With all of the hustle and bustle of todays society sometimes we tend to lose sight of what is important. With the distraction of all the technology that is available at our fingertips, we don’t look straight ahead or around us anymore. We try to do too many things at once that we forget to just be in the moment. It is such an important skill to teach  our students from a young age to enjoy those little moments and to learn how to be present in the moment.

One thing that I have found that helps to teach students this skill is observational poetry. Observational poetry is looking at anything and everything around you and making poems out of your observations. One idea to do is to take your students on a nature walk. Nature will give your students so many options to choose from and to observe from. Have your students pick an object, then have them write all of their observations, what they see, smell, hear, feel, etc. Then have the students draw their objects. This will allow them to maybe see something in it that they didn’t before and have them write down some more observations from their drawings. Then let the magic come to life and have the students write their poems, using those observations. I saw and evergreen tree and below is my example of my observations, drawing, and poem:

 

First Reflection: 

My personal feelings about reading poetry stem deep. I love poetry, but I feel a lot of pressure when I read someone else’s work. Poetry is meant for the individual and how they choose to express their emotions. I am always afraid that I don’t honor their words enough when reading their work and that I don’t get the full effect that they wanted me to. But, when I can get passed those feelings I love to imagine the imagery that they poetry brings me and I love to imagine why they wrote this poem, what have they seen or heard that struck a cord to write this masterpiece that lays before me?

I LOVE to write poetry, but only just recently. Reading and writing were not the best experiences for me in school, they were a challenge and I didn’t really have the best support system. I was graded on standards that I needed to pass for the state exams and SAT’s and ACT’s by people with red ink pens who didn’t appreciate my individuality or my creative side when I was willing to open up a part of myself through writing to them. So it took me until college to see my love for it and the right professor who thinks that anything I have to say is worthy enough. Poetry allows me an emotional escape, I believe myself to be an empath and I feel and recognize other people’s emotions very strongly, but I don’t always know how to deal and talk about mine. Poetry has opened that door for me and has given me an outlet for what I absorb.

As I said before, I think that poetry is for the individual and I think that that would make teaching it very hard. Trying to explain to students who have just been drilled over and over again to meet state testing standards that there is no right or wrong answer in poetry. I don’t think I would be at this point and time very comfortable with teaching a unit of poetry to students.  

My criteria for how I know that I have read a really good poem is that it leaves me wanting more, more questions, wanting more answers. It will make me smile or laugh or I will have tears welling up in the corner of my eyes. They are the ones that I think about constantly and want to read again and to share them and hope that people will feel the same passion for it as I do. I know it is good when I can feel that it was written from their hearts and not through the eyes of others.  

I think having a little poetry corner in a room would be a very cool thing. It could be filled with books about all different kinds of poetry and all different kinds of poets. It would be a very relaxed and inviting area as poetry should not come with any expectations. There would be paper for them to grab if they were suddenly inspired to write a poem. And after they wrote it they could either keep it for themselves, put it in their writers notebooks, or pin it up on the little cork board that will be there for other people to read. I also think that at the end of the week that the poems on the board should be read by students and let them explain their reasoning for writing it and then receive praise for their actions. 

Revised Reflection:

After reading the books I think my personal feelings on poetry have shifted a little bit. I learned that I shouldn’t feel the pressure. The author of the poem is inviting you into their world. I see it now as a great pleasure instead of a burden. Poetry is beautiful no matter if you view it the same way as the poet or not.  I think it is a privilege that we get to see what makes this persons clock tick, what drives them, what they feel, what they see, what they hear. I love reading poetry because every time I do it I think I am reading the bravest person in the worlds work as they blindly put themselves and their hearts out in the open.

My opinions about writing poetry haven’t really changed, I still LOVE to write it. I still view it as an outlet for my bottled up emotions. I still think that it takes the right teacher to come along in a students life to help them love to write poetry and that one person could be you or me. The thing that I think I love most about writing poetry is that it doesn’t have to be like Carl Sandburg or Robert Frost with great meaning rooted in its depths, it can literally be about anything. It can be about how you went and did your grocery shopping that day and what you saw, what you bought, what you smelled. There are no strings attached with poetry and no pressure should be felt to have deep meaning, if it moves you enough to write it down then it is worthy!

