No, I haven't been in a coma or abducted by aliens. Life sometimes just runs away with us for awhile. With the turn of the seasons, I'm renewing my commitment to try and post on my blog on a regular basis. How regular? Hummmmm. Well, more than once a year for sure!
I would like to wax poetic for a moment. No, really, let's polish up on poetry! While most of us in the trenches of education in Texas are watching and waiting for all to be revealed about the upcoming STAAR test...I do rejoice in the fact that poetry is being addressed. Yes, that love/hate relationship that we have with one of humanity's greatest creations and most painful of classroom subjects.
So get out your dusty copy of Mother Goose Rhymes and brush up on the classics for starters and share them with your students. For adults and older students, do a bit of research into the history of the nursery rhymes. Remember "Ring Around the Rosie"? That little ditty is about the Black Death, aka Bubonic Plague from the Middle Ages. The disease would bring about sores with "rings" around them all over the body. The medicine of the day suggested that using various herbs and flowers in a mask would ward off the "vapors", thus "pockets full of posies". Unfortunately, most infected persons would die within a few days and the ending line, "ashes, ashes we all fall down" was a reminder that both king and commoner would meet Death. The reason I present this example is that many of these rhymes have a history behind them that has been forgotten in our modern times.
Jumping into our own time and in the Texas classrooms...suggestions for teachers would be to possibly to introduce poetry in the guise of music. Most kids love to sing and know a lot of songs so it is a natural match to multitask and combine language arts and art. Heck, throw in a bit of history as well and cover social studies. Learn our state song, "Texas, Our Texas".
Be a poet and know it!
