Early Daylight Saving Time and the Darkness Is Lifting

http://www.ymcaofgreatersyracuse.org/arts/programs.aspx?ac=141

As I have mentioned in my brief blogging in the past months, I have been coping with a rough road. Redefining my career twice in 5 years has taken its toll, particularly as I am, as in the sage words of my dear friend Cathy Gibbons, basking in my late 50s and fearful of the vulnerability I face in a multitude of ways, not just in aging. I loved my work with Partners for Arts Education and I have loved my work in schools, for the most part. But this last couple of years of cobbling things together, hinging so much of it on the hope that Our Difficult Sunlight would translate into miraculous opportunities to deepen that work, I am seeking focus and stability. I need to find ways to continue doing what I do well and to support myself while fostering my work and identity as a poet.

I love everything I am involved with, most particularly my work with the Downtown Writers Center and the Comstock Review. I have been scattered over much of 2012 and now I feel there is more solid ground, I am clarifying my focus and commitment to both. One is a job, one is a volunteer act of love. The job is part time so, satisfying as it is, it is only a portion of what I need to keep the wolves at bay. I am working on additional income that is reliable, satisfying, and close to home.

I love working in schools but I am weary of it, all the stress, the travel, the negotiation, the ways I have to always be ready to shift in the immediate, the walking into classrooms that are unprepared for my lessons, the compressing a carefully designed program into half the time the process of learning actually requires. I do like the teachers (mostly), the students (mostly), the ways I learn more about teaching, and I love sharing my passion. I also love the checks when they arrive. I just am exhausted by it all, after 13 years of pursuing it as a career. And I am tired of being a living "Where's Waldo" book for my family and friends. I see much of the sacrifice that this career has entailed as well as the gains.

The real issue is that I have known my identity most of my life, at least since 3rd grade. I am a poet. I am relentlessly committed to that truth, even in the quiet decade in which I did not write and my faith was seriously challenged. But the words came back, as I had prayed. In the 20 years since, I have published consistently, with a chapbook, two complete volumes, and the textbook all in print. I have another collection being considered by a publisher now (I asked if he wanted first rights of refusal but am hopeful). I am working on two other collections of poetry that I am really excited about, a food memoir that is languishing somewhere in files on my computer, and now I know I am ready to start the notes that will result in a book on the craft of this confounding, amazing art form that is the spine of my soul.

There was a moment in the quiet time of my 30s to early 40s when I knew that I was being delivered back to the channel that results in poetry. No one but me would be able to decipher the difference. It was a cellular memory of what translating experience into image and language feels like. But now, I am experiencing another deepening of that jolt in the work I am producing. There is a maturity of craft that has come through years of teaching others what I believe about poetry and expression. It helps that I teach people in so many circumstances with such a wide range of age and skill. I have to make it tangible for anyone.

But the poems are surprising me. That is a great thing. They are mirroring to me how much I have embraced the notion that we teach what we want to learn. I hear and see the influence of all the poets I have taught as examples echoed in the images that unfold before me as I strive for the best word and challenge every syllable to earn its right to be spared the slash of my revision pen. I see complexity without obscurity. I hear musicality that makes me wonder where it even came from. The poems are in control and I am a diligent listener as well as servant.

I am close to solving the income problem but I also have the pining to spend my days just reading and writing and pondering and doing all those things that make a poet's life. Instead, I am sneaking things in around the obligations, even this blog post, and somehow getting books written, the bills paid once again, and seeing family and friends more frequently. I even have a dog. I think the spring will bring more growth, stronger roots, and maybe cause for celebration.   

   

Every Line of Poetry Is Discovery

Over the past year or so in my teaching work, I have found myself most wanting to impart the joy of discovery that writing can be to my students. Writing is an astounding identity, also ripe with reasons to doubt oneself, grow increasingly frustrated, or simply ache for the time to rest within oneself long enough to hear what needs to be captured. Sometimes I feel I am really just catching butterflies.