I think I feel a little more confident about teaching poetry now. I think the most challenging part about teaching poetry will be to get the students excited about it. I can almost guarantee you that anyone of those students think that poetry is something straight out of Shakespeare, they don’t understand it, it is long, and it is boring. But the trick is that you have to make them see it through your eyes. Let them see how excited you get over it, let them see how much your heart truly falls in love all over again every time you read your favorite poem, let them see that poetry isn’t scary or long or boring, but a beautiful thing.  

My criteria for a good poem definitely has not changed!  I know that I have read a really good poem is that it leaves me wanting more, more questions, wanting more answers. It will make me smile or laugh or I will have tears welling up in the corner of my eyes. They are the ones that I think about constantly and want to read again and to share them and hope that people will feel the same passion for it as I do. I know it is good when I can feel that it was written from their hearts and not through the eyes of others.  

I still really liked my idea about having a “poetry corner” in my room and maybe if space is an issue then that could be the route that I would choose to go. However, I loved in chapter one of Awakening the Heart when she talks about visiting a classroom where the entirety of it is just poetry. She had different stations with different things to do. Like having the clipboards at the window so the students can write what they see or having the tape recorders with favorite poems taped on them for students to listen to. There were so many options that everyone had one to fit them and their personalities. I also loved the idea of having and easel by the window as the student can draw instead of write. Regardless of how I would set up poetry in my classroom, my number one step would be to make sure that my students knew that this was a safe and welcoming environment. Anything that they were brave enough to write down on paper would be beautiful and worthy of praise. Break the stigma of bad poetry! 

 

 

There is a stigma that needs to be broken about writing and about poetry. We think sometimes that it is for the elite and that what we have to say isn’t as good as important as what Emily Dickinson or Edgar Allen Poe had to say. But, the truth is, is that it is just as valid and important as what any famous poet or writer had to say. It is true that stories and poems are written by people to be enjoyed by others, but as long as it is important to you, that it is spoken something to your soul then in the rules of writing, it is just as good as anything that Langston Hughes ever wrote.

The book Fire Fly July and Textbook by Amy Krouse Rosenthal are prime examples of this. There are poems written about green screen doors and about orange cats. There are short random stories about fathers butt dialing their daughters on numerous occasions and how she enjoys hearing her parents love story continue to unfold through the speakers. It’s the small things that sometimes mean the most. So be brave, be bold, and go write. Lucky for you, the world is your piece of paper and your soul is the pencil, so listen to them a bit more!

Once upon a time there was a magical place where students gathered to write about anything their hearts desired. They wrote about trips, families, trains, princess and just about anything else that you could imagine. They also all had no trouble with the beginning of their stories and all wrote beautiful introductions the first go round. The End.

Now if you are like me you are probably thinking to yourself, “this really is a fairy tale because even I struggle with introductions to stories.” You would be correct in thinking this. Most stories that students write won’t have an introduction picked out for them. They all won’t be fairy tales and they all won’t start off like Junie B. Jones does. But, introductions are important, they set the mood for the whole story and so they should be treated with such care. I find that when working with students on writing that they all have these wonderful ideas floating around in their minds, but struggle with starting it and that can just about ruin it for them right then and there.

Lucy Calkins article Revising Leads: Learning From Published Writing has some great ways of how to get kids started and how to keep improving upon it. Lucy says to have the students start out by writing their own introductions. Once that happens, divide them up into pairs. Then have the pair come up with a new and improved introduction by adding details, dialogue, and much more. Splitting students up into pairs is an important part of writing because it takes the stress off of them having to present in front of the whole class and there is less distractions for them.

The middle part of the story is the meat! It is where the most happens and the most important things normally happen. We don’t want students here to just skip to the ending, we want them to add as much detail as possible and keep the reader guessing what will happen at the end. My partner and I did a lesson plan about adding detail by using illustrations which you can find here.

Endings are also something that is hard for students, just like how we can’t start every story off by “Once upon a time”, we can’t end every story with The End, which is an easy and comfortable route for our students to take. I would suggest reading bunches of mentor texts and focusing on their endings. Endings should be something that is satisfying to the reader in ways that it is connected to the beginning and that is is also interesting and memorable to the reader. Remind the students that an ending will have the most impact on a reader and if it is a good one, will be the thing they remember most from the story.

