Harare International School, Zimbabwe

Sara and I are the luckiest two crackpot poets on earth. I write this sitting in the lovely home of Elementary school principal Kari Boazman and her husband Hob who is currently frying bacon for our breakfast here in Harare, Zimbabwe.

We have just finished a three day visit to Harare international School where we worked with students grades K thru 9. Our visit was directed and produced by librarian extraordinaire Mellissa Chifokoyo.

Three days was just not enough time to spend with these stellar students – but it was enough time to know we’d love to come back and work with this fine staff and  kids again. We started with a couple assemblies – one for elementary and one for the upper school and then Sara and I split up and lead writing workshops with the kids.

Peacocks and guinea hens roamed the campus squawking like upset cats as we worked on lessons in figurative language, narrative structure and public speaking skills.  I don’t know what the bird’s problems were – we were having a great time – perhaps they knew they were missing out on all the fun. Bird brains, go figure.

HIS is an IB school and they practice the PYP and MYP brand of elementary and middle school pedagogy. To those outside of the education world acronym crowd – suffice it to say they teach kids right. Inquiry based learning encouraging the students curiosity and critical thinking skills as opposed to prep for some bubble test. our style of writing instruction just meshes with this teaching strategy. of course an enthusiastic teaching staff and administrators doesn’t hurt either.

HIS was a great way for us to tip our toes in sub Saharan Africa – you won’t have to ask twice to get us back!

A Bear in the Kitchen

New collection of some old and some new stuff out with Red Giant Books.

Just in time for me to leave the country for a month - but upon my return in November I will certianly be more than eager to book some readings.

If you're interested in hosting this crackpot poet hit me up salinger@ameritech.net

Here's the title piece:

a borrowed cabin

You don't want a bear in the kitchen

they make a terrible mess

so said the neighbor on the phone

a tiny electronic voice of caution

whose ring we almost didn't answer

because we were so sure it couldn't be for us

this not being our home

it's not their fault, you see

they are so hungry

this time of year

having drowsed through most of the winter and all

and this one's pretty aggressive

busted right into the house

across the creek from you

be careful

What does one do?

when ones place in the food chain

has been threatened

by 328 pounds of groggy

louse infested Ursus Americanus

claws capable of raking through

a refrigerator's skin

as easily as if it were the cake's frosting

the beast smells hidden behind

magnetic weather-stripped doors

canines the size of of a human forefinger

implanted in jaws endowed

with twelve hundred pound per square inch

bite force

tiny squares of glistening safety glass

from an exploded patio door

diamond dusted into matted fur

sparkling like snowflakes

in the silent moonlight

do you go onto the deck?

beat pans and pots together

turn off the lights

hide in the closet amongst the snowshoes

do you pray?

and to whom

what does one do?

when reason

and logic

and your master’s degree

in 16^th century literature

are rendered useless

by a confused and frightened carnivore

scratching at

the kitchen door?           

The Poetry Friday Anthology

Bird Feeder Denizen

Oh Hi. Looks to be a juvenile goldfinch to me.

What comes around goes around…

 

Okay –

I’m no big believer in Karma – I don’t buy the notion that some blue multi armed statistician is blasting out equations in a cloud of chalk dust weighing our good deeds versus our missteps in some grand calculation deciding whether we come back as an opera singer or a sea slug.

Nonetheless – I can appreciate a good deed.

I’ve got a ring that I picked up in Bali. I wear it instead of a wedding band. A little silver mediation ring with fish skeletons carved into it. The middle spins – I’d say it’s one of a kind, except it isn’t because I have bought two of them from the same place over a couple years.

I lost the first iteration of this ring in the jungles of Batam – an Indonesian island off the coast of Singapore while on a mountain biking trip with the teachers from Singapore American School. I was careening through the jungle and came in contact with an immovable object in the form of a giant cluster of tree roots in the middle of the single track path. I jettisoned over my handlebars and soared through the air like an ancient Vimana. It wasn’t until I was taking the ferry ride back to civilization that I realized I had lost the ring.

Fortunately we were headed to Bali a couple months later and I was able to replace the lost ring with what I was told was the only other one in existence. (I’m thinking that it most probably was the only other one in existence until I left the store and one may have magically appeared as Sara and I zoomed off on our motorbike – but who’s to say.)

