We dozed with open
windows to let the first whiffs
of fall fill us full
welcome, Great Pumpkin!
welcome all scents of pumpkin spice!
bring on the sweaters!
First Day of Fall
Coaching in Schools – September
Earlier this week, I shared my experience participating in a coaching cycle in an elementary school in my state. This work takes place through the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders (GAEL) as part of the L4GA Grant (Literacy). During the second day of our coaching cycles, we visited a high school in the same area. In the elementary school, we looked for examples of behavioral, cultural, and cognitive engagement. At the high school, we looked for levels of rigor.
The classes with the highest levels of rigor, we observed, were classes where teachers knew their students’ interests and had a grasp of where they were in their understanding of the content. They knew how to push and how to pull, how to give some students an extra thinking challenge while working on the spot with a small group that needed extra support. The most masterful teacher we observed that day made relevant life applications by giving specific examples, providing time to think and to work on the task, encouraging talking with peers to figure out solutions, and asking questions in a way that allowed students to figure out the answers rather than giving the answers to the students or leading them there with hints. Instead of lowering expectations, they raised the bar.
We observed for instruction that needed tweaking to reach its potential also. No matter where we are as educators, there is always room for improvement. Teachers in these schools appeared to welcome the observation team with sincere interest in the suggestions to improve in the areas that are most often only recognized by someone other than the instructor.
I feel blessed to be able to be part of such a strong network of leaders throughout my state. Each district leader in this particular observation team comes from a different system, so we bring the perspectives of our own school system in terms of strengths, gaps, and areas of opportunity. We also see small things in the moments, on the walls, in the conversations, in the frameworks of instruction that make us stop and smile.
These were some signs throughout the building that brought some encouragement as we walked the hallways. I hope they inspire you the way they inspired me.
September Poetry Marathon – Day 5 of 5
Today’s host for the final day of our September Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Glenda Funk of Idaho, who inspires us to write Barbie poems. You can read Glenda’s full prompt and her poem here. I can’t wait to see all of the poems born into the world on this topic, so please hop over to the site and take a read. I chose a reverse nonet today, crafting nine lines with each numbered line’s syllable count on each in descending order as if going back in time, seeking Fountain of Youth Barbie.
Turning Back the Years Reverse Nonet
We’d line them up like kickball players
at recess, then pick one by one,
taking turns to get the best
looking Barbies. Next, we’d
choose accessories ~
whip worlds to life
narrating
stories
dreamed.
As part of this post today, I’m sharing the remaining poems from the poetry marathon last Friday, where a poem and hour was written either by someone in my family, a friend, or me. Here they are:
12 a.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Hashtag Haiku
#meanness
Fruit of the Spirit
my tree needs fertilizer
nothing much blooming…..
1 a.m. hour – Tanka – a five line poem with a syllable count of 5-7-5-7-7
Cinnamon apples
sliced, wax-sealed in Mason jars
cane sugar syrup
for Thanksgiving dessert pies
prepped-ahead ingredients!
2 a.m. hour – Naani – a poem consisting of four lines, with twenty to twenty-five syllables on any topic
Pumpkin Harvest!
Pumpkin Spice!
Pumpkin jack-o-lanterns ~
glowing face with the slice of a knife!
3 a.m. hour – Senryu – a three line unrhymed poem similar to Haiku, about nature
Midland water snake
basking in Gibbs Gardens grass
misunderstood
4 a.m. hour – Tricubes – three stanzas of three lines with 3 syllables per line
Poetry
Wings to Fly
Words to heal
Poetry
Weatherproof
Warmth for cold
Poetry
What if prompts
Why not now?
5 a.m hour – Cinquain – a poem that has two syllables in the first line, four in the second, six in the third, eight in the fourth, and two in the fifth (it was early, and I was watching my Honey Nut Cheerios dance in my plain Greek yogurt)…..
mOrning
cOffee hOp!
cheeriO’ed yOgurt prOm
O’s d-Osi-dO with pOetry
hOedOwn!