Changing gears a little bit here and stepping back in time to last week, I discussed how to get students to come up with writing topics. This week we learned about six word memoirs and I think they are some of the coolest things I have ever seen. A student can use a picture that they have drawn or that they have found on the internet, magazines, newspapers, etc.. The true challenge and very genius thinking behind the next step is that the students must describe this picture and how it relates to themselves in six words. This gets them excited and their brain juices flowing. This will help with creating a topic as the student should be able to elaborate on those six words. I have posted mine below with the explanation behind it.

“I follow my own brick road” I chose this as my six word memoir because I have my own style, I march to the beat of my own drum and my life is full of different crazy colors. I chose to have the converse instead of the ruby slippers because I have my own style and I tend to lean towards more comfortable things to wear on my long colorful journey that  have ahead of me. By having this memoir I can expand and write stories about me following my own path. This also allows other people to have an inside glance at who I really am.

Alright ladies and gents and friends beyond the binary keep your hands and arms inside the cart at all times and make sure to buckle up for this wild ride of learning how to get your students to write about a moment in time. We’ve all been there, trying to get students to write about one specific topic or event and it starts off well and then before you know it their story about helping their grandmother out around the house turns into them telling you about how sad they were when they had to flush their pet goldfish down the toilet.

My motto when working with children on writing is that nothing that is ever written is bad, but it can be improved on. The first and most tricky part of getting students to write to picking the topic. It doesn’t sound that hard right? Well, think again. A students mind runs a hundred miles an hour and with each passing mile another thought or idea pops up for them. The problem here isn’t generating ideas necessarily, just helping them organize their thoughts. Some exercises that I like to do when picking writing prompts is creating some sort of web or list about themselves. In the Mentor Text it discusses implementing heart maps. I think that heart maps and a list of 100 things that I love is a genius way to disguise brainstorming into a fun activity.

First have the students draw a heart in their writers notebooks and fill it with things that they love and that make them just simply them. If you decide to do a list of 100 things I love then have them make the list in their writers notebooks as well. Once they are finished with these ideas it is important to explain that they now have many many topics to write about and that if they ever find themselves struggling to find something to write about then to return there to gather some ideas.

Now that we have the topic out of the way we now need to organize our story. I did a Your Turn lesson that I will talk about later on in this post and the strategy that we used is a story outline. It looks like:

Characters:

Setting:

Problem or Goals:

Events:

Resolution:

Ending: 

This will help the students get out the big main chunks of the story, but the real magic is what the students will put in between them. This outline helps a student make their story flow and that they stay on track. It can almost be used a checklist as each of these topics will have to be addressed within the story in order to comprise one.

Here you will find a link to a lesson plan to use with students called Every Picture Tells A Story. This lesson is about pulling personal narratives and moment in time stories from pictures. My partner and I thought it was important to show that a picture doesn’t have to be an actual digital or polaroid picture, but one from a magazine, newspaper, etc.. It just has to strike an idea within you. I did my example using a personal polaroid and my partner used a random picture from a newspaper and we used the exact same strategy of the story outline. I have not used this with a class before, but the first opportunity that I could, I would. It is a great and easy way for students to organize their thoughts and stay on track when writing their actual story.

My moment in time story that I wrote is actually from the polaroid in the Your Turn lesson plan:

I remember that day, it was a hot one, but nonetheless, beautiful. The sun was pelting down on my poorly sun protected shoulders, but the ocean brought relief with a slight warm breeze. It was our annual family beach vacation and my mother and aunt were trying to round all six of my brothers, cousins, and I to take a picture. “Kenan, stop throwing sand on your cousin and get over here for a picture.” “Aunt Kathy, after you take a picture on your phone, can you take one on my camera”? My aunt of course said yes. It took some time and I would lying if I said that there wasn’t any pushing and shoving, but we all lined up and put the biggest smiles we had on our faces. After a few seconds my aunt said “ok, don’t move Emily wants a picture on her camera.” Of course there were moans and groans from the boys, but I didn’t care, I wanted something to remember this day by.

