Seven at the Golden Shovel

So--I'm not sure how many people are familiar with this Gwendolyn Brooks poem. I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to put it on my website but you can't find me on Google or anything so I think it's kosher. I'll take it down if not.

Seven at the Golden Shovel

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

my kids went crazy when they saw this. even my strategic class. the first slide in my first day of the poetry unit was "What is poetry?" The second slide was "Is this a poet?" with a picture of Gwendolyn Brooks (an oddly provocative slide). The third slide was the poem and they wouldn't be quiet. they started reading it out loud, analyzing it, "what's jazz june?", "what's thin gin?" (they didn't know how to say "gin"--they were saying it with a hard "g" like in girl. i understand the poem so much better now that i read it with them, just because they were so excited. it was really cute. several of them felt compelled to walk me through the meaning of the whole thing in front of the class. they all had their own theories--some thought that the golden shovel was what killed them. truthfully, they had very innocent interpretations of the poem which i found fascinating and kind of reassuring. they seem so grown up sometimes!

a few of my kids were really put off by the poem--i got a few comments like "the person who wrote this is messed up" or "the person who wrote this needs to get a life." these kids told me that they had a problem with the left school and the die soon parts. i didn't really share my interpretation with them, because i realized how sophisticated it was. my intention wasn't for them to go into a deep analysis, anyways. i saw my role as doing some clarifying and defining of words and ideas, and leading them to understanding through questioning.

it turns out that they totally love poetry--or, enough of them are excited enough that they are carrying the class along with them. there is a city-wide poetry contest for 8th graders which is really exciting, and a bunch of kids want to enter it. they are all reciting poetry for me or bringing in poems or poem books from home. i get the sense that they find poetry more palatable than pages and pages of fiction or non-fiction reading that i put in front of them sometimes. either way, i had no idea that the unit would be received this way so i was very excited. it's great to see them feeling energetic about stuff.

they also wrote some amazing poems based on a format of "where i'm from..."
i will try to post a few of them up here later today as i am reading them all and checking them in. my goal this week is to get a poetry bulletin board set up in my classroom and begin posting their poetry and other peoples' poetry that they like up there.

so yeah, tuesday was one of the best days in school, although it started out really hard initially, with some severe misbehavior. but we moved on which was also really nice.

i should go and get ready in an attempt to make this week half as fun as last week. there is a Black History Month assembly on tuesday at an indeterminate time so that should be kind of fun and interesting. Some of my students are performing. i will have at least one class period off of teaching, which will also be a nice break.

it's back to the grind for me. trying to get things ready for a couple of days worth of work before a play this afternoon.