This afternoon, I finished reading James Longenbach's The Art of the Poetic Line. Longenbach's book is one of the notable Graywolf series of books on craft, genre, and prosody. At a later point in this treatise, he proferred a thought that echoed what I have been attempting to communicate to my students of all ages:

Whatever shape it takes, this kind of movement is what makes a poem feel like an act of discovery rather than an act of recitation - an event that happens on the page rather than a recounting of an event that happened prior to the page. Lineation is a powerful tool for creating such movement, but not because a poet chooses simply to write pentameter lines or syntactically complete lines or no lines at all. What matters within any particular formal decorum is variation: the making of pattern along with the simultaneous disruption of pattern...This kind of movement - the establishment of a formal decorum in which even the smallest variation from it feels thrilling - is what makes the act of reading a poem feel like the act of writing a poem. It is what makes a poem an experience we need to have more than once, an act of discovery that is contingent not simply upon what we learn but on the temporal process of discovering how it feels to learn again what we've always known.
                               [pg. 112-113, The Art of the Poetic Line, Graywolf, 2008]

I repeatedly remind my students to ask themselves, "What is the rush?" There is a lot at stake: the difference between an adequate poem and something that is magical or striking. We must strive for the latter. There are those who are similar to production potters; the goal is to crank out as much as possible. I admire the truly prolific poet but if the goal is to get the poem done in order to take on the next and the next and the next, is the poet truly sitting within the work to discover its fullest capacity?

It is not uncommon, as an editor of a literary journal, to see potential that the poet has missed, that may be accomplished with simple edits as well as looking at different possibilities for line ends, enjambment, tighter language, even reordering stanzas and lines. There is a rush to be done and get the poem out the door. Many poems are close to hitting the mark but this ain't horseshoes.

James Tate once spoke to a group of writers at the Asheville Poetry Festival; I believe it was 1995. Among the indelible comments he made that day was his belief that a poem should take a grand journey that, when over, we ask, "How did I get here?" but in looking back at the poem, the route is completely obvious.

We cannot intend or plan much of what comprises a great poem. Last night with a new class of adult writers, I discussed how I consider our creative work in this way: this is a journey; the bus is being driven by the piece. I am riding shotgun holding the map. The readers will be seated in back, going along for the ride, trusting the poem and me well enough to believe that we will arrive at a destination proving it was worth their time. The poem is the driving force of everything. And everything is important, every choice is critical, right down to the smallest shift in punctuation. No one proved that as clearly as Lucille Clifton in her magnificent, stark poem, dialysis. When originally published, as it appears in Blessing the Boats, the last line, Blessed be even this? is a chilling question. When I heard Ms. Clifton read this poem upon release of the collection, she read it as published and then she read it as she had grown to understand its meaning: Blessed be even this. More than once I have said Ms. Clifton is the kind of woman I want to be when I grow up.

Today, a friend wished me the opportunity for joy. I would love to resume joy as a way of being, the way Ms. Clifton taught by example. In a small step of accommodating that wish, I chose to slow down from everything else to immerse in my own poetry for the evening. I sat on my deck with my work, my computer, my iced tea, the cardinals' shrill chirps punctuating the forgiving hour. I worked until I could no longer read my new edits on poems from 2011 and the crickets were tuning up. I pushed stanzas around like wheelbarrows. I chopped lines like wood to see the rings. I found places to trim and advantageous enjambments. I threw other language from the poems entirely.  I also submitted five poems for consideration, beating a deadline in the process. I was poet first and all the other identities had to wait.

The mosquitoes were hiding around my ankles to escape the bats. It was time to come in.    
   

The Art of Lifelong Learning

I have been working steadily as an educator now 11 years, some of it very frustrating, most of it joyous. I will teach in any setting, will work with any age group, and the size of the group matters not a whit to me. If I can share the information I have cultivated and the passion I feel for writing, language, reading, and learning, I will do it. Often I even am paid for my instruction and that is becoming more and more a precedent, which is a good thing since this is my career.

In school settings, particularly in the one district that I served for 6 years, I was frequently scheduled to work with what I refer to as reluctant learners. Other times, I was placed in "special ed" classes in which students mostly had emotional issues and/or learning disabilities, I assume with the hope (or even expectation) that I would not only address skills needed to bring scores up on the standardized assessment tests but also perhaps excite the students. Now, those who work in education understand the delicate balance of special ed: there is often additional funding to provide the support, even if just a small budgetary asset, so that is a potential plus; the other side of the seesaw is that those students labeled with special needs will test lower and bring the overall rating of the school down (and, thus the teachers who may face evaluation and public scrutiny in the process). This will affect funding, faculty assignments, sometimes even the fate of the entire school. These are very high stakes.

