The Poem Lady

Sorry I've been away, neglecting my bloggerly duties. It's not that I've given up hope on finding an audience or that I've decided that maintaining a blog AND a notebook are mutually exclusive, as some earlier entries may have implied. No, that's not what's kept me away. So where have I been?

I went back to school. Back to the high school I taught at for seven years, that is. But not as a full-time teacher. (I sent in my official resignation a few weeks ago.) For the past two weeks, I played the role of poet-in-residence at Montgomery Blair High School. April being National Poetry Month, it seemed a fitting thing to do.

Last spring, when I announced that I was leaving Blair to concentrate on my writing, one of the librarians approached me to ask if I would be at all interested in coming back to do a guest stint teaching poetry to students for two weeks in April. The poet who had done such a good job for the past two years (Carol Peck), would not be available, and they needed someone to take her place. Much to the librarian's surprise, I jumped at the chance. After all, I'd been telling everyone that my dream job would be doing creative writing with students without all of the grading that came with teaching it full time.

I'll admit I was more than a little nervous as the time drew near. The librarian sent me a class list that included everything from ESOL 4 to 12th grade Honors students. As I made my plans, two voices competed in my head: Poetry with high school students? What makes you think you can make them enjoy poetry? VS. You can do this in your sleep. Your creative writing students always loved what you did with poetry -- even the reluctant poets. I blocked them out as I planned four different activities to generate poems with the students, and I hoped for the best.

By the end of week one, I had worked with 10 different classes in 16 sessions, and I was more than satisfied with the quality of the poems the students were producing. The second week brought 10 new classes and 16 more sessions, which resulted in more than a few terrific poems. Even the class of 13 freshman boys and 1 girl -- the one I was most worried about -- seemed to be engaged. (I would post some of my favorites so you could see their creativity, but I have to get their permission first.)

I was pretty sure the students were enjoying our time together as much as I was, but it was something I overheard at lunchtime of week two that confirmed my suspicions. I was walking down the hall to return a stack of poems to one of the teachers, when I heard a student interrupt a conversation with his friend to say, "Hey, that's the poem lady!"

The poem lady!?! I could get used to that...