Ok maybe not pretty. But apropo.
Proud of those Puyallup Digital Learning Graduates!
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Mrs. Morgan/Ms. Ray
Mis Sonrisas
Each day
the sun rises gently,
with a whisper of deference,
and a shudder of
anticipation.
The implicit simplicity of manners
is not lost on the horizon
but beams happily up
from row after row after row after row after row after row...
each shaft of light
reflects a different image
here I see proud, strong, and cooperative,
now silly, sweet and secrective.
There is grinning and slouching
now alert, now drowsy.
Monkey faces, stretch their lips, twist their eyebrows
around their chubby cheeks.
Tappity tap--confused and frustrated: defeated becomes
clear, focused: victorious.
Sullen and silent, cell reorganization, chemical alterations
clear, sure, excitable wow!
Moving from a world of their own,
to my realm,
and back again.
Quite sure they won't miss a thing.
Quite happily, they are one energy.
When, as nature requires, the sun
sets...
I will ache with the wish to have given more to my sonrisas who only
stayed for a day.
CM 1997
Ok that is a weird start. My intention here is to share all of the poems I wrote about students over the past 20 years in the classroom that I felt really captured their essence.
Over the years, I have felt, rightly or not, that I know my students very well. I am honored when I read their essays or poems, or anything where their voice comes through. I feel it is similar to asking for a rock from Paris rather than a T-shirt.
I don't want gifts when friends and family travel, what I really want is a rock from their trip. I want them to be in a beautiful place, think of me, and pick up a rock from underfoot. Then I feel as if I was there.
similarly,
I want the students to give me something genuine from themselves, and that's what I wanted the most---more important to me on a human level than a formulaic essay or straight A work. It was the rocks my students brought me that helped me know them and celebrate them. And to me, that is the most important part of my work as an English teacher.
And in this blog, I will share my students with you.