6 a.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Ode – a poem of praise, often written directly to a person or object
Memories of Miriam
Dear Mom,
you come to me
in the missing
with tingly spots that
turn warm
in the heart,
help me exhale~ my
fingers circling my temples
bringing back
all the whens
of this Bernina
your fingers guiding
mine under the
foot, stitch by stitch
learning to sew
a lime green terrycloth
bathcover, now
sewing quilts
for your great grands
on your fine
Swiss machine
of hawks,
talons clutching wires
checking that
my seatbelt
is fastened
as I drive past,
shaking your pointing finger
if I forgot,
knowing that
whatever I’m
thinking at
that moment,
you’re there
in it
of strawberry figs,
last summer wave
just picked, my own
weakening fingers twisting
tender fruits free ~
canned this very
week, Mason jars
sealed tight
with summer’s
sweetened warmth
for coming winter
of spiced Russian tea,
the Tangy orange
and lemonade mixed
with clove, sugar
cinnamon and tea ~
a medicinal brush
of your invisible fingers
through my hair
in sore throat season
of rippled milkglass
with resurrection fern
springing to life
unfurling its brown
dry fingers
into open arms
green again
7 a.m. hour – grand finale recap poem
A coffee stir stick
started a 24-hour
poem marathon!
we stirred up writing
gave wings to what if ideas
preserved memories
called love to action
resurrected ancestors
September Poetry Marathon – Day 4 of 5
Barb Edler of Iowa is our host today for the 4th day of our September Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com, and she’s encouraging us to write poems of inspiration and victory after reading Ada Limon’s How to Triumph Like a Girl. I chose a Haiku as my form and impulse response as my topic. You can read Barb’s full prompt and Limon’s poem here.
How to Triumph Over Impulse
do nothing but this:
turn your eyes in squint wonder
toward the heavens
I’m continuing to share the poems written during Friday’s poetry marathon with a poem written every hour.
11 pm hour – Kim Johnson – Heart poem – a poem having anything to do with a heart, love, bravery, or admiration
September’s Song
from the depths
of her heart ~
Summer Tanager
singing summer’s end
from a low branch
near Auchumpkee Creek Bridge
sad September serenade ~
fall flight farewell
September 2023 Poetry Marathon – Day 3 of 5
The host for September’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com today is Barb Edler of Iowa. She inspires us to write poems about favorite childhood books or poems. You can read her full prompt here. I chose to write about my favorite childhood book – Childcraft Volume 1: Poems and Rhymes.
By The Light of the Moon
back in the 70s, the
World Book Encyclopedia
and Childcraft salesmen came
door to door
selling sets
ecru-colored hardbacks
gold-embossed lettering
the only one that
mattered to me
had a pink-banded
spine ~ Volume 1
Poems and Rhymes
that I read so much
I’m surprised I didn’t
read the ink clean off
the pages
I had a closet-and-flashlight
fixation with Volume 1
I’d crawl in and read for hours
staring at the illustrations,
memorizing the words
Overheard on a Salt Marsh
my favorite of all time
but Pirate Don Durk of Dowdee
and The Purple Cow
and The Raggedy Man
and every.other.page
were my best friends
so much that today,
I have a framed copy
of Harold Monro’s
masterpiece
by my bed, draped
with green glass beads
to remind me
I was steeped
in reading
by the light
of
the
moon
Last Friday, I had a poetry writing marathon, where I invited family and some friends to write poems that I would feature on the blog this week. Each hour, a new poem was born. I began sharing these on Saturday, and today is Day 3 of 5 days of our shared poems, continued below.
6 p.m. hour – Kim Johnson – List poem – – a poem that contains a list or inventory of things, people, places, or ideas
Signs Seen on a Drive Between Counties in Rural Georgia
Do not be lukewarm
Be the light!
Slower traffic keep right
Speed checked by detection devices
The compassion of the Lord never fails
Sad to see summer go. NOT.
Where will you spend eternity?
Don’t be the dealer…..be the difference!
Wrong Way
Don’t scroll. Stay in control.
