All posts in Robbie Telfer

Insect Petting Zoo!

TEAM Englewood – Week 11 So, we took a break from having a model text this week, as the students had read and seen many poems at this point, and we did something very […]

Hanging Fires

TEAM Englewood – Week 10 This week we looked at our insecurities through “Hanging Fires” by Audre Lorde (it was very successful with my younger poets at Moos). Sometimes the youths insecurities were external […]

Special Report!

So for the past eight years or so, I’ve worked for Young Chicago Authors‘ youth poetry festival, Louder Than A Bomb – five of those as the festival director. This past year I’ve been […]

2 Legit 2 Quit

TEAM Englewood – Week 9 This week I decided to teach abstract concepts to students who could actually conceive of them (no offense to my 4th graders). However, we did have this exchange: me: […]

Antiheros

TEAM Englewood – Week 7 Today we looked at William Stafford’s “Traveling Through the Dark.” I like this poem as it’s about an act of violence that seems justified in its reasoning, but doesn’t […]

More Apologies

TEAM Englewood – Week 8 More poems inspired by the Martin Espada poem I taught to the Moos students. Once again, they were encouraged to only apologize if they meant it, otherwise say why […]

Concrete Abstracts

Moos – Week 8 This week was met with a small challenge – I love the poem “On Kindness” by Aracelis Girmay, and I usually teach it to High School students. In the workshop […]

Hyperbolic Annoyance

TEAM Englewood – Week 6 As a way to comment on Black History Month, we were responding to June Jordan’s “Notes on the Peanut” – a satirical persona poem about George Washington Carver. I […]

Sorry/Soory/I’m not sorry

Moos – Week 7 The students this week took a look at Martin Espada’s poem “I Apologize for Giving You Poison Ivy by Smacking You in the Eye with the Crayfish at the End […]

The Beginning

TEAM Englewood – Week 5 Tim Seibles is definitely one of my favorite poets of any era. He is wacky and serious at the same time – which is probably my favorite emotion too. […]

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