All posts in Taft

Hanging Worries (pt. 2)

I was struck by how I would ask the students to list the things they were worried about and it would usually vacillate between mundane things like grades and horrifying things like clowns murdering […]

Hanging Worries (pt. 1)

For this workshop, the 7th graders of Taft wrote based off of Audre Lorde’s “Hanging Fire.” The poem perfectly represents the mentality I had in 7th grade, where worrying about death has equal value […]

A True Account of Talking to our Stuff (pt. 2)

Since I teach five classes at Taft, I’ll split my posts up like this. Hooray! Mrs. Asvos 7th Grade, 6th Period “Downtown” Morgan Z. The streets roar with anger, Their fury washing oer me, […]

A True Account of Talking to our Stuff (pt. 1)

I’m teaching at Taft High School for 20 weeks this year, 10 weeks with 5 classes of 7th graders and 10 weeks with 8th graders. The first day with Mrs. Asvos’s 7th graders found […]

Ancient nerds! The sound a freshly cut garden! Skies on fire!

The sound of the sky on fire! Ancient nerds! I am the sound of new idea.. of a freshly picked garden. That first sound above belongs to George Bradley and his poem, The Sound […]

Ode to a… huh?

Time for Odes! But not just any ode, no… Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market” started us off swimmingly. Let me tell you, Neruda really knows how to sell a […]

What The Mirror Said

This week we read “Mirror,” in which Sylvia Plath turns the poem itself into a mirror, and deploys her sniper-like precision, as always. Continuing our discussion of identity, we wondered about what the objects […]

Hanging Fire

We read the magnificent “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde. Worries big and small collide with equal weight all the while nobody does anything about it! During this year’s Taft residency we’ve focused a great […]

The Universe In A Book

This week we explored the power of books with Albert Goldbarth’s lengthy poem, “Library.” Before we read the poem, I asked the students to close their eyes and imagine the oldest, grandest, craziest library […]

Unrelentingly Lovely: Imagist Portraits

This week we continued with William Carlos Williams and read “Locust Tree In Flower.” I asked the students to write an imagist-style poem about something they could see (or visualize), one word per line. […]

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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