One of my favorite things about teaching Reading and Writing to elementary gifted students is our weekly poetry reading and writing. We’d gather around the center table and read a poem together, talk about it, annotate, and write “like” the author. While it looks different this year, I have not given up teaching poetry. This week we worked with Teach this Poem and Joy Harjo’s poem Perhaps the World Ends Here. I love this poem, the universality of it, the simple profound language, and its accessibility to young students.
When Jaden suggested we steal a line, I knew exactly which one I wanted to steal: “This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.” After a few false starts, I am pleased with my poem. I am also posting Jaden’s because it shares wisdom beyond his 10 years.
The Writing Table
At this table,
dreams are written
in decorated notebooks.There’s a pocket for poems
and clean blue lines open
to ideas.At this table, there are
scraps of paper,
colored pens in a coffee can,
a tube of glitter-glue.Today, this table is empty.
A screen glows
while children type
& breathe through cloth.Words still float onto an empty page.
Poems still light a spark.This table is a house in the rain,
Margaret Simon, 2020
An umbrella in the sun,
a dawn in the darkness.
Come taste the sweetness.
Why all
the gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table.
So has it been since creation, and it will go on.
The gifts have been laid out through history
traveling through our mind.
The table of gifts has been the energy of life in our heart.
The gifts of the table have been tampered with.
The gifts in our heart have been bruised.
The table is the immune system
shielding the gifts of the earth.
Jaden, 5th grade
Reflections on the Teche 