Poetic reflection from my day with Hill Central Academy...

Yesterday, teachers at Hill Central Academy in New Haven, Jason Courtmanche of UCConn, and I initiated a conversation about writing at their K-8 school across grade levels and subject areas. Mr. Glen Worthy, the principal, deserves to be commended for his active participation and involvement with the teachers throughout the afternoon, as does his literacy team who stepped up during our time together. I'm also mightily impressed with the student writing that came my way through a prompt I sent to them last week. Lots of written communication, wham, just like that. A first step is building community. Writers need to belong and be part of something beyond the self (although selfishly writing is good, too).

At the end of day teachers broke up into groups and responded to a similar prompt that their students reflected upon. Why Write? has been my essential question for many years. As they wrote, I realized I also needed to write, too. So, I took the white board that was filled with my group's ideas and scribbled this fast, found poem. The words came from their discussion of adapting to the language of Common Core State Standards.

Much more to come.

Word, we are the transitions,
in a position to 
motivate the roads ahead...
supporting our claims until we are dead
in styles informally formal, 
formally informal,
where the writing processes are explored.

We teach & cannot be ignored,
bridging out-of-school words
with in-school skills that get swirled
in curriculum.

Wee hoo. Ho. Hum...
ain't none of us dumb
cuz we put our thumbs up
to academic language and words
(with #'s & vocabulary
we become birds ready to fly to the moon).

We'll get there eventually,
probably pretty soon,
but in the mean time we'll be a hot mess.