Everything is hotter in the south!
Fall: When God displays his finest artistry.
7 p.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Etheree – A ten line poem in which each numbered line contains that number of syllables, written in ascending or descending order.
Norris’s Fine Foods
catfish, hush puppies, coleslaw and crawfish
green beans, cabbage, and corn on the cob
fried shrimp, baked cod, barbecue beans
shrimp scampi, rice and cornbread
peach and apple cobblers
Norris’s Fine Foods
chocolate cake
banana
pudding
…..full!
8 p.m. hour – my grandson Aidan – Concrete Poem – a poem in the shape of an object of the poem, or where the arrangement of words looks like the poem’s subject. These are also called shape poems.
9 p.m. hour – Ken Haynes and Jennifer Butler – Renga Poem – a poem in which the first poet writes the first three lines in seventeen syllables, then the second poet writes two lines containing seven syllables.
Gracie and JoJo are mine
Kasa is his
We are one family
loving our dogs
please love yours!
10 p.m. hour – Kim Johnson – Nonet – poem with nine lines, with each numbered line containing that many syllables and can be written in ascending or descending order
Cemetery Slap Fight
they got in a slap fight, those 3, right
in the cemetery over
their mother’s grave ~ she’d once said,
“over my dead body”
turns out she was right
……believing truth
was never
her strong
suit
September Poetry Marathon – Day 2 of 5
Today for the September Open Write, our host at http://www.ethicalela is Stacey Joy of California. You can read her prompt and her poem here and see the amazing Diamante form generator that will help you write your own Diamante poem. Today’s topic is food, but as I was reflecting on last night’s dinner, I chose Riesling as my topic.
Rhine grapes
light, refreshing
flavoring, fermenting, fulfilling
German white wine perfection
dinnering, relaxing, reading
citrusy, aromatic
Riesling
Continuing with Friday’s poetry marathon that I began sharing yesterday, here are some more poems from the 24 poems in 24 hours. I had other writers contributing as well. The first one was written by my stepson, who chose the word laughter to write an acrostic. I love his creativity and his random example of laughter right at the start!
1:00 pm hour – Andrew Johnson, Acrostic Poem – a poem in which the first letters of each line spell a word vertically, often defining or explaining the acrostic topic.
LAUGHTER
Little spontaneous
Alien pajamas
Universal expression
Good times had
Human experience
Topic of discussions
Emotion of healing
Right kind of feeling
2:00 pm hour – Shadorma – Kim Johnson – a Shadorma is a poem that has six lines with this syllable pattern: 3,5,3,3,7,5
Shaving Cream
shaving cream!
not just for shaving
but also
for cleaning
when little fingers write words
into the lather
3:00 pm hour – Abecedarian Poem by Boxer Moon – In an abecedarian poem, each line or stanza begins with the first letter of the alphabet and continues with letters in successive order, or the poet may take creative license and use the stitch-up feature that Boxer used, stitching the ends back to the beginning. I think he created a whole new form – a Circular Abecedarian! He not only wrote it forward, but also back up from the bottom, starting with A and working back up to Z. The man shows his genius in this Halloween poem.
All alone, Zombie of Me
Before Dawn, Your life will be.
Crackling bones, Xanthic Demon!
Demonic Songs, Why have you Chosen Me- Dreaming?
Every Breath a stone, Vicious Song!
For Here my Creature roams, Ugly rightful wrongs!
Gleaming with blood, Tomorrow I’ll retrace.
His eyes yellow with crud, So fast-paced.
Inside no love, Retreating from my space.
Just as teeth chatter, Quietly, I leave my place.
Keynotes of feelings matter, Pathogen thoughts infected.
Leave, oh please leave,—- Rejected!
My heart punctured and deceived- Neglected!
Neglected- My punctured heart grieved- dejected!
Or rejected- Leave, oh please, leave in the latter
Pathogen thoughts, Keynotes of life do not matter.
Quietly, shhhhhh! Justify my chatter…
Running, Ruining, my face! Inside without love
So fast-paced, His eyes yellow stained with crud!
