Reflections on the Teche

Recovery, Discovery, and a Rescue

December 6, 2014 by margaretsmn

Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.

My phone is like a visual diary of my week. I take pictures of things I care about. I finished the prayer shawl I was making for Glenae. It is easily one of the most beautiful things I have ever made. I could tell she loved it by the way she held it close and fingered it. She signed the word “soft.” She is making progress slowly and will be moving to a rehab center soon. Seeing her, talking to her, and feeling her gentle spirit gave me hope for her recovery. If you have added her to your prayer list, keep it going. I believe she feels the strength of many.

A Go Fund Me was set up for Glenae’s expenses. In just 7 days, they have far exceeded their goal. People are reaching out to help. I am encouraged by the number of students and parents who are donating. We have a strong and supportive community.

On Tuesday, my students and I toured the local Buddhist Temple, Wat Thammarattanaram. This amazing temple is set back in a quiet neighborhood in Coteau, which literally means country. We know very little about Buddhism and about our own community. My students, their parents, and I were fascinated to hear about this hidden gem.

We also went to the Shadows, a local plantation home and tourist attraction. Every year, the gifted elementary students in the parish perform a historical play for the first graders. My students love dressing in the period costumes, learning their lines, and feeling the joy of performing. I love this picture of the white camellias blooming.

My friend was vacationing at Orange Beach in Alabama and sent me an email about her duck rescue. I shortened it into a found poem here.

Along the beach yesterday
I saw a duck trying to swim,
obviously in distress.
The bird’s leg and wing were all tangled
in fishing line.
I waded out into the waves.
The water was dragging her in.
We managed to cut the line.
Wildlife and Fisheries came to the rescue.
She was given a clean bill of health.
We watched her waddle back to the water
and head for Florida.

A wonderful week filled with loving, learning, and rescuing.

Posted in Celebration Saturday | Tagged duck rescue, Glenae Nora, Gofundme, The Shadows, Wat Buddhist Temple | 6 Comments »

Poetry Galore at my Door

December 5, 2014 by margaretsmn

Find more Poetry Friday with Anastasia at Booktalking #kidlit

Round one for the CYBILS judging has begun. I am a round one judge for poetry. What this means for this poetry lover is there is a new book at my door every day. My collection is building, and I love reading them all. I look forward to discussions with other judges to see what they are thinking. I also love poetry people.

Today I’d like to review two of the books I have received. Note that this review does not in any way reveal where these books will go in the line-up for the CYBILS award. It is merely my opinion.

I have met Irene Latham thanks to a quick pass at a session at NCTE. She is as lovely as her picture. I did not know what a wildebeest was until I got her new book of poetry. It is a good thing that each page not only features a poem but also factual information.

The poetry bounces with the impala “twig pops/grazing stops” and peeps like the meerkat, “I sing my song:/peep peep peep/ It means, we’re safe!/ Forage! Sleep!”

Word play with “Saw-scaled viper/ rubs, shrugs,/ sizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzles.”
Form play in Triptych for a Thirsty Giraffe.
Humor of “Dung Beetle lays eggs/ in elephant poop.”
And even danger, “Siren-howls/ foul the air./ Vultures stick to task:”
Children will love the language and learning that wanders in this book along with the animals of the watering hole.

You may be inclined to say enough with the ABC books, and I was too until I saw this delightfully evil book by Eve Bunting. The seven to eleven year old boys that I teach would love this book of short poems and loads of nonfiction commentary about pirates. I am saving it for next year’s Talk Like a Pirate Day. The illustrations by John Manders are full of action and character. My favorite one is the Movie Pirates. There is a hidden cheat sheet at the end of the book for identifying the actors.

What I love about both of these poetry books is students can gain a love of language while reading about an interesting and engaging topic. I am off to read more poetry!

Posted in Poetry Friday | Tagged CYBILS award, Eve Bunting, Irene Latham, poetry books for children | 15 Comments »

Advent Coming

December 4, 2014 by margaretsmn

Click here to read more #spiritualjourney posts. Thanks Holly for hosting this roundup!

Advent is here. I never feel ready. I haven’t bought my purple candles. I don’t have a Christmas tree yet. I do have some greenery, only because I ordered it in October, and it was delivered this week. I am always caught by surprise.

Advent means coming, the time to prepare for the coming of Jesus. This happens every year. Why do we come back year after year? I reflect as I unwrap the baby Jesus for the traditional creche. I wonder while I wrap the tree in twinkle lights. Why do we keep doing this?