As soon as I heard the click from my camera I felt something smash against my head as if someone had just thrown a rock at it. My brother who was standing beside me pushed me to the side and screamed “Emily, it’s a seagull!” Now I don’t know if this seagull thought that I was its nest or if my hair was food, but it flew back up into the air again and pointed its nose straight down and dove. I started to panic and I threw my brother on top of me to try and protect me. The seagull did this two more times. Finally my cousins and other brother came to my rescue with buckets of water and sand and scared it off. I was so upset and shaking by the time that it was all over. My mother and aunt thought it was the funniest thing they have seen, but knew I was upset so they said we could go get some ice cream. Needless to say, I will never forget that day.

“It’s the little things. Sunsets, coffee, long drives, giggles, sappy movies, ice cream, deep conversation, cozy socks, and music. These things are so little, yet mean a great deal to me.” -E.A.S.. In our readings and articles this week, we learned that even the tiniest of sparks, ideas, memories, etc. can be turned into amazing stories written in writers notebooks. However organizing these thoughts are a very important step when teaching any writer to become a better one.

One of the methods that I enjoyed most was the upside down triangle. This really allows a writer to start off with a big idea and work it down to a specific direction to take their story. It also might be able to spark things in their minds that they wouldn’t have thought of originally. It is also an important to model this strategy for the writers. Even though this strategy is a very good one, it will need demonstrating and practice non the least.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal has done it again in this section of Textbook. She again makes you laugh, smile, and think to yourself “oh yes that is absolutely me.” In one of the first entries that we read by her she is talking about once she cut off her hair and then she felt like she could do anything. I can personally attest to this. Every year or year and a half, I cut my hair off and donate it and it is one of the most empowering feelings there is. It think it makes me feel like this because having long pretty hair has always been such a feminine stereotype and to rid yourself of that and march to the beat of your own drum is definitely a feeling like no other. The other part of this book that really stood out to me was when she wrote “Just look at us, all of us, quietly doing our thing and trying matter. The earnestness is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time.” She’s right, here we have seven billion people on this planet, all with different hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Sometimes that leads us to go throughout our day with our heads down or eyes straightforward, only looking towards our futures, not seeing everything that surrounds us. It is inspiring to see people follow their dreams, but heartbreaking to see what they give up to do that.

Jacqueline Woodson is such an amazing writer and if you haven’t read anything by her yet, I suggest you go right now and do just that. The line that most stood out to me in this weeks reading of Brown Girl Dreaming, was “And now coming back home isn’t really coming back home at all.” Right now at this phase in my life, I don’t really have a place to call home. I have lived out of boxes that can be quickly and easily packed for the past five years, throughout my stay at college. My home from where I am from didn’t take long to start to feel foreign to me, I don’t feel the same comfort from it as I once used to. My room has just become a storage closet and a bed to sleep in for the rare weekend that I come home for. The people who I once saw everyday don’t talk normally with me anymore it is always the same routine of questions such as “how are you? We have missed you so much. How is school going? Do you have a boyfriend yet? How much longer you got up in them mountains”? So yes, Jacqueline, home isn’t really home any more for me.

Most any person will not write just because. Most people need motivation, inspiration, they need a reason to find themselves immersed in a print wonderland. In Dorman’s and Cappelli’s book, they are emphasizing that students need to find some a book or a piece of writing that they can relate to. All it takes sometimes is the smallest detail to make a big spark in a students mind.

I loved how this text talked about the teacher reading the book An Angel for Solomon Singer and how it says that this might seem too difficult of a book for this teacher to read to her young students, but the truth is is that it’s not. Students, especially children can connect to very minutiae things. I think this is because they haven’t yet learned how to repress their emotions as much yet. If they are sad, they will tell you that they are and why, they will also probably tell you that they felt sad like this when their goldfish died two years ago. Finding a text for a student to connect to is so important and also no telling in what sort of writing and connections will surface when they do.