Later on this trip we went snorkeling at White Sandy Beach near Candidasa. Thanks to prior experience I had a healthy respect for the miniscule jellyfish that swarmed in clouds over the coral reefs – well if not a respect for the jellyfish themselves I had developed a reverence for their teeny tiny stinging tentacles. So when I encountered a bloom of these little demons in twenty feet of crystal clear water I thrashed my way out of the vicinity as quickly as I could. One can only wonder what kind of life they had lived to be reincarnated as nearly invisible phylum Cnidaria members.

Once clear of the little bastards I realized I had lost my ring.

I floated back to where I encountered the jellyfish – who had since moved on – and swam around peering through my mask hoping that I might see the ring amidst the coral. Unbelievably, I saw it glistening on the sea bottom some twenty or so feet down. I took a deep breath and started pushing down. I was astounded at the pressure and my head began to pound. I thought one would have to be much deeper to experience this. The mask pressed tighter and tighter against my face and my ears felt like they were being filled with that aerosol expanding foam insulation stuff. Another five feet deeper and I don’t think I could have made it – but luckily I was able to grab the ring and bob back up to the surface.

So – imagine my chagrin when, several months later, I left the thing in a restroom on the Pennsylvania turnpike. Fortuitously I had the Starbucks receipt from the Oakmont Service plaza in my pocket when I finally realized I had lost the ring again when I arrived at my Virginia destination. I e-mailed the PA Turnpike powers that be and informed them that I had left the ring in the restroom and figured that would be that and I would be trying to replace the thing the next time I was in Bali.

Well, the next day I received an e-mail reply. I expected it to be an automatic message saying that the PA Turnpike had received my note along with some non-committal promise of action. But, what I got was a real reply with the direct number to the plaza. I called them and someone had indeed turned my lost ring in!

Subsequently five days later we got off at the Oakmont exit – past home of Pudgie Wudgie, whose story I do not have time to go into, but you would do well to research on your own – and I got my ring back.

It took me a while to track down the manager so I have to assume it took just as long for the individual to turn the ring in to lost and found. I appreciate their effort. Hat’s off to you returner of rings found on toll road rest room sinks - may you be rewarded for your honesty and good deeds. And if I am wrong, and karma does exist – I think we can rest assured your next incarnation will not be that of a stinging jellyfish.

back in the saddle

This summer has been a great time – lots of cycling – lots of relaxing – lots of fun.

But, it’s time to get back to work and to dust off this blog. I promise to try and keep more up to date and not let Facebook keep me away from here.

Sara and I are so looking forward to getting back into the classroom – we’ve already done some work with teachers in San Antonio –  and now we are planning our return to classroom.

I will have a new collection of poems under my wing – A Bear in the Kitchen – takes some of my previously published stuff and mixes in some new will be out in conjunction with Red Giant Books.

I’ve also got some new kids stuff that came out in the Poetry Friday anthologies  edited by Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell with more forthcoming in Silvia and Janet's Poetry Friday STEM collection.

We also have a new teacher resource coming out from the fine folks at Corwin Press. High Impact Writing Clinics – is a collection of twenty lessons aimed at the teacher looking to improve literacy and writing while still nodding to the CCSS. We even have a Facebook page – swing by and give us a thumbs up if you are so inclined.

But most exciting of all – is we are going to Africa!

Sara and I will be visiting schools in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Ghana and also presenting at the AISA conference (African International School Association). We couldn’t be looking more forward to this.

We take off at the end of the month and spend just about four weeks on the continent – so stay tuned for more poetic adventures.

Write to Learn Conference–Missouri

Getting close and closer to catching up with real time here.

After getting back from our latest overseas jaunt Sara and I took a day and a half to try and screw our heads back on straight and face forward in our home time zone. Then we hopped a plane – rented a car and presented a couple sessions at a wonderful literacy conference near Columbia Missouri. The Write to Learn conference is put on by the alliteratively named Willy Wood.

This Lake of the Ozarks resort gathering mixed us with  top educator development folks and  stellar teachers as well. While we were signing our books for some of the conference attendees I eavesdropped on a conversation a teacher was having with Cris Tovani author of I Read It, but I Don't Get It and Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?