December has only just begun and already I feel behind. I take a moment to watch the sun set and find comfort in the knowledge that Christmas will come even if I don’t put out the creche or decorate the tree. Christmas will come even if I don’t sing a single carol.

I decide to be intentional.

I will decorate slowly.
I will buy a few gifts every day.
I will celebrate the coming of Christ
while realizing he is already here.

Advent is a magical time,
a time to be reflective and intentional.
A time to open my arms
and welcome God’s presence
whether wrapped in paper, a blanket, or a smile.
A time to embrace hope and look for a star.

This beautiful rendition of Hallelujah was posted on Facebook. Listening to it helped me to stop, slow down, and write this post. Christmas is coming. Christmas will come. And with that coming, a new life begins again. Let us remember to rejoice.

“A Hallelujah Christmas” by Cloverton from Ross Wooten on Vimeo.

Posted in Spiritual Growth | Tagged advent, Hallelujah, spiritual reflection | 7 Comments »

White Girl Dreaming

December 2, 2014 by margaretsmn

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jacqueline Woodson was scheduled to speak at the Books for Children luncheon at NCTE. I bought a ticket. In the hallways of the NCTE convention, there was a buzz about the National Book Award. Jacqueline Woodson had won for her memoir in verse, Brown Girl Dreaming. We had all read it.

You see, to English teachers, authors are our heroes. The words we say to our students are important, but the words we read aloud from authors are magical. When I read aloud Each Kindness By Jacqueline Woodson, the room became completely silent. How could it end? How could the new girl disappear with no way to make amends for the meanness?

When I learned of the offhand, stupid comment that Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) made at the National Book Award Ceremony, I was appalled. How could someone who values words, who uses words as a way to reach into the hearts and lives of young people, be so flippant and capricious? At the luncheon, Jacqueline spoke of this “joke” abstractly and told us that her response would be in an article for the NY Times. The article appeared on Saturday.
Jacqueline Woodson’s New York Times article, The Pain of the Watermelon Joke.

Jackie Woodson

I have lived in the deep south all my life. I was raised in a time of racial turmoil. My school desegregated in 1971, and I was bussed across town to a strange area, strange school with a strange curriculum (Remember the open classroom concept?) However, I knew this was necessary. For too long, black people in the south were given second best. Neighborhood schools resulted in segregated schools. My new fourth grade teacher became Mrs. Love, a loving and warm African American woman. I remember how much I loved Mrs. Love.

The next year in 5th grade, I walked into the classroom holding the hand of my new friend. The teacher (a white woman) looked at our hands and said, “Don’t do that.” I knew her reprimand was due to the difference in our skin color.

Things have changed. In my small community, we have black leaders. In my school, I have black colleagues. I really hadn’t taken note of this until race became such a hot point these days. One of my close friends is black, and just yesterday we talked about how we don’t even notice it.

Things have changed. My students don’t see color. They love each other (and argue with each other) equally. When I talk about race, they don’t “get it.” I have to tell them the history.

When Obama became president, I heard Will Smith tell Oprah, “We don’t have any more excuses.” I believe none of us do. There are no reasons to ridicule anyone for their heritage, whatever that may be. As Jacqueline Woodson so eloquently put it in her speech, “We are all every day people.”

It is time for us to respect the dignity of every human being. It is time for us all to live in love and kindness. It is time for things to change.

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing | Tagged Jacqueline Woodson, Lemony Snicket, race | 24 Comments »

Chalkabration Inside

November 30, 2014 by margaretsmn

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Join the Chalk-a-bration over at Teaching Young Writers.

I can’t spend time with a 9-year old and not get him to write poetry. So while having frozen yogurt with my nephew, I told him about Chalkabration. We wrote the above poem together. I’m not sure what happened to the time, but by the time we made it back to my parents’ house, it was dark. We also discovered that their driveway was rocky, not smooth concrete.

My mother has an Ipad and this cool app called Tayasui Sketches. With her paintbrush stylus I wrote our poem and made a poor illustration of the frozen yogurt cup.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday. Are you ready for the whirlwind of December? If you happen to be thinking about digital literacy, please join the round up.

Posted in Chalk-a-bration, Digital Learning, Poetry, Writing | Tagged chalku | 5 Comments »

Celebrating Family Heroes

November 29, 2014 by margaretsmn

Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.

Jack interviews Martha via Google Hangout.

