Reflections on the Teche

Celebration Saturday

December 7, 2013 by margaretsmn

Celebration Saturday is here once again. Do the weeks fly by for you? I have much to be thankful for this week.

1. Last Saturday I had a book signing at Lemuria in Jackson, MS with my father. We were signing our book Illuminate. The biggest treat was to see old friends and to share the joy. We even sold one to a stranger.

Here I am with a high school friend sitting under photos of Eudora Welty and Walker Percy among other famous authors.

2. Tuesday night I rode in the Christmas parade all decked out in a vintage red dress and white wig.

My best queenly wave!

3. On Wednesday, my students went to the Shadows to rehearse for their play. Every year, the gifted students in grades 4-6 perform a play for the first graders in the parish. This program based on the history of the plantation home has been going on for 30 years. Some of my students have parents who performed in the play when they were younger. This is a great experience for my students. They all learned their lines and behaved well. We went to lunch downtown on Main Street at Victor’s cafeteria. This is an iconic place in New Iberia. They have a sign that reads “Dave Robicheaux eats here.” My students did such a good job at paying and figuring out tip that they were complimented by the cafeteria staff, so I let them have a play time in Bouligny Plaza. They played a vigorous game of hide and seek. Down by the bayou, I showed them a sculpture garden, another fun place to play and take ~~group~~ family pictures. A great day!

Girls in period costume

4. On Thursday evening, I took an art class. I learned how to use a gelli plate for printing. The instructor, Marcie Melancon, had made a mold from gelatin for me to use. You can purchase a gelli plate, but since I didn’t have one, I used the homemade one. I was very pleased with the resulting prints. The process was fun and easy. Just squirt out paint, roll it on, and print. We used a variety of found objects for printing, like toilet paper tubes, bubble wrap, leaves, string, etc. The one I liked the most was a double print rather than a mono print. So the images layered to create a beautiful mystical image. The woman figure was a magazine cut out that was laminated with packing tape.

5. On Friday, I found $50 that I had lost somewhere in my purse. I thought it was gone forever, but it surfaced miraculously when I was looking for something else.

This was a wonderful week, and I am working hard to avoid getting into a holiday frenzy. I want to continue to find blessings in every day.

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Teaching | Tagged Gelli plate art, Illuminate, Lemuria, The Shadows | 6 Comments »

Crows on the Playground

December 6, 2013 by margaretsmn

See more Poetry Friday with Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on image for link to original image.

One early morning this week when I sat down at my desk, I became aware of a murder of crows on the playground outside my window, so I wrote a poem about it. Poetry is everywhere.

A flock of crows in the school yard
perched on the basketball goal,
side by side on the swing set,
cluttering the picnic table.

Like children who will come out later,
they chatter, peck, and flit.
Tag, you’re it. Hide-and-seek,
Treasure hunt.

Some are flying alone.

Some are gathered together.
Crows on the playground.
–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

A Poetry Friday friend, Donna Smith, posted this video in response to my crow poem. Funny and clever, a crow snowboarding.

Posted in Poetry Friday | Tagged crows, playground, poetry | 10 Comments »

Technology Rocks!

December 3, 2013 by margaretsmn

Join the Tuesday Slice of Life!

Some people say technology gets in the way of real relationships. Put down that device and talk to me, will you? However, this Thanksgiving holiday I was grateful for new technology: Facetime and Texting especially. Only one of my 3 daughters was able to make the trip to my parents’ home in Mississippi this year. Traditionally, this is where we spend Thanksgiving, but as they have grown and have lives of their own, it has become more and more difficult for all of us to be together.

Daughter #1, Maggie, was attending an Indian wedding in North Carolina with her boyfriend. Using group text, she was sending updates with pictures of all of the events- henna tattoos, painting the groom, the ceremony, the reception. Vicariously, we all experienced the wedding with her.

I love this picture of my daughter, Maggie, dressed in traditional Indian clothing with her boyfriend, Louis.

On Thanksgiving night, we did Facetime with daughter #3, Martha, who was celebrating the holiday with her boyfriend’s family in Wisconsin. She’s in school in Chicago, so this was a treat to see them both from so far away. We even met Bailey, the boyfriend’s beautiful collie. The next best thing to being there is Facetime, an amazing invention in my book!

The last night I was with my parents, we went out to eat dinner at a restaurant where my brother was entertaining. As he was singing along with his 2 daughters, ages 11 and 14, I was missing my girls. But then came a new group text:

Maggie: We had mint choc chip dippin dots during the ceremony.
Kat: Write that down for your wedding!
Kat: We just put the Santa gnome on Wayne’s tree.
Martha: Home alone making banana bread and listening to Love Actually soundtrack.
Maggie: Ha ha perfect!