I am not sure what happened with my work in that district overall. There was never any formal assessment of my work, which leads me to believe that there was a certain disconnect with the value of what I was developing to meet the needs of improved literacy as well as English Language Arts proficiency. I had hoped that there would be a tracking of the students, some of whom I met in elementary school, taught again in middle, and then in the high school. I was hoping to not only further develop my pedagogy but prove that it had merit. We never did the pre- and post-tests. There was no step to that higher level of documentation and observation. On the one hand, I had tremendous freedom in my work, often tailoring my lesson planning to specific classroom needs and requests from the teachers themselves so that was the upside. The downside is I have no data to indicate my effectiveness. I can only hope. 

In that district, I worked annually in five schools: two elementary, two middle, and the one high school. Add to this schedule the other districts where I gained contracts, plus my adult education, and a single class at the college level, and I determined that I was teaching an average of 2000 individuals a year. Most of those students were before me for an average of 3 - 5 contact sessions.

I have been observing that the philosophy of lifelong learning is fading over the horizon. Even with adults, the idea of being a learning machine is not prevalent. We are a goal-oriented society much more than we invest in the value of process. In the college level course as well as the adult writing workshops I facilitate frequently, I have discovered an attitude that I refer to as consumer-based education; in other words, "I am paying for this so you have to teach me what I want and the way I want you to teach it." I find this frustrating.

The idea that an experienced educator, or even expert in one's field, would determine how they best can convey the knowledge to the student who does not yet have it is not valued, particularly once one has presented a check or a credit card number to pay the course fee. Often, the student wants to decide how much they can be asked to read, to produce, and how the course should be structured. Just as often, the paying student does not even fully understand the nature of the course he or she has signed up for after reading the 30-word blurb in a brochure but still wants the course to meet some preconceived idea of what they will be experiencing. Additionally, some (albeit a very small minority) can be quite vocal about their perceived needs and expectations, even confrontational.

The word I use more and more often about the process of writing is discovery. I want students to discover what the poem wants to be, to discover the wonder of a great line, or the sound of the vowels, or the subconscious metaphor in their work. I want them to be curious rather than exacting. I want them to be patient in letting the work unfold, knowing that there is no deadline in creating a good piece of writing. Deadlines only apply to homework and publishing.

Racking up a pile of adequate poems is far less important that lolling about with a new work and striving for the best word, the most advantageous line end, a new stanza configuration, all with the goal of creating something magical, or even important. What does it matter if a writer spends an hour rearranging a new piece to see what will be implied in the process? After all, isn't that part of the joy of being a writer, playing with language to discover all its potential and impact?

If I ask a class of adults at the beginning of each session, "How was your week as a writer?" I am suggesting that they take the time from all their other obligations, duties, and distractions to honor that part of their selves, their identities. It is no frivolous query. Yet, sometimes those adult students balk at the question, shy from it, and then complain about it on my evaluations. They are looking to get a particular set of teachings or experience, mostly "What do you think about my poem?" rather than "What can I learn about being a poet?"

I am never complacent about my work. I demand a great deal from myself. I read other poets and read about poetry regularly, I talk with other writers, I experiment, and I push myself to grow, to never believe I know all there is to know about the art. I have determined that I know a fair amount and that I have a certain level of skill that I am now becoming comfortable in, even confident. I know I have a viewpoint that is worthy of sharing. I have also discovered that a classroom full of seemingly cranky 5th graders will often be more open to discovery than any number of adults. This is so in adult writing workshops and in teacher in-services. It is sad that we only want what we think we need. We want praise and a list of "how to's" rather than being willing to let the instructor be the driver and to sit back and enjoy the ride, while discovering that there is a new landscape beyond our own knowledge and expectation.  In the interest of discovery, I rarely forecast what I will be teaching. I am resistant to syllabi, and equally resistant to rubrics.

I teach what I want to learn. I learn more every day so I can teach it better. I love my work but I do wish that every student enters a class because they are more interested in process than product. The product will come. This much I know. Now to convince the customer.

Goodbye 2011 - It's Been Good to Know Ya!

Every year, I find the transition from one year to the next unsettling. Perspectives change just in the passage of a day into another year. It is odd. This year, Samoa is losing a whole day as they switch to a time zone that is more in keeping with their primary trade partners. That is how elusive and malleable time is, because it is an arbitrary construct that suits the mood of humanity more than the cycles of the moon or the turn of the seasons. Time makes things convenient and provides agreement among our species, as well as conflict and guilt. This is proven every time we are late for any appointment.