Brown Girl Dreaming tells the story of the author, Jacqueline Woodson. The book starts by giving us two family trees, one of her father’s family and one of her mother’s family. One of the first things that we read about is the complicated process of choosing her name. In our writing journals this week we had to talk about the relationship with our names. To me when I read that assignment I thought that was such a strange thing to write about and I found myself asking “do people even have relationships with their names”? For the longest time I guess I just thought of my name as literally just a name. It didn’t have any sort of special story or significance like Jacqueline’s did. But the truth is is that whether we realize it or not, we all have  relations and feeling towards our name because it is part of our identity and something that has been with us from the very beginning.

This book is written in poems, but Jacqueline does such a beautiful job at telling her story through each stanza that you sometimes aren’t even aware that what you are reading is poetry. She does not hold back on anything, especially with dealing with racism that she and her family faced in the 60’s. I found my heart really aching at one point for her mother when she painted such a vivid picture of how happy she was dancing with her family and reminiscing about the good ole times and telling her that she was a Irving and that she belonged her, but then hearing her husbands booming voice saying that he will never allow his children to be treated less than they are.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal continues to make my sides hurt from laughing too much. I find myself laughing as I do because I realize that her and I aren’t that different, but then the deeper that I keep thinking I see that Amy is just simply human, like we all are. Like the story that she tells about how she can normally tell who her husband is talking to on the phone by the way his voice sounds, I could go on forever about how I can do the exact same thing with my mother. I notice that if she is talking to somebody who is immediate family or a very close friend, the pitch in her voice is always higher (like a fake customer service voice) and she also laughs a lot more. Once I hear the pitch of her voice I can narrow down my suspects and eventually by listening for a little bit longer on what they are talking about, I know who’s on the other end. However, there is a rare occasion where I have no clue who is on the other end and like Amy I am eager to know and will keep mouthing to her “who is that”? Just in case it has any importance to me or I want to say hello to them.

Her diagram that she drew about The Two Stages of Life was not only very funny, but very true. As children we don’t worry about seeing the whole big picture in things. We see a granola bar in the box, but we don’t notice that it is the last one, we are simply satisfied that we got what we came looking for. I think that is what makes children so innocent is that they don’t worry about the bigger overall picture or how leaving that empty box in the cabinet could clutter it up. They don’t worry about trying to please others like an adult can, they don’t weigh themselves down with so much responsibilities. So the next time you grab the last granola bar out of the box, will you relive your childhood?

This week in class and in our text readings we have been learning all about what mentor texts are and what writers notebooks are. We also read parts of Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s book, Textbook, which I highly recommend.

After going to Middle Fork School and seeing these writers notebooks implemented, it made my extremely envious that I did not have anything like this when I was in school. Writing in school was a struggle for me and I didn’t have the best experiences with it. Everything that I essentially wrote was graded with a red ink pen by a person who didn’t think like me, who didn’t have the same ideas as me, and told me whether or not my words met their standards.

I think that educators underestimate the power of writing and what it can do for a student. The writers notebook is essentially a place where students can go to write with no fear of anyone judging their ideas, their style, or their grammatical errors. It is a place for them to simply open up and become themselves. I loved seeing these being used in the school because when they were told to take out their notebooks, there was no groaning or complaining. They were invested and excited to go to this safe haven full of their own ideas. If you do not have writers notebooks in your classroom already, do not wait another minute to get them. They will definitely be something that will be put into my future classroom.

At Middle Fork we were fortunate enough to see the writers notebook introduced to the students. The teacher threw a party and wrapped each of their notebooks in wrapping paper and presented it to them. The look on each students face was priceless and they enjoyed eating their cupcake that went with it and decorating their own. This would be the way that I would want to introduce writers notebooks into my class because who doesn’t love a good party?

Textbook by Amy Krouse Rosenthal is what I would call a writers notebook. This book is full of Amy’s own ideas and experiences, all from her point of view. They were random stories about her imagining the courage to go down a big waterslide or about how they came to be in possession of her now pet dog. I also found myself saying “yeah! The same thing has happened to me. Or, I never thought of it like that.” While our thoughts are our own and they are certainly unique, we find that they can be relatable in a lot of ways because they are all part of the human experience.

In her part of the book when it talks about serendipity, I found myself smiling a lot through this passage. When I went back to reflect on this passage I found myself thinking how amazing it is that things in our lives line up and how unexpected it is. Serendipity doesn’t always have to be a warm feel good moment. For example, when Amy was talking about having to let her child go off to college and how letting go was hard, but that they chain she had worn since he was born came off in the instant that she knew this was what she had to do. They aren’t always happy moments, sometimes they are signs telling us it is time and bringing us a little bit of comfort.