Tomorrow I’ll retrace, Gleaming with blood.
Ugly vicious wrong! For my creature roams
Vicious, ugly, song. Each breath a stone
Why must we repeat this Demonic song?
Xanthic Demon, Crackling bones!
Your life is mine, Be.
Zombie of me, A me of Zombie?
– Boxer Moon
4:00 pm hour – Kim Johnson – Limerick – – a humourous rhyming verse of three long lines, then two short lines, with a rhyme scheme of aabba.
Goofy Schnoodle
A schnoodle who sleeps upside down
Is a goofily-schnoozing nap hound
He contorts in my chair
Chasing rabbit dreams there
Ollie chases those hares ‘round and ‘round!
5:00 p.m. hour – – Kim Johnson – Decima- a ten line poem with 8 syllables in each line, having rhyme scheme of abbaaccddc
Monster and Robber Spray
we used to have a can of spray
when you were but a wee youngster
to rid bad robbers and monsters
to keep those things of fear at bay
and chase those horrid scares away
together we would fill the air
of Lysol-labeled love and care
you thought it did the magic trick
better than any billystick
come near us? No monster would dare!
September 2023 Poetry Marathon Day 1 of 5
Today, Stacey Joy of California is our host for the September Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She is inspiring us to write odes today. I took inspiration from her poem and from Amy Van DerWater’s Dear Socks in writing an ode to the memories of my mother through the ways she still comes to me when I am missing her.
From Saturday through Wednesday, I will post the daily writing along with several other poems that were written during the poetry marathon I began yesterday morning at 8:00 a.m.. It ends at 8:00 this morning, and will contain one poem written each hour since then either by a friend/family member or by me. (Okay, I slept the night, but I wrote ahead and behind those hours of sleep because…..my meanness might have kicked in).
I’ll begin with today’s poem, written in the 6 a.m. hour, September 16, 2023: ODE – a poem of praise, often written directly to someone or something.
Memories of Miriam ~ An Ode – a poem of praise, often directly to a person or object
Dear Mom,
you come to me
in the missing
with tingly spots that
turn warm
in the heart,
help me exhale~ my
fingers circling my temples
bringing back
all the whens
of this Bernina
your fingers guiding
mine under the
foot, stitch by stitch
learning to sew
a lime green terrycloth
bathcover, now
sewing quilts
for your great grands
on your fine
Swiss machine
of hawks,
talons clutching wires
checking that
my seatbelt
is fastened
as I drive past,
shaking your pointing finger
if I forgot,
knowing that
whatever I’m
thinking at
that moment,
you’re there
in it
of strawberry figs,
last summer wave
just picked, my own
weakening fingers twisting
tender fruits free ~
canned this very
week, Mason jars
sealed tight
with summer’s
sweetened warmth
for coming winter
of spiced Russian tea,
the Tangy orange
and lemonade mixed
with clove, sugar
cinnamon and tea ~
a medicinal brush
of your invisible fingers
through my hair
in sore throat season
of rippled milkglass
with resurrection fern
springing to life
unfurling its brown
dry fingers
into open arms
green again
September 15, 2023 – The Kickoff – 8 a.m. hour – Kim Johnson
Haiku – a poem with three lines and seventeen syllables in 5/7/5 syllabicated lines
My Stir Stick
deep in the forest
a tiny tree takes root
reaches to sunlight
growing tall, falling
with a thud, destined to be
my coffee stir stick
September 15, 2023 – 9 a.m. hour – my son Marshall Meyer – Gogyoshi (a 5-line poem on any topic, and Marshall wrote two back to back gogyoshis, connected, about a recent fishing experience….and he wrote this within a half hour of when I requested a poem, which is what a poetry marathon experience is about – – birthing poetry meaningfully in a few intentional moments throughout the day). I’m so proud of him!
The experience is like no
other. The stalk and hunt is
on, wind and direction
matter. I’m in shin deep
water and the reds can feel
all vibrations.
