Slice of Life- So Much Depends…

Almost twenty years ago (or maybe yesterday?), I had the privilege of studying with Don Graves in the doctoral program at the University of New Hampshire. I will never forget walking into Don's study for the first doctoral seminar. Don sat in a big swivel chair at his desk, laptop open. He pulled a piece of writing off the printer and said something like, "And so we begin…" With that, he passed out the first one pager of the semester.

One pagers, it seemed, were a trademark feature of the UNH doctoral program. Every week, for pretty much every class, we wrote 1-1.5 page responses to our reading. And I know it doesn't sound like much, but sometimes, maybe most of the time, one pagers were really hard work for me. Don's class was on Tuesday, and I would often spend 8-10 hours on Sunday or Monday agonizing over what I was going to write (I was always a little shocked when I would talk to a classmate on Monday night at 9, and they still had not written their one pager for our Tuesday morning class- for me that would have meant pulling an all nighter!). Don believed that the one pagers were an opportunity for people to process and distill their thinking before they came to class. He commented one time that he thought that our class discussions were at a much higher level because we had written before we were allowed to talk. Often class opened with Don sharing his writing, and then we would break into small groups or partners and share ours. 

What shocked me the most about one pagers, however, was that all of the professors- Don, Tom Newkirk, Jane Hansen- wrote right along with us. They truly believed that teachers should never ask students to do what they were not willing to do themselves.

I have carried that big truth with me for the past twenty years. Teachers need to be writers. Teachers should never ask their students to do anything that they are not willing to do themselves. I've written with graduate students. I've written with first and second graders. And this year, I have written a heck of a lot with my fourth graders.

Right now, for example, we are doing an integrated unit on renewable and nonrenewable energy sources. As one of last week's lessons, we were supposed to write poetry about fossil fuels. My kids have read and written tons of poetry this year. Several weeks ago, I read LOVE THAT DOG, and then HATE THAT CAT. I also introduced them to a new poetry book FORGIVE ME, I MEANT TO DO IT, by Gail Carson Levine,  and since then, much of their writing seems to have taken on a William Carlos Williams flavor. He's not a poet I probably ever would have thought of sharing with them, but they could definitely have chosen much worse mentors. Then, for a reason totally unknown to me, they are especially interested in acrostic poems. I don't remember ever reading them an acrostic poem, or showing them how to write them, but they are all the rage. Last week, when we wrote notes for Secretaries' Day, many of them wrote acrostic poems. After I explained to them that you had to choose words that actually went with the topic, they actually turned out pretty well.  So again, we will go with it. 

Anyway, as I was saying, last week the kids were supposed to write poems about fossil fuels. I decided I would write a couple also. One is a William Carlos Williams take off. The other is an acrostic. I opened our workshop by reading my two poems, then we did a shared reading of an article about fossil fuels. My ten-year-olds read with a pencil in hand, marking important phrases and ideas they wanted to include in their poems. Afterwards, they wrote alone or with partners- they weren't required to write William Carlos Williams or acrostic poems, but almost all of them did.

Here are my poems:

“Our Earth”

So much depends

Upon

Coal oil gas

underground

Fossil fuels

Waiting

To be used up.

Nonrenewable.

Carol Wilcox

For millions of years

Old plant and animal remains

Squashed deep underground

Squeezed tightly

Into rock

Layers and layers underground.

Furnishes coal, oil, and natural gas

Used 80% of the time

Energy for our cars and houses

Leaves its mark on Mother Earth,  people.

Should be more careful.

And here are a few of theirs.

   Greenhouse

caRs use fossil fuels

    Earth is getting warmer

    Energy for us to use

    No food for us.

    Hurricanes kill living things.

    Other places are hot and dry.

  SUn's heat we use

    Sea levels rise.

 IcE melting away.

     JV

Pollution affects things that are energy

Oil, coal, gas

Leaves carbon dioxide in the air

Leaves warm air around the earth

Usually ice melts

Trouble for polar bears

Ice melts in the Arctic

Ocean is warmer

Need to be careful of the earth.

"This is Just to Say"

This is just to say

I made a lot of pollution

to kill the Earth.

That was not nice.

Forgive me.

I like driving cars.

JL, AO, JV

"Greenhouses"

Greenhouses keep

all the heat

inside

so plants can grow.

And that's good.

But the greenhouse effect

it's also bad

because all that heat

close to the surface

melts glaciers

And that floods the earth

And then a lot of people die

And people die

of hunger

because all that water

spoils the crops.

DS

Robert was one of the first to share his work with me. "I wrote two poems," he said. "One is about fossil fuels and the other is about writing." I was blown away by the one about writing-- it pretty much captures my philosophy of teaching kids to write in about fifty words:

"So Much Depends"

So much depends

upon Ms. W.

writing an acrostic poem

about fossil fuels.

And so much depends

upon me

writing the same thing

as she did."

RT

I think Robert and Don Graves, hit the nail right on the head. So much does depend on me, not as a teacher, but as a teacher writer, sharing my work with my kids.