Amy’s book could absolutely be used as what we would refer to as a mentor text. A mentor text is a text that we can come back to time and time again that we can use for inspiration or ideas. I could see myself using this in my future classroom by maybe reading a passage from her serendipity part and having my students write about a time when they experienced or if they hadn’t would they would like to happen to them that could be considered serendipitous .

 

Here is a YouTube link to my vlog:

Separate is Never Equal 

“Mexicans should be segregated like pigs in pig pins, they are filthy and have lice and all other kinds of diseases.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that these words are extremely hurtful, ignorant, and just plain unkind. But believe it or not a real man said these words in front of an entire courtroom filled with people. His name was James L. Kent and he was the superintendent of Garden Grove School District and he said this exact phrase during the trial that involved Sylvia Mendez and her family who fought for the desegregation of schools in Orange County. Ufortunately, people like Mr. Kent have always existed and always will, they for some reason think they are superior over others simply because of the color of their skin. The book Separate is Never Equal does an amazing job at retelling the true story of Syliva Mendez and her family and their fight and struggle to have fair rights within education.

We see here in this picture above that this image is clearly depicting racism in the fact that children who are Mexican are not allowed in the pool. I also wanted to point out that on the  sign where it is saying who and what is not allowed in the public pool that they put dogs before saying Mexicans. That is horrible as the message that is being conveyed that dogs mean more and are more important than actual human beings. We can also see that the children who are in the pool are almost in a way mocking the ones who aren’t as they know that they are better than them. One of the biggest symbols in the illustration though is that the Mexican kids are trapped behind bars. This can signify and represent a lot in that they are prisoners in their own communities and their freedom will always be detained.

We see here now in the image above that from all of the stereotypes that we were shown in the book that they are all now broken. They are taking part in school activities and their peers. They CAN speak English and they are well-groomed and keep up with their hygiene. They are playing together and in harmony. This picture shows us that kids don’t care as much about things such as skin color, they see a person who will swing on the swing with them or someone who likes playing marbles as well. Nobody is born with racism at their heart, it is taught.

When you look at this picture you might just see three children sitting on a bench who might be surprised or upset about something. However, I see three children displaying activism. This is the part in the story when they are in the midst of the trial. The fact that they are in the courtroom and paying attention and are aware, proves to me that they care about their education and really belive in the cause that they are fighting for. In a later line it talks about how Sylvia is always ready to testify on the stand for her right to go toa nice school and receive an education and I think that speaks volumes considering that she is so young.

This book centers around the Mendez family and especially Sylvia. We learn that the children are being discriminated against. They want to go to the school that is closet to their home, but the school board says they cannot because they have to go to the Mexican school. They have to bring their case in front of a court and state their case where they end up winning and their children are allowed to go to their home school.

The author and illustrator of this book is named Duncan Tonathiuh. He is a Mexican-American who gives insight in this book on the Hispanic cultural experience. While he never experienced having to go to another school and to have to fight in a court case to go to other, he did face some discrimination because of his skin. In the article he talks about his inspiration for his drawings. They stem from 14th century Mixtec Codics. He says he wants to keep the ancient art alive and to make it accessable to all children. 

One Last Word

Nikki Grimes was born in 1950 in Harlem, New York. She started writing from the very young age of six and by the age of 13, she was performing in front of audiences. Her life was rough as she came from a broken family. Her and her sister were in and out of foster care, but eventually ended up back together with their family. She grew up in a very rough area where violence was common. She is quoted as saying “sometimes I wondered if I would survive.” She struggled in school until a teacher, who she became very fond of, helped her through it. James Livingston acted as her mentor until she graduated high school and she went on to receive a degree from Livingston College of Rugters University.

Each of these poems, Nikki, took from an African-American poet who some even wrote during the Harlem Renaissance. Most of them write about the beauty and power within the human spirit and to truly embrace who you are. That brown skin isn’t just a color it is beauty and should be embraced.