The end of the year is the review time for many of us. I enter every year saying, "Next year is my turnaround time...the challenges will ease...I will make my breakthrough to stability..." Then, each year gives me many blessings and a wrath of challenges to adjust to as I journey through the calendar.

As I entered 2011, I was extremely optimistic. I knew it was the year that Our Difficult Sunlight was going to be released, after 3 years in the making. I appreciate Teachers & Writers Collaborative for publishing the book, taking the risk on our proposal. 

This book was going to open many doors and further my career, as well as provide new opportunities for my coauthor, Quraysh Ali Lansana. Somehow and with many bumps and trials, the book was made manifest, starting as a thought and a list of ideas nearly 6 years ago. It is a remarkable accomplishment. What I did not anticipate was that promoting it was going to be so dependent on the efforts of Q and myself. But we know how to do that. We have been promoting our own books of poetry for years. So we rolled up our sleeves and got busy. Most of our promotional efforts is through personal contacts and the internet; we are building our market and the books are getting into the hands of those who benefit from our pedagogy, even if at a slower pace than we anticipated. 

I have lost one of my major contracts in the 2011-12 school year due to the impact of the economy on school districts. It is a travesty what our leaders is permitting and actually orchestrating in the realm of American education. I could go on for a long time about this issue. I Tweet about it regularly. And now it affects me directly.

With the rug pulled out from under me again, I have been scraping together what I can to get through these past 6 months until I could redefine my work profile and recreate the sources of income to replace that work now gone. I have been in a dark place in all of this but I have also responded by stretching beyond the boundaries I have previously recognized or created. What has come of that is a confidence in my work and capacity that I did not possess before this. I see myself as a mature artist with a body of work as a foundation that gives me pride and a hope for all the new work that is lined up in my brain and in various files on my computer like planes on the tarmac at O'Hare.

I am 2 months behind on almost all of my bills. I am shuffling funds to meet the most crucial need any given day and sometimes arguing with bill collectors as to why I cannot agree to their suggestions for the payments they want at that moment. I have found that if the employees on the other end of the line are American, they almost always understand my frustrations. They live here and they are talking to hundreds of people like me every week. I will get through. I know this. When I am most frightened, I remind myself that I will get through because I am resourceful, resilient, and relentless. And because I always have...why would it change now?

I have a wonderful part-time job working at the Downtown Writer's Center as workshop coordinator. I follow in the footsteps of Jennifer Pashley in this role and hold a hearty commitment to this organization, now in its 11th year. I have taught there since the beginning and now we are planning for new programs that will continue to build that community of writers in the Central NY region. I also continue to teach there, which is a delightful experience in supporting other writers achieve their own capacity. After all, we teach what we want to learn!

Quraysh and I developed a number of trainings throughout 2011 that were exhilarating as they unfolded, including a day with educators at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum last winter. We attended several conferences to offer panels and workshops, all of them a tremendous success. We met many teachers and teaching artists who are striving to connect with our nation's youth throughout the country and in spite of the many limitations. We celebrate them all for their efforts.

We both visited colleges and universities to share the book and our own creative work as poets. I look forward to many more opportunities in the realm of higher education. But I am very grateful for those thus far, especially our trip to the University of New Haven, and my visit to Waynesburg University this fall.

We have applied for a nomination for an NAACP Image Award. We have so many to thank for this past year for welcoming us and helping promote our book. We are hoping for much recognition and continued support of our book to develop and grow its market, now that the snowball has started its roll down from the mountaintop. We will endeavor to find ways of sharing our pedagogy, as presented in ODS and, hopefully, we will realize great success for the efforts.

I am personally hoping for several other opportunities for which I have made application. I am often reminded by my dear friend, Dale Davis, of the advice of the great Al Poulin, founder of BOA Editions, Ltd.; she tells me that Al would often say that you have to launch many balloons into the air. At some point, the more options one pursues, the more likely success will unfold. Then we must also remember: it is a waiting game as well. To wait with optimism and accepting that I am of the caliber of candidate for any grant, fellowship, consulting gig, or other career opportunity but without attachment to the outcome in the waiting. This is the most difficult aspect of facing the future. 