Even without them physically present with me, I was in a circle of love.

Posted in Slice of Life | Tagged facetime, Slice of Life, texting | 8 Comments »

Thanku. Chalk-a-bration. Celebration

November 30, 2013 by margaretsmn

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

This post combines three ideas/connections to three blog sites. The Thanku poem was started by the Teaching Authors who encouraged us to write thank you haiku about teachers who have influenced us. Chalk-a-bration is a monthly round up that Betsy Hubbard hosts at Teaching Young Writers. And the Celebration Saturday round up is hosted by Ruth Ayres at Discover. Play. Build.

Last Friday before we broke for a week off, my students wrote their Thanku poems in chalk. I wrote, too, and was pleased with the sticky thanku I wrote for my mom. I’m hoping she will read this and make me pancakes this morning.

I celebrate that Brooklyn’s flying and thanking me for her wings. How awesome!

Tyler celebrates the sunshine in his life, his mother. His grandma makes pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse.

I love you, Mom, for more than just your pancakes, but your pancakes are the best!

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Poetry | Tagged Betsy Hubbard, chalkabration, poems about mothers, Ruth Ayres, Teaching Young Writers, thanku | 5 Comments »

Thanksgiving Day

November 29, 2013 by margaretsmn

See more Poetry Friday at Carol’s Corner.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, Betsy Hubbard of Two Writing Teachers asked us to take a moment to be still and write a poem. I actually wrote this poem by speaking into my phone on the way to Walgreens to get some decongestant. (My sinuses do not like the cold.) While I was shopping, a young woman, girl actually, asked if she could help me find something. Then she commented that I smelled. “It’s not a bad smell.” I had carried the roasting turkey smell with me. Anything can make its way into a poem.

Thanksgiving Day

Fire orange blazes from the tops of the trees
announcing the season’s change,
so I drive to my parents’ home by the lake
through the woods, tall pines, draping oaks.

Mama puts the turkey on early in the morning
while I still lounge in pajamas.
That Thanksgiving smell fills the air,
a scent I cannot emulate,
a scent I hold here

in my clothes, in my hair, my heart.
My mind does not wander to times before;
I do not miss the sound of children.
No, I am just here with this now,

This turkey roasting, the warmth of the fire,
this place where I am always loved.

–Margaret Simon

Posted in Poetry Friday, Writing | Tagged Betsy Hubbard, poetry, thanksgiving, Two Writing Teachers | 12 Comments »

Not Everyone

November 26, 2013 by margaretsmn

Join the Tuesday Slice of Life!

This weekly Slice of Life Challenge makes me write. Sometimes, the writing comes easily. Sometimes, I re-write it ten times. Sometimes, I don’t know what to say. Sometimes, I think what I say is stupid, or worse, uninteresting.

This quote from John Green, the author of The Fault in Our Stars (which is an awesome book, btw) really hit home with me. I have to do a lot of self-talk to convince myself that I have something to say. I want to be worthy of your time spent here.

On Saturday, I went to Wordlab. I hadn’t been in a while, so I forgot how stimulating and yet, frightening, it is to sit with a group and write raw and read raw. This week’s guest writer-presenter was Charles Garrett. He first asked us to write 10 American sentences. I had not heard of the American sentence before. Apparently coined by Alen Ginsberg, who rejected the Japanese haiku, the American Sentence is a sentence of 17 syllables.

The apple in his eye had a bite taken out, a black and blue spot.

Don’t say this is easy until you have drawn on the page left-handed.

Speaking of the black bird singing, did you hear the owl who cooks for you?

In a perfect world where lines are straight and black is black, no grey, I’m blind.

My hips are square in this red chair, but my mind is flying to the moon.

Crazy, right? Then Charles asked us to choose one of the lines to be the title of our poem. As if that wasn’t hard enough, then we had to chose a line from within poem 1 to be the last line of poem 2. Our brains were stretched and prodded and poked, but none of us gave up.

I combined these prompts with a technique from Ava Haymon that I tried with students last week, repetition.
So even though I don’t think I have written a brilliant poem, these writing exercises give me something to write and keep me breathing and healthy.

Not everyone sings in the shower.
Not everyone believes Namaste.
Not everyone digs in the hard ground,
or buys roses to bloom the next day.

Not everyone steals to feel worthy.
Not everyone wants a stiff drink.
Not everyone smells like a flower,
or washes their hands in the sink.

Not everyone loves their own mother.
Not everyone wears socks in the bed.
Not everyone turns on the TV
to hear what the weatherman said.

