Poetry Power

I again stepped WAY beyond out of my comfort zone at school on friday.

One of the English teachers has been trying to introduce the school to SLAM poetry, or Spoken-Word poetry. She has a local poet that has been coming in, and invited some kids to share their own poetry. She wanted us as teachers to encourage more kids to perform, so after pushing the thing for a couple weeks, and after watching another TED talk, I asked if I could perform. And I did. Friday we had an assembly with some professional poets doing their stuff. Luckily we (the kids, myself, and the teacher running the thing) went first. It was incredibly uncomfortable, but I got a lot of good feedback from the teachers, and some of the kids too. One even said I inspired him! The professionals that came out were really moving. One was a graduate of LADE who has gone on to win in national poetry competitions, and has performed on HBO. Hakim Bellamy and Carlos Contreras are part of Urban Verbs. During a conversation after the show, I still felt small in comparison (literally and poetically) but I responded to something Hakim said by quoting a line from one of the poems he had performed. It was amazing to see how that affected him. He, as a poet, tries to affect people. To move them. To connect through words soul to soul, and I guess that validated him. Proved that his work was working.

As for me, is this the last time I perform my poetry? Who knows. I don't anticipate being the next Taylor Mali, but I'll probably do more here at the school. For you, though, is the poem I performed below. It's there as I wrote it, not as it came out, because nerves will have their way with you, no matter what you do.

I am a performer.

It’s “A Nite at the Improv.”

Six shows a day, five days a week. Thank you! Thank you!

Thank you very much! I’ll be here all year!

Any tips are greatly appreciated;

Please pass the hat.

I am a performer.

Playing an actor in my own life

Following the script I have written

Hoping to be the person I said I have been.

But playing myself to be younger than I am

When I start to feel old,

And pretending to be very old

When I’m looking for respect,

Hoping that you don’t put 2 and 2 together

And find out that 2 is how long I’ve been a teacher.

I am a performer.

I play everything’s cool, even if it’s not

And I get all riled up if you don’t talk

Cause I want to hear your thought.

I see something beyond that blank stare

Tempting you to speak your mind,

And I will not let you stay silent!

Because “IDK” is not the answer to a questions

But the beginning of a journey.

I am a performer.

I am a street corner preacher

Crying “Repent! Repent!”

For the end is near,

But finals are nearer.

And tik tik tock says the clock.

Time is passing, are you?

I am a performer.

But here I am.

Heart on my sleeve.

Telling you to look at me. Know me.

This is who I am.

But, in your mind,

 You will see me standing here,

And you will remember, that

I am a performer.

Podcasting power

I watch a lot of TED talks. I'll have to post on that another time. I also started listening to economics podcast so that I would get ideas for teaching my econ class. I shared one with my class once. And they really liked it, so, I'm like "Self, great day!" (to quote my favorite economics professor). But it's in a format that is hard to do in a classroom, so I wanted to make it work somehow. So, I thought about TED. TED is video, and has subtitles (the kids have a hard time with British accents), so I've shared a couple videos and had some success. But I still wanted to work in some of the audio podcasts, especially since the kids wanted me to. So again, I turned to TED. There was a talk on Changing Education Paradigms, and the cool thing was that instead of a fancy powerpoint, there was live illustration visualizing the things he talked about. It was a living storyboard for his talk. That gave me an idea.

I have a SmartBoard. So, I thought that I would live-illustrate a podcast. I proposed this to the kids, and asked if they thought it was a good idea. It was the last week of school for my seniors, so they didn't care. They thought anything was a great idea. So I did it. A little ways into it stopped and asked if it was working, and they said it was. I also admitted to them that this was WAY beyond being out of my comfort zone, but that I was doing it for them. I mean, it was NOT anything spectacular, but it wasn't distracting. So they either just listened, or they listened and watched.

So, here are the screen shots of my live-illustrated podcast, which you can listen to here.

Reverie

Reverie can be defined as: A state of being pleasantly lost in one's thoughts; a daydream; a dreamy or musing state; absentminded dreaming while awake; an abstracted state of absorption.

Do you ever experience something that just stops you dead in your tracks? There is a song, that does it to me. Gabriel's Oboe from The Mission. I find it practically impossible to do anything while it's playing. I am overcome in reverie.

It happens to me often enough with music, but sometimes it hits me when reading a student's paper. I see some image of their future, and the stack drops into my lap, and I just think. Reverie to me is reminiscence of the future. Like starting a story "Once upon a time...in the future."

It also overcomes me with the smell of tree blossoms. It's subtle, unnoticeable, then you catch it and it's the only thing you can smell. Lilacs at night. You're caught up in everything, then you stop. Then your mind flashes through its register, and then there's that moment of recognition. Lilacs. And you have to stop. You have to close your eyes so that the only thing in the universe for one second is the smell of lilacs. Or the song of an oboe. Or a sliver of a moon, so faint its hardly there.

Sometimes there are moments that are so romantic, that you cannot help but be overcome. They are so perfect, so idyllic, so picturesque. But then there are the moments that are so unabashedly normal that when that little thing crosses your vision you are sweetly jerked out of your reality. A toddler's laugh, a sunset, shapes in the clouds. A whimsy, that if you don't give into it, it's gone. Sometimes you have to choose not to give in to the reverie. And there is a certain bittersweet sadness reserved for just that moment.

My duplicate

I was reading an article. You can read it, if you want to, but it's not important. The article had a picture, which you see, of my duplicate AKA my doppelgänger. You can see by the scene that you've got a high school teacher. You can see by the prominent placement of flags, the MLK picture, etc. that you're dealing with a high school social studies teacher. He has MC Escher and fractal prints and a calculator poster, so he probably teaches multiple subjects. He's using a projector and smart board, so he's somewhat tech-savvy. He also has longer, shaggy hair, glasses, and a beard kept short. He's wearing khakis and a blue button-down shirt, which I also was wearing when I saw the picture.


Creepy. But, Kamila says I'm better looking.