Well this teacher was going on and on about all the work she was doing in the classroom – then about the extra things she was doing after school – she was asking deep questions about comprehension and reading and writing across the curriculum. Of course all of this is on top of the fact that she was here at the conference spending her weekend to get more ideas for her students instruction.

I finally got up and walked over to the pair and said how I wished all those folks who malign teachers – who spout the same old BS about teachers only working seven hours a day – getting the whole summer off – that they are coddled by unions etc. etc. – could witness how seriously and deeply this woman took her pupils education. This teacher is not an aberration by a long shot – the vast majority of educators I work with are dedicated professionals.

So why this need to malign the profession? Well, as a wiser man than me once said – follow the money. How are you gong to funnel public money into private institutions like charter schools or pre-packaged education programs touted by software gurus and politicians (folks with no education experience) unless you can tear down the real professionals already doing the work?

What would happen if we treated medicine in the same way. In fact we did at one time and snake oil salesmen and quacks travelled from town to town selling their magic pills and potions to hopeful but ill informed citizens.  A whole bunch of these “treatments” actually did more harm than they did good. Patients would have been in better shape if they had done nothing rather than jumping at the promise of a miracle cure.

Maybe this is the real answer to the great education problem that is being hawked by business interests. Maybe we just need to get out of the way and let teachers teach.

Hong Kong International School

I continue to play catch up with the blog.

After Sara and I presented at the literacy conference on Saturday and Sunday – we stayed over a couple days to work with the middle-schoolers who we had met back in September.

We test drove a couple of our lessons from our new resource coming out with Corwin this Fall and are happy to report they went down like  fresh Dim Sum. The teachers ate it up. plus we found some places where things could be tightened up and even a typo in one of the slides. (Nothing like a 7th grader as copy editor.)

The groups we worked with were fairly large – three classes at a time so we were not as nimble as we could have been. I explained it to the students as we being a cruise ship instead of a speed boat and that taking the twists and turns during the lesson we need to really concentrate or else we will lose precious time just moving about in the lesson.

Well the kids performed heroically and we got a whole bunch of work done – writing and practicing our public speaking skills. Sure every now and then we’d have a participant rowing in the wrong direction – but this was rare and easily corrected.

Kudos to the teachers and students at HKIS and special thanks to Clare – the 7th and 8th grade LA teacher who first suggested we visit to the powers that be.

Hope to see you guys and gals soon.

The Art of Teaching Literacy – Hong Kong International School

After a bit of respite in Bali Sara and I were back at work. This time we were making a return visit to Hong Kong International School.Back in September Sara and I swung through for a quick visit after which – Professional Development guru Karen Rohrs invited us back to speak at a literacy conference and to work with some of the middle school students.

One of the many great things about accepting this assignment was the opportunity to share the bill (as well as a taxi and dinner table) with one of our favorite educators, Stephanie Harvey. We like to think that our work augments hers by providing practical classroom lessons that are rooted in the inquiry based learning model that Stephanie champions.

We squeezed a whole lot of PD into a couple days and the teachers attending, from schools all over Asia,  performed like champions themselves. They plugged away and managed to stay bright eyed throughout a an 8am to 5pm day. My only regret of the conference was that we didn’t get the opportunity to sit in on many sessions ourselves – they kept us pretty busy. I would have really liked to get a chance to listen to Matt Glover’s presentations but we were presenting opposite him throughout.

Of course our time at the conference was not all work and no play – we had a wonderful dinner at some swanky joint overlooking the harbor where we celebrated Matt’s son’s 18th birthday while watching the light shows being played out on the skyscraper backdrop.

Many thanks to Karen, Jacqui and all the crew who made the conference the success it was and here’s to hoping we see you again soon!

Bali 2013

Sara and I have managed to finagle our way to a Bali visit the last couple years as part of our working with International Schools in SE Asia. Here are a smattering of photos from this years trip which we shared with our good friend Larry and Rai who live there a couple months every year.

I should really devote a lot more time and space to this visit – it was one of our best – but deadlines and more travel are squeezing time through a funnel here – so please enjoy these photos.