Not everyone reads The New Yorker.
Not everyone watches cartoons.
Not everyone adds sugar to coffee,
or stays in pajamas ’til noon.

Not everyone likes to write poems.
Not everyone knows how to rhyme.
Not everyone has the same gifts
or discovers them all in good time.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing | Tagged Acadiana Wordlab, Alen Ginsberg, Charles Garrett, John Green, repetition | 9 Comments »

Celebration Saturday: Walking for a Cause

November 23, 2013 by margaretsmn

Join in the fun of celebrating on Saturday, a blog round-up at Discover. Play. Build.

Beginning with Monday, this was a great week for poetry writing success. Using the field trip notes from last Friday, Monday’s quest was to complete and revise our poems and post them on the class kidblog. One of my newest students had success with this poem:

My dangling trumpet flower

is like a golden trumpet,

big yellow bell,

and a fluffy bridal gown.

My dangling trumpet flower

is a hummingbird’s favorite snack

with the most delicious flavor

of a big slice of cake.

And the student comment, “I like this poem very much. I like that you made it very specific and beautiful. I also like that you put similes and metaphors in your poem.” Both students are fourth graders who are just stretching out their writers’ wings.

On Wednesday, I used a new lesson I adapted from a conversation I had with Ava Haymon, Louisiana poet laureate. The structure of repetition worked well. I posted a few on my blog for Poetry Friday and got this email from their teacher, “I shared your blog with the sixth graders today. Jack and Ethan were beaming when they saw their poems. THANK YOU so much for giving them that feeling. The vice principal wants them to read the poems during the announcements next week.” Celebration, indeed!

Mayor Hilda Curry talks with our 6th grade students about their service project.

On Friday, three of my students and I led the school in a Walk for St. Jude. A teacher’s child lost her life to cancer last month, and the response to do something to honor Kamryn was amazing! Students could purchase a t-shirt, a button, and a color page of a star along with the donation for the walk. I’m not sure how much we raised in dollars yet, but we raised awareness and felt pride in giving back to St. Jude. Before the walk, the skies were dark and cloudy; however, just in time, our angel Kamryn swept the clouds away to show us the sun.

Kamryn’s best friend Amanda was interviewed by the newspaper.

The button and Kamryn’s picture on my t-shirt.

The official St. Jude Give Thanks Walk is today. You can still donate to support my walk on my page.

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gratitude, Teaching, Writing | Tagged gifted education, poetry, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, student writing activity | 5 Comments »

Repetition: A Bridge to Details

November 22, 2013 by margaretsmn

See more Poetry Friday with Katya at Write. Sketch. Repeat.

How do you write a poem? Where do you begin? I learned long ago from working with children writers that they are full of ideas. I wrote an article for the National Writing Project journal The Quarterly in 2005 when it was still in print titled “Writing with William.” (I was pleased to find it on a Google search.) In the article, I described a tutoring experience that led me to understand young writers need tools, not ideas, structures, not prompts. When I was talking with Ava Haymon, our state poet laureate, last weekend about writing ideas for students, she said a technique that she likes to use is repetition.

Using Ava’s poems as models, I introduced this structure to 6th graders at our monthly enrichment day we call WOW (Way out Wednesday.) “The Child Born” begins each line with the same three words, “The child who.” I asked the students to listen for the details. Following the reading, we did a memory test. “What did you remember?” While they didn’t quite understand the poem, they did remember almost every line, especially “The child who bites cuticles instead of fingernails,” and “The child who sucks her hair at night.” Details are memorable. Another model I used was Betsy Franco’s “Fourths of Me” from The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School.

Then I gave them the assignment: Write about whatever you want to, but begin each line or each stanza in the same way. Examples: Before, Everybody, As long as, The child who, Anyone, Who, Why, I am. The students also added beginnings to the list.

This was a successful lesson because everyone wrote a poem. Even the kid who said he hates writing poems. Even the one who said she has never written a poem before. After writing, we shared and did a memory test for each other’s poems. They realized the importance of using specificity and original ideas to draw a reader’s attention.

What Do You See?

When you see the stars, you see the sky
But when I see the stars, I see the days passing by.
When you see the beach, you see grains of sand.
But when I see the beach, I see a place untouched of man.
When you see the ocean, you see fish and pearls.
But when I see the ocean, I see an underwater world.
When you see a child, you see a small man.
But when I see a child, I see a gift from God’s hands.

–Kaley

Before and After

After the sun sets at night,
After the bud blooms,
After the plane takes off in flight,
I’ll go home to my room.

Before the sun rises at dawn,
Before dew forms on the flower,
Before the bird lands in its nest,
The king will give up his power.

