All posts in Mayda del Valle

The People Who Made Us: The Idea of Ancestry

Today we read The Idea of Ancestry by Etheridge Knight. We had an amazing discussion about family, both biological and chosen. We talked about the stories that get handed down to us, who we […]

All Writing is Rewriting

This week at Simpson, we had a shortened period, so we dedicated our session to working on uncompleted pieces. We talked about revision as part of the writing process and how getting our ideas […]

All endings are beginnings…

We finished up the first half of our after school programming with Clissold students this week by bringing all of our Poetry Club participants together. After sharing a few sweet treats we read some […]

Let’s Get Started!

For our first session at Foster Park Elementary we spent some time introducing ourselves and talking about what poetry is and what it means to us. I introduced myself, by sharing a poem Ode […]

Magic Words

What could happen if your words were magic? This week our 2nd and 3rd graders wrote about just that after reading Magic Words, and Inuit Poem by Nalungiaq.   Magic Words Eva W. 3rd […]

What Poems Can Do

I was so excited to get started with students at Perez Elementary in Pilsen today! I’ll be working with three classes of 7th and 8th graders and they are ready to go. I introduced […]

Ode Poems

Ode Poems are written to celebrate people, places, things or ideas. We discussed, how Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, wrote ode poems about objects that are often overlooked, or taken for granted, like a lemon, […]

Freewrite

This week, after our check-in, the Clissold poets dove into a conversation about the past, present, future, what we’ve learned and what we hope for. So we decided to write straight from the heart […]

Days of the Week

Why do Mondays feel like “Ugh!” and Fridays feel like “Yea!” This week we talked about how different days and times can conjure different kinds of feelings. Here’s a piece by Neia who let […]

What’s In A Name Part 2: “ I bring peace…”

This week we spent some more time working on poems that weren’t quite finished yet. Here’s a few more pieces about the importance of names. Enjoy this week’s poets!   Aniya Aniya Moore Aniya […]

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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