So, I just looked at my Blogger page and am ashamed to admit the number posts that carry the blazing orange Draft label. Ok, I'm not quite Hester strutting around with a scarlet A stitched on my pullover, but still, for someone who is on his kids to write, develop ideas, and share them, it is a little embarrassing. I even went into an older draft and deleted what was there to start this one, just so another Draft wouldn't be sitting there screaming at me next time. It's been a rough winter, and I have puked thoughts on the electronic page, but I cannot seem to scrape them into a pile worth publishing. But I am going to on this one. I promise.
All right. Moving on.
This semester, I have been blessed to have a student-teacher. No, that is not one of the things that has made it a rough winter; quite the contrary. Mrs. Lehr has been one of the bright spots. She and the others in my BHS family are the primary reasons I have made it to the point where I can see Spring Break on the horizon with my sanity intact.
One of the greatest things about Mrs Lehr taking on my classes has been the opportunity for me to be in the student role. Today was one of those days. During Honors Soph English, we were taking part in a Poe-Tree activity (Mrs. Lehr was pretty tickled at her pun), and I was able to sit in with a group whose members had pulled "Strange Fruit" from the Poe-Tree. Mrs. Lehr starter question was "What is your initial reaction to the poem after reading it?" After a student read the poem aloud, I looked around the circle. "I don't like this. How it makes me feel." "I got a chill just now." "I'm really uncomfortable right now." "This makes my stomach hurt." One student just shook her head. Another bit her nails.
So, we got to discuss visceral reactions. Good poetry, good literature of any kind, can do that. It makes you feel. Then you get to my favorite question, the one kids probably get tired of us asking: Why? That is when we really start thinking. The kids ran with it. This poem, for this group, did it through imagery. It juxtaposed the beauty and serenity with the grotesque and disturbing. That left a knot in some kids' bellies. It did so with lines loaded with sensory details, but open enough to allow each reader to bring their own connections, those little bits of themselves, to the table. Each student said they could close their eyes and picture the scene; however, each individual's scene was a little different. Grandma's yard, an sunlit field with a single poplar, a warm countryside broken up by scattered trees, fields awash in the perfume of magnolias. And then, as one student said, "The scene withered." The beauty dimmed. The overpowering scent of burning flesh and rot drowned the magnolia. Darkness suffocated the sunshine.
One young lady said at that point, images of her younger relatives invaded her mind. That upset her. A lot.
The group talked about imagery, about metaphor, about powerful words. We talked about the "blood on the leaves and blood at the root." We talked about our past, about our more recent history. And we talked about today.
Mrs Lehr has already come up with ways to make the activity better. She felt like in one of our classes we didn't reach as many students as we could have. And I agree; we can do things better. Always.
At the end of this hour, the student I was next to looked up at the clock. "Oh wow. We talked the whole hour."
Yes, we did. And from where I was sitting, it was a pretty valuable hour.
We'll do better. We always have to look at how we can do better. That's how we grow.
