All posts in Madison Mae Parker

Paint me…

Starting off our poetry class at Smyser Elementary, we looked at a poem by Delia Garcia titled “Paint Me Like I Am” (workshop adapted by another PIR, Joy Young). These young poets learned about […]

A List for the Future

At Henry Elementary, we looked at Chen Chen’s poem “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” and explored our own list of future possibilities! Following Chen Chen’s model […]

Conversational Poetry

At Social Justice HS, we studied how to incorporate conversational language into poetry by analyzing Anis Mojgani’s “To Where the Trees Grow Tall.” How can conversations be a doorway into another world? How can […]

Writing Through Tradition

In Social Justice High School last week, we read Jane Wong’s “After Preparing the Altar the Ghosts Feasts Feverishly.” We discussed the layered meaning of food, cultures, and how this was reflected in the […]

Imagery Building!

This last week at Henry, we looked at Ayokunle Falomo’s “#BlackBoyJoy” poem. We learned about personification as a further expansion of metaphors and imagery. Check out some of our poems from this week! Mrs. […]

Ode to…

For our fifth week at Henry, we looked at Elizabeth Acevedo’s “Rat Ode.” We learned about odes, imagery, and word bubbles (or word maps), and how useful word bubbles can be to our pre-writing […]

Strength in Writing

For our second week at Social Justice High School’s poetry club, we read and listened to Elizabeth Acevedo’s “Rat Ode.” Discussing what an ode is, we learned how to build imagery. In the version […]

“I capture every moment…”

In Mrs. Siciliano’s 7th+8th grade class, we looked at “Sorrow Is Not My Name” by Ross Gay. Through the exploration of similes and metaphors, we learned about holding the complexity of things being both […]

Choosing our Stories

In our first meeting at Social Justice High School in the after school program, we shared a poem by Tonya Ingram titled, “I am 22.” In this poem, Tonya shares about herself, her diagnosis […]

Power of Voice

Today in Mrs. Siciliano 7th + 8th grade class, we looked at Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s poem, “Like Totally Whatever.” We learned about tone of voice, and the power of using it in poetry, particularly in […]

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I’M FROM THE CITY LIGHTS / STREAMING OUT IN THE NIGHT / AND HUGE SKYSCRAPERS / TOWERING OVER THE LAKE – MELISSA E., 7TH GRADE POET