So if you're reading this and will be at the orientation this afternoon, no surprises for you, so stop reading now if that's the case. You know who you are.

I've changed my title to Reciprocal Syllabus Development, though I just typed "Strategies" rather than development, so perhaps that's what I mean.

I'm thinking about my philosophical stance, my reason for going into the classroom. Is it to "Teach poetry" - no. Lots of kids slumber through school, and how do you learn anything this way - sleep learning with the book under the pillow in "The Shaggy Dog" notwithstanding - ! I think lots of teachers try to work around the banking model of education, the filling the vessels angle, that one way top down flow that prepares kids for assembly line work by treating them as objects on an assembly line. BUT, an artist enters the classroom with no WASL scores hanging over her head and a passion for her art. One teacher I work with says "I can't be passionate about one thing, what a middle school teacher has to be is a good manager." Enter the artist. But what do you believe about the kids you will build a writing community with (or fail to)? Will you teach them to make haiku or pantoums? What underlies this teaching? Why would they want to learn it? I believe that most if not all kids have inner lives they can give voice to if we listen, offer tools, and keep listening as they use the tools. But they won't use the tools if they don't care, not really use them if their motivation is points, is extra credit, is no recess if they don't buckle down. I approach my students as a fellow traveler, bungler, failer, attempter, questioner. I offer small gestures. If they respond to a gesture in one way, I will go that way, if not, I'll offer another small gesture. Perhaps the gestures get larger and more complex. Even if the gestures are tentative, I'm asking the kids to risk, to try to do something I haven't exactly defined because I want them to do something never done before, how can it have a definition? I believe that each person is unique in the history of the universe and that the more closely a person describes what she sees the more unlike anyone else her speech will be. This is why cliche is a problem - you sound like everyone else using a cliche, hiding your uniqueness behind the bland generality. What would you say if you said exactly what you mean? I hope I help at least some students try to find out. It is exciting to say something you didn't know you could say, find out something you think through writing it. I believe in the writing brain, in the fingers as savants. I believe with Brenda Ueland that "everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say."


Sheffer Crossword Puzzle Poem Draft, 9/18

I didn't ask for your curriculum vita, pass the pita
out like a lion but don't imagine I'm in like a lamb
don't count your fingers before you go to Tel Aviv
aswim, on a train, by bus and checkpoint car, alar
but someone always catches someone in the act
even fellows we know like so many Valentinos
in sheety splendor running sheeply cross the lea
like you and me they hunger past dense entree
we're grown for greed always certain we are needy
wading with our microwaves and Dells. Even so
we know we get our just desserts from Vixen,
Comet, Cupid all the rest for all we give and gave,
glory moments on TV on field, on clay, on mat.
Every Tom and Dick responds to bugle, RCMP
Do Right. Each has born heat from Wolf, the Aga,
done some unsung deed and toasted self with ale
oh heroes pale before our unknown Bobs and Iras
though none espy our capes our heroics solo.
You walked into this store for milk and gum,
when by the cheeses you grow larger than your past.