My favorite poem in this book is A Dark Date for Josh. This poem focuses on Josh who is a white teenager who is so excited to take a girl, named Tanisha, that he likes to prom, she is black. We see that his mother has a conniption and tells Josh that he absolutely is not allowed to go with her. Long story short, the mothers insecurities come from her own personal experiences. Nikki breaks stereotypes by having an interracial couple attend prom together in Mississippi. I have a strange draw to this poem. To me it speaks volumes.

This book talks about the ugly truth of racism and stares it right in the face, but also finds the beauty in it all. It shows us that beauty can be found in the ugliest of places. It teaches people to embrace who they are to find themselves beautiful and there is power within that.

I’d Always Imagined

By: Emily Cox

I’d always imagined what it would have been like to see her blossom and grow

I’d always imagined what she would have looked like down to the very tips of her toes

I’d always imagined that she would be a free spirit who would dance bare

Who took on the challenge of the ugly world and didn’t ever seem to care.

She would face her enemies with all the dignity and grace

Head-on, full heart, but would never forget to put on her forgiving face

I’d always imagine that she would love the world even if it didn’t love her back

And not once did I ever see a tear, a fit , or a crack.

But the world isn’t ready for her yet or maybe it’s me, hard to say

So I’ll put her back in the cage, in my mind where she’ll stay.

I’d always imagine that this is how that girl would be

But I’ll never know because I threw away the key.  

 

Beautiful

By: Emily Cox

One of the most beautiful things you could ever do is to sit back and watch the world, watch it so   

that you see every bit and part of it. The good, joyful, bad, and unpleasant parts. I’ll

never forget how I was passing a birthday party in my car one time. I see the smile and joy on her

face, but while she is celebrating life, I head to funeral to mourn a loss. You’ll find that life doesn’t wait for anybody, in that sense, we are all equal. You can stare at it and it will stare straight back,

Waiting for you to make the first move. It plays a strategic game, it will put thoughts in  

your head and cast feelings upon your heart to where at some point you aren’t sure who is winning the game anymore. It’ll teach you to guard your heart so that you won’t ever feel that heartache again from the boy who broke your heart at 16. But don’t put your heart in a cage.

like a flower, it needs nutrients to grow and survive. But like a flower, it must be rooted in

the depths. Don’t give up on your 16-year-old heart, it was just being planted. My  

advice, try to find the beauty in everything, it is there, it is that nagging voice in the back of your mind,  

it is the tiny voice that whispers in a room filled with screams, you may have to really search, but it is there.

But do not ever forget where

you come from. Life teaches us that we can be lots of things, we can be the girl at the birthday party, who knows she is excited because she’ll  

live to see another year, or we can be in the car driving to mourn someone who won’t. You might ask how all of this is one of the most beautiful experience you could ever have? Because it is an experience  unlike any other, that only WE get to have, but it also gives a choice, the choice to stay

in our comforzones and cage every emotion we are capable of, or to be planted and to blossom into something beautiful.

Blossom, it fills the world with beautiful things.

 

 

First off I want to start off by saying that if you have not read this book, then you need to go out right now and buy yourself a copy because you are missing out. This story follows two smart, curious, and brave kids named Candice and Brandon. They rush against the clock to solve the mystery of a secret inheritance all while learning about the towns painful secrets and ugly truths about racism as they even face it themselves.  If you like suspense, thrills, and even learning a thing or two about history, this book will suck you in and not let you go until you read the last page.

This book deals with racism……a lot of it. There are a lot of misconceptions in our society today about the fact that racism doesn’t exist. I know I have heard the phrase multiple times “there is no racism anymore, it is 2018.” They are very wrong about one half of the statement, but they are right about it being 2018. It is 2018 and yet our country still has yet to face the reality that racism is still very much alive and brewing in the very minds of the privileged who are the exact same ones that say “there is no racism anymore, it’s 2018” or “I don’t see color.” We may not be in the practice anymore of taking people from their homes and forcing them onto boats, BUT our society still seems to think that people who are black are of an inferior race because it didn’t stop with sit-ins, it didn’t stop with I Have a Dream, and it didn’t stop with Black Lives Matter. How many more Charlottesville’s will it take, how many more bullets piercing the beautiful minds of those who had a dream will it take, how many more statues being torn down will it take? HOW MANY MORE WILL IT TAKE until we wake up and we stop having to fight for change and actually start moving towards it?