This time I will not stay silent,
This time I will speak.
This time I will not be shy,
This time I’ll be bold.

–Ethan

My Dream

I am the frail one.
I am the fragile one.
I am the annoying one.
I am the one in the back of the classroom.
I am the new student.
I am the one no one wants around.
I am the dumb one.
I am the one nobody talks to.
I am the runt of the litter.
I am the timid one
Only in my dreams.

–Jack

Posted in Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing | Tagged Ava Leavell Haymon, gifted education, National Writing Project, repetition, The Quarterly | 12 Comments »

Entertaining Angels: All Poets Welcome

November 19, 2013 by margaretsmn

Join the Tuesday Slice of Life!

Ava enjoys paella at the Spanish Festival.

I am having a hard time putting into words this feeling. This good, fulfilled feeling after a successful Fall Poetry Night. I think magic happens when a poem is read aloud, the words shared become everyone’s words. Your life becomes theirs, and theirs yours. We become a community.

On Saturday, I hosted our state poet laureate, Ava Leavell Haymon. (See a previous post here featuring her poetry.) She came into town in time to have paella downtown at the second annual Spanish Festival. Ava laughs at her new title. She said it has a certain amount of celebrity to it, but in the same way a rare boa constrictor might; Everyone comes to see what it is.

I don’t think that was the case for our audience Saturday night. I had been getting messages on Facebook from a variety of people who wanted to read. I wouldn’t dare say no to anyone who has the courage to read his own poetry aloud. So we had 4 featured authors and 5 readers in open mic. Good thing the food truck man was coming, and a number of friends had brought treats.

Ava took notes as each poet read, and she made a point of speaking to each one with specific comments about their writing. What a gift! When she read her own poetry, she instructed us as well on the forms of her poems. The teacher in her is natural. All weekend we shared stories of teaching poetry. I look forward to trying some of her ideas with my students. (And sharing them here.)

Ava reading at A&E Gallery.

I entertained an angel this weekend, an angel who taught me about opening my ears and my heart to all poets. Ava was still smiling Sunday morning. She told me after all of the traveling and many activities of her new position, the energy of Saturday night had rejuvenated her. I felt she did the same for me and for all who attended and participated in the Fall Poetry Night.

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Writing | Tagged Ava Leavell Haymon, Louisiana poet laureate, Poetry Reading | 4 Comments »

Private Eyes on Jefferson Island

November 16, 2013 by margaretsmn

Ruth Ayres is gathering Saturday Celebration posts on her blog. Click the image above to visit.

Early in October, I had an author visit my gifted classroom. Chere’ Coen wrote the book Haunted Lafayette. When she was talking to the students about ghost stories, she mentioned Jefferson Island, and the students did not know anything about a location just down the road. Rip Van Winkle Gardens located on Jefferson Island is a land of beauty while also a place of historical and geological significance. I decided to remedy their lack of knowledge by planning a field trip.

The weather in November can be iffy. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we had a cold front and temperatures dipped while the wind blew hard. All that went away Friday, and the sky opened to the sun. Temperatures rose to a comfortable 75 degrees. The heavens were shining on our day.

I invited some other teachers along, so we gathered 32 area gifted kids from second through sixth grade. They watched a video and learned about the actor Joseph Jefferson for whom the island was named. They learned about the salt dome disaster of 1980 when an oil drill punctured the salt dome causing a whirlpool that closed the salt mine and caused damage to acres of land. The owner’s home fell into the lake leaving only the chimney visible today.

A huge gong hangs from an old oak tree.

Lake Peigneur with chimney

We toured the historical mansion, and took a nature walk along the trails through the lush and beautiful gardens. Even before I told them they could, the students started collecting items from nature. They couldn’t help themselves. They picked up peacock feathers, moss, flowers, bamboo sticks, pinecones, etc. I gave them ziplock bags to hold their collection.

After collecting, I gave the students a Private Eye loupe magnifying glass. The exercise went like this: Look at your chosen object through the loupe and ask the question, “What does it look like? What else? What else?” In this manner, students were able to build a metaphor poem. This exercise worked well for my youngest writers. Here are a few.

A little lagniappe (South Louisiana for something extra) occurred when the owner saw me and asked how the day was going. I introduced myself and explained how the students did not know the stories of Jefferson Island. He brought me into the gift shop and handed me a DVD and a book. When I introduced him to two of our students, he told them some of the ghost stories. What a thrill for these kids and for me! Today I celebrate the success of our field trip, the learning, observing, writing, and friendships!

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Poetry, Writing | Tagged field trip, ghost stories, gifted education, Jefferson Island, Joseph Jefferson, Private eye, Rip Van WInkle Gardens | 4 Comments »