My nephew Jack, a nine-year-old 4th grader, had a class assignment this holiday to interview his hero. He chose my youngest daughter Martha. Martha is a social worker in Chicago and couldn’t be with us for Thanksgiving. (She is coming home for Christmas! Yay!) I had the privilege of listening in on his conversation with her in a Google Hangout. He had a list of 9 questions.

Martha is a Community Support Specialist with Thresholds, a nonprofit organization that works with the those living with mental illness. What struck me most about the interview were her convictions about being a good listener and giving voice to people who have been silenced through society. She spoke with understanding and respect for her clients.

Being Martha’s mother and she being my baby, I haven’t really appreciated her selflessness. As she was growing up, she was the quiet one. She was always well behaved. She did well in school. When she decided to go to Chicago, I worried. I worried about stupid things like will she be warm enough and how will she navigate such a large place. I didn’t tune in the significance of her work. During Jack’s interview, I saw her differently. I saw her as his hero. I saw her as an advocate for the lonely, the homeless, the mentally ill. She became my hero.

Today, I celebrate my daughter. I celebrate special time with my family. I celebrate heroes.

Posted in Celebration Saturday | Tagged family, heroes, Thresholds | 11 Comments »

We Must Live in Gratitude

November 27, 2014 by margaretsmn

Lagniappe, a little something extra, in this photo, a rainbow spray reflected from the rising sun.

I do not often resort to absolutes like the word Must, but today I can think of no other way to say what I want to say about gratitude. When Thanksgiving rolls around in the midst of fall, temperatures cool, leaves change and remind us that life ends. We are faced with mortality every time a leaf crunches under our feet. I could focus on this. I could turn my attention to the anger and hatred burning in the buildings of Ferguson. Or I could remember to be grateful.

I choose gratitude. Recently, a close friend has met with tragedy. Two weeks ago, Glenae’s little car hit a sugarcane tractor. She is “lucky to be alive.” Yet beyond the realization that she could be gone is the reality that recovery is hard. I get texts from her mother every day. Every day her text ends with gratitude. I believe in the power of prayer and in the power of community surrounding this family. But to me the most powerful thing, the thing that will pull Glenae through her recovery is her mother’s will to live in gratitude.

We never know when things will change. My husband says, “Anything can happen to anybody at any time.” This is true, so we must live each day in gratitude. I am grateful for the health of my family and myself. I am grateful that I wake up every day to the reflection on the bayou, God’s beauty in nature. I am grateful that I have so many people in my life who give me hope, strength, and love. Living in gratitude will give me strength when things change as they most certainly will. I will face the new day in the knowledge that God’s love is abundant. Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in Gratitude, Spiritual Growth | Tagged thanksgiving | 2 Comments »

NCTE14 Revisited

November 25, 2014 by margaretsmn

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Georgia Heard and Ralph Fletcher congratulate me!

I am having a hard time coming down from the high of NCTE14 in Washington, DC. To begin the weekend, I was honored at the Elementary Get Together for the Donald H. Graves Award for teaching writing. My acceptance speech is here. I was surrounded by notable writers Lester Laminack, Ralph Fletcher, and Georgia Heard. All three of them were kind and easy to talk to.

Selfie with Lester Laminack and Ralph Fletcher.

On Friday, I presented with my colleagues from the National Writing Project Professional Writing Retreat (2004). This was our 10 year reunion, and we talked about what keeps us writing. We created an acronym, STAMP, for Social Media, Time, Audience, Mentors, and Peers. Here is a link to our Emaze presentation.

Another highlight of my weekend was meeting so many authors. I passed Augusta Scattergood standing alone in the lobby, so I stopped and talked to her. She used to attend these events as a librarian and now she is an author. Her second book, The Way to Stay in Destiny, was available as a galley copy. I stood in line and was the last one to receive one. The guards at Scholastic did not want me to get it signed, but when we started waving to each other like silly school girls, they let me through.

Augusta Scattergood

Meeting fellow bloggers as long lost friends was a joy. We connected immediately and sought each other out at different sessions. We had dinner together with the Two Writing Teachers team on Saturday night and had a difficult time saying good night. We all wanted to continue the time together. Being in the company of kind, thoughtful teachers who think like I think and struggle like I struggle and love their students like I love mine was inspiring and heart warming. I feel like we have begun a long friendship as well as a strong professional connection.

Professional Book Exchange organized by Chris Lehman.

I made an Animoto video of all my pictures. I took along Jack, the lemur, for some of them. Jack is our class pet that Emily snuck into my school cart. He enjoyed NCTE as much as I did.

