Basketball and Poetry
These next 4 days are going to be wild with Basketball playoffs running late into each night and kids coming to school with tired eyes and a teacher just as tired. I will be partaking in a Monster Rasberry Ice Tea or 2 before the week is over.
Working on Poetry today and my kids are sharing some deep things. It is interesting seeing them open up more when the options to write differently present themselves. I had students write about struggles fitting into their families, their religion, friend groups. Other wrote about death, ranching and you guessed it Basketball.
I love this small town I live in, I love getting to read the “Golden Lines” as my friend Cameron would call them that my students put on the page. I am incredibly lucky.
PSA (unrelated to my day) : Kids need time to read without strings, to enjoy a book without worrying about a test and to find who they are as a reader without some Basal or textbook to fill out. My students told me to burn a free sample book we received in our mail today that was going to “build their vocabulary skills” the secretary and I were looking at it and could not figure out the questions… The kids told me to burn it. #istandwithDrMary #letkidsread #sol18
Things Mr.G says 
I bet my students would love if we did Mathematics of Basketball as a mini lesson series before Spring Break. There is so much complexity to our students. As a teacher that gets to read their writing, you must get some powerful insights as they pull back the curtains. Math class not so much.
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Their writing has been less personal leading up until now. Random moments here and there and then just a ton today.
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Really enjoyed this post. I think we don’t give students enough opportunity to write poetry. I teach developmental writing for college freshmen, and several of them have been writing poems in their writer’s notebooks while I’ve been encouraging them to write analytical essays. I think after our spring break is over, we’re going to write poetry!
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I couldn’t help but think about Kwame Alexander’s “The Crossover” as I read your post.
I handed a student a copy of “The Poet X” this morning.
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The power of reading what you want to read is so amazing! It is great that you understand and gift the gift of reading to your students!
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