Candice and Brandon have to face a choice about whether to bring the past to light or to leave it where it has been buried six feet under for decades and that most people think that it should stay. But like Candice and Brandon, we too, have a choice of what to do with our countries past. Some would say to leave it where it belongs, but we can’t because if we do, we give the unspoken statement that we are ok with what happened. But we must bring things to light, recognize and acknowledge of what has happened, and learn from our mistakes and move forward to try and correct them so they will have no fear of being repeated.

The other topic that I would really like to focus on is gender roles and the LGBTQIA community. Gender roles are a topic that is widely debated because of a multiple number of reasons, whether it be because “this is what the bible said”, or “men are just naturally stronger and better built than women.” and a personal favorite of mine, “that’s just how things have always been done.” When we are born, we come into this world with a label attached to us already, boy or girl. Your label is also coded a certain color, blue and pink and throughout the rest of your life, your label and color will be your ticket into somethings and your rejection letter to others. We tell boys to play with trucks and toy guns and that they are acting like a sissy girl if they cry and yet we tell girls to go play house or with a baby doll and they are allowed to cry, but not too much because they would look unstable.

In the book towards the very beginning we read about a scene in which Candice and her mom are talking to Brandon about the types of books that he reads. He hesitates and says “I don’t know, all the boy books I guess.” Candice was confused by what that meant and she had every right to be. What makes a book a boys book? Is it maybe because it isn’t a story where a princess needs rescuing? The fact that Brandon felt defensive enough to say that, concerns me and that he thinks that he has to take on some superiority role to people that he has never even meet before until a few minutes ago. I think the sooner that we stop teaching our children that only certain toys and colors and emotions are for specific genders then we can really break through the barrier and truly be an inclusive society.

The LGBTQIA topic hits a little closer to home for me. Books have never before made me cry before, but this one seemed to do the trick. We learn towards the end of the book who our LGBTQIA characters are which are, Quincy (Brandon’s best friend) and Candice’s dad who is dating the mysterious ‘Danielle’, which turns out to be Daniel. Quincy’s coming out experience wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, but he had the support of his family and his closest loves one at the end of the day, but couldn’t protect him from the prejudice that he received from others. In a way, this is what happened to the Washingtons, they were chased out of town because of something they couldn’t control, their skin color, because their loved ones couldn’t protect them.

The part that really made me cry was when Candice’s dad came out to her at the end of the story. I immediately felt so attached to him and that I was feeling every single emotion that he felt. I came out to my family about seven years ago and it is really something that you can never prepare for. You play out every scenario in your head until you think that you are ready for anything that might come your way. There is a pit at the bottom of your stomach and it just sits there making you feel like you need to curl up in a fetal position, but yet you persist on. You struggle to get the words out then the first little bit of them comes out and you want to just stop and pretend that it just never happened, but there is a little voice inside you that tells you to keep going. And once you get those words out it isn’t immediate relief. You hold your breath while your loved one who you couldn’t imagine your life without, processes what you just told them. Candice’s father felt sweet relief, his daughter and they only one that really mattered to him accepted and loved him for who he was. That took so much courage to do, he hid is sexuality for years and got married and had a child. I really appreciate that the book has a parent coming out to a child instead of a child coming out to their parents because we don’t think of that situation a lot, but now that our society is becoming more accepting and welcoming of the LGBTQIA community, more people (adults) are starting to be true to themselves and realize that they don’t have to hide anymore. I want to make it clear that not every person that comes out, will have a positive experience, some will spend the rest of their lives feeling the negative effects of it, I know that I will. But it is important as well that we surround these people with love and support because they might not feel like anywhere else.

Within the three categories of visual and verbal sensitivity, authenticity and accuracy and ideology, I think that this book exhibits great qualities within it. The story is not based off strict fact to fact, but it is based off of real people and places. The story might be a little far fetched, but history and social justice issues definitely were not.

This book is amazing and I would highly recommend it to anyone to read. It has so many twists and turns that you don’t see coming that it will have you on the edge of your seat the whole time.

Resources:

Varian Johnson – Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. – 2018