Keep on truckin'

I'm still here!

I would like to announce that loud and clear everyone who cares. Life just gets busy sometimes.

So brief update:

1. I've graduated!
2. I'm teaching!
3. I'm surviving!

Now for all those debbie-downers out there who will be quick to point out that there is still six months left in the school year to survive, yes, I am quite aware of that fact. But so far, things are going great and there is nothing that I can foresee changing that. (Cross your fingers, ya'll).

Further updates:

• reading Frankenstein with my sophomores, progressing just how you can imagine sophomores appreciating Victorian literature. I've been pretty impressed with some, disheartened by others. The plan is to finish it by Christmas. So, if you have any AWESOME project ideas with Frankenstein, send them my way.

• just finished a WWI poetry unit with my juniors. They were pretty good about. Next up, short stories and the Roaring Twenties!

• American Imperialism with my U.S. history kids. It's been really fun to coincide my junior English and History classes. We investigated different views of Imperialism through poetry. BOOM! Cross-curricular awesome-ness.

• Seniors...boy. Seniors are hard. I remember being DONE with school. And I can only imagine that it's going to get worse as the year goes by. So...stick around for them.

Anyways, that is pretty much it! I think I am going to get back into the swing of things and blog more. I like it.

Till then,
Farewell.

Update: This is the 200th post! Wowza, folks! I'm prolific!

Glutten for Punishment

Oh hey there. It's been awhile. Astonishing how much time teaching takes. Well, we are getting close to the end and we are discussing poetry right now. As part of their assignment, I have asked the kids to pick a poem and memorize it. In the spirit of fairness, I decided to pick a poem to memorize as well. If only I had decided to memorize it a little sooner before the due date (i.e. tomorrow). Yes, I am the molder of young minds. Yes, I do procrastinate.
However, if I can pull it off then they have NO excuses.
Here is the poem.
The Pomegranate by Eavon Boland

The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell
and found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it
Ceres and Persephone the names
and the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.

As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants
I read it first and at first,
I was an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the Underworld, the stars blighted. Later,
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey scented buddelias
but I was Ceres then and I knew
Winter was in store for every leaf
And every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.

It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines
her can of coke, her plate of uncut fruit
the pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but
she reached out a hand and plucked a pomegranate

She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time the story was told,
 a child can be hungry. I can warn her. There is still a chance.

The rain is cold. The road is flint colored
The suburb has cars and cable television
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else can
a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?

If I defer the grief, I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold the papery flushed skin in her hand
And to her lips. I will say nothing.

Mountains. In. Color.

I found this picture in my camera. Utah may be frigid for months but it sure knows how to paint a mountain.
Stunning.
I can only imagine how it must have looked two hundred years ago before parking lots and all-night lighting. Can you imagine being the first person to have ever seen anything like this?
It's like physical poetry. If I was more creatively motivated, I'd compose a verse in honor of the mountains. But I am not that confident in my poetic soul. You will have to fill in where I have failed.
But seriously, what better muse could you have asked for?

Crystal Stairs

Mother to Son

by Langston Hughes

"Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair."
*from poetryfoundation.org

Life may not be a crystal stair...
but it's worth it.

Keep that in mind as school tries to take it out of you.
with loves,
Kiera