Posted in Blogging, Slice of Life, Teaching | Tagged Animoto, children authors, NCTE, Two Writing Teachers | 17 Comments »

Bunk Bed Fills the Room

November 21, 2014 by margaretsmn

Find more Poetry Friday with Becky at Tapestry of Words.

A few weeks ago I attended a poetry writing workshop with our Louisiana state poet laureate, Ava Leavell Haymon. I posted about one of the exercises here. The second exercise she led us through began with an image. We were to remember a room, kitchen or bedroom. Then we drew it, recognizing that this was a prompt for writing and no great work of art.

I thought of my daughters’ bedroom, the one two of them shared growing up. The room was small. My husband had built a bunk bed for them. He is a good carpenter, but he doesn’t make anything halfway. This bed filled up the small room. In fact, when we moved, we left the bed. We could not get it out of the room.

Bunk Bed Fills the Room

That is the bedroom where
I looked at the mess,
sheets unmade,
the angry child
red with fury.

Her bunk bed filled the small space.
No room for my approval.

I could only see
the mess,
the wild squealing.

I forgot to look
under the sheets,
under the pile of toys,
under the dirty clothes
to see her child-heart.

–Margaret Simon

Posted in Poetry Friday | Tagged Ava Leavell Haymon, mother poem, poetry | 4 Comments »

Donald Graves Award Gratitude

November 20, 2014 by margaretsmn

Click here to read more #spiritualjourney posts. Thanks Holly for hosting this roundup!

Every week Holly posts a theme on Twitter for our #spiritualjourney posts. Every week it seems to be the most appropriate theme. This week is gratitude. I am posting my acceptance speech for the Donald H. Graves Award. I will give this speech this afternoon at the NCTE Elementary Section Get Together. Reading it aloud makes me cry. I am praying I will be able to get through it without croaking up.

Emily snuck our class lemur, Jack, into my bag. He is helping me write my speech.

Thank you, Detra Price-Dennis, and the Elementary Section Steering Committee for this honor. I am overwhelmed and humbled. Writing drives my work with students and my interactions with the world.

Kate DiCamillo, our National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and one of my favorite children’s authors, says that stories connect us. “When we learn someone else’s story, it shifts the fabric of our being. We are more open. And when we are open, we connect.”

My One Little Word for 2014 is Open, so when I saw the call for submissions to the Donald H. Graves Award, I thought, never in a million years, and why not?

I was encouraged when I saw that Julie Johnson was the 2010 winner. I know her! I read her blog! That is how I have connected to so many wonderful authors and educators. These connections, their stories, have given me courage to be open to new adventures. My fellow blogging teachers have also given me confidence in my own voice through their comments. My small world has grown.

These wider connections have not only enriched my life, but they have affected my students’ lives. Earlier this fall, my 4th grader Emily lost her mother. This should not happen to anyone, let alone to a nine-year-old girl. Of course, I wrote about this profound experience on my blog. Amy Ludwig Vanderwater read it and wrote a poem for Emily. She didn’t say that the poem was for Emily but I knew that she had read my blog.

Amy became that someone for Emily. When Emily wrote a poem about clouds, she made an Animoto video, so I said to her, “Would you like to dedicate this poem to someone?” Her eyes lowered. I know she thought I meant her mother. But when I said, “Amy Vanderwater,” her eyes danced. We tweeted the poem-movie to Amy. For Poetry Friday the next week, Amy posted it on her blog along with some writing tips from my 4th grader. These connections, these stories, strengthen us when we need it most. Emily feels like a real poet. She will always have that gift, and Amy recognized her and honored her.

I began this journey when I attended the summer institute of the National Writing Project of Acadiana. There, Ann Dobie, director at the time and an important mentor ever since, introduced me to the work of Donald Graves. His philosophy that a teacher of writing must be a writer has entered my heart and soul.

I am grateful to the National Writing Project for supporting my desire to be a writer. I am grateful to the works of mentors like Ralph Fletcher and Aimee Buckner. I am grateful to the Two Writing Teachers, all 6 of them, who support the Slice of Life challenge and hold each teacher/writer in their gentle and wise hands. My family and my colleagues back home in New Iberia give me love, confidence, and the freedom to write and teach in way I believe is right and true.

Our stories connect us and make us partners on this journey of life. I encourage you to be Open, open to the lives of your students and to the lives of others. Write your life and, as Amy Vanderwater reminds us, Be the someone.