Concentration is at an all
time high. Cast. The feel of
the exploding strike is like
no other.
September 15, 2023 – 10 a.m. hour – Found Poem by Kim Johnson – a Found Poem is a poem that is written by finding words on an existing page of print, lifting them out to stand alone as a poem. This one is taken from The Outsiders.
A Silent Moment
dawn mist
golden
gray to pink
a silent moment:
paint,
fresh in my mind,
like
nature’s flower;
down to day…
nothing can stay
September 15, 2023 – 11 a.m. hour – Jenga Poem – Kim Johnson
I let my son’s 9:00 poem inspire a title I found on a Jenga block and wrote this poem from the word blocks in my collection. To write a Jenga poem, select blocks and arrange them into a poem of words that stand alone or words that inspire lines mixed with your own words.
Casting a Line
choose your own
hopes for the future ~
murals unveiled:
ending or new beginning?
inspiring
another chance at life
every precious “breath”
how we have chosen
race against time
September 15, 2023 – Noon hour – Kim Johnson
Skinny – a poem with 11 lines, where first and last line repeat similarly in small number of words, and the rest of the lines have one word. Lines 2, 6, and 10 use the same word.
Owl
owl swoops down
gracefully
without
a
sound
gracefully
to
forest
ground
gracefully
owl swoops down
Ollie’s Day Out
We’ve recently switched veterinarians to lessen the stress and half-day production of traveling over to the next county and waiting and waiting and waiting our turn. Where we live in rural Georgia, there isn’t much of anything. Our county has a public school, a private school, maybe a dozen churches, a small private airport, 10 or 15 restaurants, a couple of medical facilities, a courthouse, some small businesses along the square and some larger ones farther out, a regional library and a town library, a coffee shop and bookstore, several little free libraries, a small grocery store, a couple of hardware stores, and a handful of convenience stores with gas stations. Oh yeah – – and about a half dozen Dollar Generals. Five small town limits are nestled within the county, and we are spread out in larger land tracts with rolling hills, meadows, dirt roads, and crooked wooden fences.
We drive out of our county to buy clothes, shoes, office supplies, and groceries. And we love Amazon, even for aspirin and shampoo.
That’s why we switched veterinarians. It wasn’t because we suddenly didn’t like the former vet or had some kind of falling out with the other practice. It was because this office has a hometown staff and we see them out together in the county eating at our local barbecue restaurant for lunch sometimes. We wanted to lessen our drive and not have to take a half day off work just to get a heartworm injection.
Also, about six years ago, Dr. Kelly allowed me to bring an adventure book club who’d just finished reading Finding Gobi to his office to go behind the scenes and see what veterinarians do. His office started as a house, then became a restaurant, and now welcomes pets for their healthcare.
Which was Ollie’s outing yesterday. He needed his 6-month heartworm test and ProHeart injection. We walked in to the office and were greeted by Hunter the minute we entered the room: Hey, Ollie, we have you all checked in, buddy!
We walked past the fireplace and the burning candle and took a seat in the room where the large mixed breed dog was not wallowing on his back all over the floor, kicking his feet up in pure joy like he didn’t know what was coming.
And we waited a few minutes, listening to the thunder and rain, looking out the windows, and breathing. Where else could there possibly be a more relaxing veterinary office?
Ollie gets momsick when they take him back for shots (like a preschooler) He started to go all tail-waggy, excited then turned in his tracks We love our new vet right in our own small hometown We love low windows!
A Strawberry Fig Visit
I picked the last of the figs yesterday, half at lunchtime when I was letting the dogs out and half after getting home from a day of work and a haircut. I was determined to make strawberry figs just like my mother always made at the end of each summer, when we’d put on aprons and each take a job of washing, chopping, and stirring in her kitchen.
Temperatures are finally out of the 90s, and the mornings are beginning their wee hour thermostat adjustment one little tap a week, it seems. When that happens, the figs that aren’t finished off by birds, butterflies, and squirrels – or picked before anything else gets them first – dry up like upside-down miniature deflated balloons hanging on the stems. I was able to reach enough remaining good figs for one last wave of canning for this season.
