisiana this weekend as Hurricane Ida invaded our state. We are fine.
A hurricane is an unusual beast of a storm. While it gained strength out in the Gulf, it swirled into a tighter circular cloud with a well-defined eye. That swirl gathered everything into it. As the hurricane entered the state at the tip of the boot (Grand Isle), here in New Iberia (in the arch of the boot) we felt eerily calm weather, light rain and periodic gusts of wind, but not enough to even knock out power. In fact, the weather was really pleasant.
All day on Sunday, we watched and waited. My oldest daughter and her family stayed at our house because we have a good generator. I have to admit, this mamére had a wonderful time with the grandchildren.
My two younger daughters live in New Orleans, and they have evacuated to Florida. Now that Ida has knocked down a major power transmitter, they will be driving to us and staying here for weeks. When I talked to my husband about this, he said, “This is why we’re here.”
We are here to be a safe haven for our children, a calm in the storm. Please continue your prayers for our state. In our gratitude, we can open the doors and welcome whatever comes next.
Hot August oceans churn. Tornadoes internally spurn a meteorologist’s concern.
This is what the hurricane knows.
With strength beyond a whale’s tail, swallow waves into booming gale, loosen nature’s grip and WAIL!
Margaret Simon, draft
On Friday, I wrote wisdom poems with my students. I couldn’t focus on much except Hurricane Ida heading our way. They also wrote some wonderful wisdom poems linked below.
For the end of the month Poetry Sisters challenge, Mary Lee posted this call to write deeper wisdom poems in the form of Jane Yolen’s What the Bear Knows. I recall a similar challenge from Michelle Barnes’ interview with Joyce Sidman on Today’s Little Ditty. I used this form in my book Bayou Song to write about the black-crowned night-heron.
On this anniversary of Hurricane Laura that devastated Lake Charles, Louisiana last year, we are once again bracing for a storm, Tropical Storm Ida that is predicted to come in around New Orleans as a Category 3 hurricane. We are preparing and watching news closely. Please keep us in your prayers. We know how to do this. I’ll post updates as I am able on Instagram/ Facebook. Thanks!
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
We are in our second full week of school, so it’s time to start slicing. I am pleased with the daily routine I’ve started this year with my students. Today, they came in and found their notebooks, opened them up to a clean page, dated it, and waited. Ah, yes. Routine of writing every day is taking hold.
This morning after our quick write, Jaden pointed to Katie’s filled page and said, “She told me she didn’t want to write this morning.” The magic of Linda Rief’s The Quick Write Handbook. Together we have done the first two quick writes in the book, Rambling Autobiography and On Being Asked to Select the Most Memorable Day in My Life. These were great set ups for writing a Slice of Life post on our class blog. (Kidblog has morphed into Fan School and we are not happy.)
I write alongside my students. For the rambling autobiography, Linda Rief suggests using three phrases on their blank page, at the top, middle, and bottom, and write to them. (I was born…, I lied to…, and A friend once told me…)
Rambling Autobiography
I was born under the Perseids meteor showers in a Mississippi torn by racial riots. When I was six, “camping out” in our front yard, we set it on fire, an accident that left me with a fear of fire and deep shame. Our house had the largest oak tree on the whole block. I’ve always imagined my grandmother as my guardian angel. I carry her name with me every day. I lied to my mother about the fire. A friend once told me to trust my gut. I could create a timeline of my life with parentheses of hurricanes. I secretly like to listen to choral music and sing along the alto part. I once danced with Marilyn Singer’s husband. I’ve won an award for teaching writing but not for writing.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a retired elementary gifted teacher who writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
photo by Henry Cancienne
Reflections on the Teche 