School projects start in a couple of weeks. I will return to one of my favorite schools, the Watkins Glen Middle School. I will also be introduced to two new schools in Horseheads, NY, in a collaborative arts-in-ed project with the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, NY. This is a gem of a cultural experience in a small city, a surprise and a treasure trove of art.

I am also creating programming with the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY, another fabulous museum and arts community in another small city. Art is everywhere and often undervalued, but, like school reform, another lengthy and emotional discussion.

I also continue with my efforts as managing editor of the Comstock Review. I have been very tardy in the publishing schedule as I learn how to integrate this important job into my life but we have come through our 25th anniversary and I am planning for the future while I catch up on the backlog. I only hope that all the poets will continue to be patient and forgive for the delays. I also anticipate that the quality of the issues will be satisfaction enough. I am proud of our journal and it is an honor to facilitate the publication of so many talented writers. Here's to many more years but that, again, is a lengthy discussion regarding building that future and all that it involves. 

I have other projects that are brewing, other potential sources of income and career development. I will repeat my New Year's rituals of meditation in the 30 minutes leading up to the turn at midnight from one reality to the next. I will ring the bell 108 times, as I have been doing since I first visited the West Coast and sat in the zendo at the Hartford Street Zen Center in the late 1980s. Then I will take all of the little prayer requests I have written and placed in a special receptacle throughout the year and burn them in my chiminea with some lavender and rosemary. I will release my fears and disappointments and petition the universe to move me forward and answer my prayers. I will wake later that morning feeling refreshed and I will continue to put one foot in front of the next as I progress through the year. Here's hoping...my fingers are crossed...

I am filled with gratitude for the countless blessings of this year, too many to cite here but clearly cataloged in my gratitude journal and etched on my heart. This miracle of life, even at its darkest, astounds me.

Thanks for reading my blog throughout this year and I hope you will continue to return. Please share my link with friends. Consider purchasing Our Difficult Sunlight, either for yourself or for a friend who teaches. I am entrenched in the progressive education reform tweeting world. Find me on Twitter if you do that sort of thing: @gappoet. It is always a spirited exchange!

Have a happy and safe New Year. Be well in all ways. Have a happy and safe New Year. I will see you in 2012. Proceed and be bold. I will see you in 2012.

Another friend of mine from high school has recently connected with me via Facebook. For several days we have been sending let's catch up on the past four decades notes back and forth. It turns out that, after all this time, my friend has been living just 2 hours further west on I-90. Who knew?!

He asked a curious question about my work in the latest note: How old are the kids you teach writing? They are so all wired into their phones and texting. Is it hard to get past this? 

My response: I tell them that I ask them to put the media away, especially the phones, because my thumbs start to itch when I see them texting and my phone is off. I text a lot. It is convenient and often efficient. Generally the students are quite surprised that I text. Ms. Popoff!!! You really text?! 

It's true. In spite of my age and obvious corniness, I am a relentless texter. Students are extremely dependent on their phones and IPods. Instead of passing notes, they text. They also think we adults don't see what they are doing or are too old to understand. I like breaking their presumption with my reality. And then, sometimes the best way to engage the students in the poem is to ask them to "translate" it into text language. There is a different code for our kids to use to individualize and keep us out of their business. I guess mine was Pig Latin, though I never knew why it was called that.

Kids have to have their own code, their own connection, in all things, language, art, music, clothing, hair styles. Most outgrow rebellion, although I don't know that I have done so very well.

I can understand middle and high schoolers being self-focused but I often wonder why my college students are not more involved in politics. I think my peers' awareness has just a little bit to do with the fact that my generation, including my friend with whom I have been reunited, sat in front of a television to endure the Draft Lottery that would seal the fate of so many. It could literally be the difference between life and death. Sometimes I tell the story of the first Lottery and what it meant to all of my generation, as well as our parents. Perhaps it is that the Civil Rights era now seems like a successful mission to many who want to believe the myth of Post-Racial America. Perhaps I just ran with a unique crowd.

As I stated to my friend, we were unusual young people. The majority of our crew were artists in some medium or another and continued that journey into adulthood. Some of us are also educators in some capacity. We were movie addicts, we made art, we attended a lot of music events, we spent afternoons voluntarily at the Everson Museum of Art in downtown Syracuse. We had long hair then, both genders. Some of us still do.