I found strawberries price-slashed on the clearance cart in our local grocery store and added a couple of two-pound boxes of cane sugar to my buggy.
My husband was off at a meeting, so it was only me and the strong presence of my mother in the kitchen washing, chopping, and stirring up strawberry fig memories together, steam rising and aromas swelling. And tears welling, as I think of all the things since December 29, 2015 that I want to tell her.
You have six great grandchildren now, Mom. Four boys and two girls. Aidan is an avid reader just like you, Sawyer loves science and nature, Saylor has ultra sass and is tougher than any of the boys, River loves to be barefooted in his backyard kayaking through the marsh and running with his three dogs, Beckham never likes wearing any clothes, and Magnolia Mae is only a month old and already a sweet little blossom rooted deep in southern culture, on her way to becoming another strong woman on your branch of the tree. Your three grandchildren are all on their feet, moving onward!
And my brother Ken is in love with his soul mate and she’s good for him, Dad needs you to tell him the answers (and how to let things go), and so do the rest of us. You’d love all three of our dogs that you never met. Your last words to dad – “You take care of these dogs” – assure me that you’d be proud to know that our Boo Radley, Fitz (short for F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (named for Mary Oliver) basically run the house so much that we call them our four-legged sons.
Thank you for teaching me the ways of your kitchen and giving me a love of strawberry figs that not everyone knows how to appreciate. As the autumn nears and passes and winter arrives, the warmth of toast laden with butter and slathered with strawberry figs will keep you here with me.
And I still need you, Mom.
Patriot Day Poetry
I was riding along Route 66 through Texas on vacation in June when the text came from my friend Melanie, who teaches in our Humanities pathway in our Ninth Grade Academy:
Those are the kinds of texts I love the most – when teachers invite me into classrooms to write alongside students. I met with Melanie when I returned, and we designed a plan. Our day was originally scheduled for yesterday, but we had to reschedule for today. We will write 9/11 Jenga block poems, and I will model a Nonet form to show how a poet might use visual shape to symbolize rebuilding and strengthening when all hope seemed lost.
A nonet is a poem with nine lines, containing each numbered line’s number of syllables on its line. It can be written in ascending or descending order – or both, and could even be read bottom to top if a poet decided to write it that way.
I got the idea for this form from Paul Hankins, who glues colorful letters of all different fonts onto different shapes of wooden blocks. He calls it Blockhead poetry when his students take the letters and arrange them into words, then put the words into poems.
I took the quicker way out and began purchasing sets of Jenga blocks and using whole words from magazines to put onto the blocks, and I’ve created sets on various themes such as Bloom! (gardening and growth words for National Poetry Month), poverty and genocide (two of our Humanities themes), and rural Georgia living, with words like pickup truck and dirt road. For today, I’ve created a set of 200 blocks to be used for 9/11 poetry. I’ve used them in all grades from Pre-K through 12, and with adults. Sometimes, we let a group of words inspire poems that take different forms. Sometimes, the words stand alone on lines as poems of their own. One time, we challenged ourselves to write Haiku with blocks alone and no added words.
I drafted a poem yesterday to show how students might select blocks as inspiration words. Here is my draft:
I spoke with Melanie yesterday. She was concerned that she hadn’t spent enough time building background knowledge on 9/11 to prepare for this writing but didn’t want to leave the task in the hands of a sub for such a sensitive topic. I think she made the right choice. I’m thinking that this may even have been a better approach – – because students will have seen the remembrance tributes yesterday and engaged in conversations with others. Perhaps in our initial disappointment that we’d had to reschedule the writing day, this blessing of time may have allowed students to gain greater awareness of the events in ways that laid a more meaningful foundation for us to begin.
I can’t wait to see what the students write, but more importantly, I can’t wait to write alongside them and watch their wheels turn as they make their block word choices. There’s something magical about writing, even in the midst of a topic of despair and pain.
That’s when the hope shines through.
Common Threads 