Writer’s Blank

Thanksgiving break means I’ve had a little time to sort through my own poems. I found a few about teaching, including this one, inspired by one of my students:
Writer’s Blank
During the poetry lesson
in Mrs. C’s 7th Grade English class
José waved his hand: “Teacher,
Teacher! I have writer’s blank!”
“José, just write. Write
anything. Write
the questions.” Today
I don’t even [...]

Poems on the theme of dreams:

These are some of the poems I use with my students to spark ideas for writing about dreams (read my previous post for more details!): 

 “Last Night I Dreamed of Chickens,” Jack Prelutsky 
 “A Dream Deferred,” Langston Hughes
“Stars,” Langston Hughes
“Let America Be America,” Langston Hughes
“Still I Rise,” (especially the last stanza) Maya Angelou
“City That Does Not [...]

Last Night I Dreamed …

Not long ago I was meeting with a program director from an area agency who wanted to hire me to teach a poetry workshop at her site, and one of my colleagues. The three of us were sitting in my small office discussing how to teach creative writing.

“How do you get students to write poems?” [...]

And Today, Another Cry

Yesterday, I had a new group for poetry. S was sitting right up front, round-faced, with eyes hiding a wink of mischief in them. She wrote her name in a cheerful cursive in pink pen. 
 
The assignment, after reading Aleida Rodriguez’s poem, “Extracted,” was to write a poem about a neighbor.  In Rodriguez’s poem the poet [...]

A Lesson in Puerto Rican Poetry

A few weeks ago I brought Roberto Marquez’s anthology, Puerto Rican Poetry, to my afternoon writing class. All of the students are from Puerto Rico, or their parents are. When I held up heavy, 490  page tome, one student said, “I never knew there was any such thing.”
“Any such thing as what?” I asked. [...]