And we are the first of the electronic age that morphed from television. We have cell phones and computers. We tweet. And we reunite on Facebook to look back at another generation that wants so much to be relevant and connect. A poem is no obstacle to me in that... 

The Natural Rhythms of Summer and a Foreboding Forecast

It has been a rough-n-tumble summer, given the huge impact of the current state of the nation and how it will affect everything, most certainly how it will hobble the world of education. I am piece-mealing my way through the summer months with some freelance work and a bit of teaching here and there. It has been cause for anxiety and a lot of soul searching. The cloud banks on the horizon are ominous and tunneled for most of us, not the least of whom the art educators like me, working independently and without a net. We are quite vulnerable, even more so than we have known previously.

But this afternoon I am curiously at ease all of a sudden. I have been in deep self-examination since May, no stone unturned. At times it has been a fire walk. I have managed to achieve a great deal of clarity.  I have taken a magnifying glass to my reasons for the career path I have chosen. In spite of the disruptions of our current economic and political climate, I believe that this is the work I should be doing.  I will persevere. 

I experienced a lengthy poetic quiet time. It lasted throughout much of the 80s and into the early 90s. In the silence of my pen, I invested a significant course of study in my spiritual understanding, learning principals of metaphysics. Poetry had fulfilled my spiritual need throughout my life until my early 30s, when the words ran dry in the face of constant frustration and roadblocks to living my truest identity as poet. It was a crisis of faith and I searched for understanding. This was equally frustrating since the questions, I have discovered, are often confounding, rarely answered and, if somehow there is an answer, it is  generally anything but concrete.

I had a caring teacher who opened me to an understanding of healing and connection that is based in faith and intuition, the metaphysical realm of being that became an even stronger part of who I am in all ways. Rev. Joan D. Lee had a classroom in the basement of her suburban split ranch that served as a conduit to community in so many ways. There are countless ones such as myself who have reasons to honor and thank Joanie for all she presented to us, the keys to our knowledge, faith, and talents, that we then used to open a multitude of doors. For many of us, we embraced our life work. Our circle grew quite wide.

Rev. Joan has been on my mind this week, as is generally the case in August. It is her birthday month. We are no longer in touch. I knew that her husband of 55 years, Raymond Lee, made his transition this past winter. I wondered how she was going to get by. Joanie didn't drive.

This morning, as is my habit, I checked the obituaries on line. There was a notice with Joanie's name, stating that she passed into the Light on July 17th. I gasped. Then I offered my gratitude and bid her well in her journey. Thank you, Joan, for opening my eyes to my own capacity at a time when I needed both a mirror and a guide. Tonight I will light a candle in the garden for both Ray and Joan. I will place it between my two rose bushes that struggle on in their bed with not enough sun. I wonder who will inherit your rose beds. Will they understand how much you loved them? How long they have danced their seasons for you?

During my poetic quiet time, I learned much, including a healthy regard for the quiet times; an artist needs them. I also reflected often to the universe, If I may be of service with my words, please allow me to have them back. That was 17 years ago.

In these 17 years, I have created my life based on my true self, the one I knew intimately when I was first comprehending that I loved words. I am a poet. I take this very seriously. 

In those 17 years, I have built a pedagogy and a sound practice that may be summed up in a 3-word motto: Empowerment through Language. I thank my friend Amanda Gormley for assigning the task that led to this summary. I have also written and published three books. There are at least four in my brain right now, waiting for my fingers to translate them into written language. One of them carries the title Psychometry. I will dedicate it to Joan.

In my work as a writer educator, no matter the age or circumstance of the students before me, I approach my work with intention and integrity. I have no agenda other than to foster the ability of others to engage truly with themselves, with others, and with their own connection to language, and earn a living sharing the knowledge and perspective I have developed over the 50 years I have identified as poet. I hope that what I have to say has relevance to others. I hope that people will cross more bridges of understanding the poets of the world provide to us all so we may learn of the world beyond the small stamps we each create on this planet. 

This is a devoted path. It is my life. And now I trust that the recognition for my work will be expressed in a way that I am able to continue to earn my living and build some sense of security I do not have now.

It is a bit intimidating but we are all faced with fears in this moment in history. It is a crossroads for us all, one way or another. The horizon may appear dark but the sun is always just beyond, sometimes just beyond reach as well. But honor your belief in the sun. It is a constant.

Back in the Saddle

Now that I am fully supporting as a poet, editor, and teaching artist, my cycles are revealing themselves. The summers have become a period of reading and writing, for the most part. I can spend time on the front porch or the back deck, especially because my wireless router provides mobility. Autumn is when I teach a discussion seminar, Viewing the World through Changing Lenses, for the Renee Crown Honors Program at Syracuse University and generally a course or two for the Downtown Writer’s Center. Then, in late fall, my work in schools begins and I am back on the road through the spring blossoming.

This fall I had a terrific experience with all three classes while I also completed the revision and finer edits with Quraysh Ali Lansana on our book, Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, & Social Justice in Classroom & Community, which will be available from Teachers & Writers Collaborative in February 2011. The Honors course included nine very talented college students with a tremendous commitment to themselves and the learning process. The DWC courses were equally fulfilling; both for adult writers, one was an intro to poetry and the second was an advanced workshop for poets who have engaged in the DWC PRO Certification Program. Since I live by the motto, “teach what you want to learn,” immersion in the craft and facilitating the exploration of two groups of writers gave me reason to keep myself sharp at all times. Best part is that, now that Our Difficult Sunlight is completed, I can go back to the pile of poems that have been sorely neglected and perhaps finish several book projects.

I also had a quick turnaround trip to Orlando early Thanksgiving week to join a panel of remarkable colleagues to present a post-conference intensive workshop for the National Council of Teachers of English. This day focused on the power of writers in the classroom and it was an honor to be invited to share my perspective as an independent teaching artist. I do wish I had been able to attend more of the conference because there were countless workshops I would have loved to sit in on as well as network with teachers while soaking up the Disney brainwashing.

After Thanksgiving, I packed up the suitcase and the car trunk and hit the highway for my first residency of the 2010 – 2011 school year. What an amazing 10 days with middle schoolers. I was invited into a wider variety of classes this year, my sixth in visiting this school. I was with literacy classes to support stronger reading and writing skills, standard English classes, enriched English classes with advanced students, and several self-contained special education classes. We did so much together. Some of the students worked with my premise of reading poems as if engaged in a video game. Other classes were writing memoir poems utilizing a framework of “Six-Word Memoirs.” Still others were creating persona poems, one class even developed their personas in response to completing S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. This also meant I finally read the novel myself so I could ask pertinent questions. Although this novel is often assigned reading for young people, my secondary education preceded its popularity. But now I have still another tool in my work.

I get to be so creative in this arena. I become not just educator or poet but Game Master, storyteller, confidant, even inspiration sometimes. The only part I don’t love is disciplinarian but there are times when it is necessary. Boundaries must be maintained for the good work to happen. I will outline a few of my favorite moments with these young minds next week. For now, I am nursing the cold that followed me home through the snow last Friday, the general outcome of my return to K-12 classrooms year after year. It is such a rewarding career, one that took me most of my adulthood to achieve. I feel valuable and fulfilled, and quite sniffly.

Living as a Lifelong Learner

Everything I know about teaching I have learned through my experiences in the classroom. Sometimes these lessons are due to trial and error. Other skills are the result of my continual professional development that is the result of the example of the terrific teachers I work with year after year. Every teacher gives me something that I can use not just with their students but with other classes as I continue in this work as a teaching artist.

This morning, one of my host teachers gave me a very simple suggestion that will make my lessons so much more student driven and meaningful for us all. She suggested from her experience in the past few years that, when asking a question, give the students a few moments to discuss the question in peer partnership. Students are often sitting with partners or in small groups. Allowing a short exchange to discuss theories and responses before bringing their thoughts to the collective, and the "authorities" at the front of the class makes so much sense. This creates a learning environment that is much more student driven. The other thing I sensed is that it reduces some of the "performance anxiety" some students may feel in answering a question.

None of us wants to be wrong, particularly in a public forum. We are embarrassed if we wave to someone thinking it is someone we know, but we are mistaken. Taking the risk to answer a question in front of peers may be very challenging for some students so they may withdraw. This is even more plausible with a teaching artist since there needs to be the time to create safety in sharing between students and visitor. I will be using this approach from hereon in. I look forward to observing how my discussions progress from the effort. I think there is tremendous opportunity for even more exciting responses and perhaps I will not have to "pull" so much from students. They will be ready to share their ideas because they will already have taken them for a test drive.