Look Around

In reading Awakening the Heart, I found so many exciting ideas that I couldn’t wait to try out with some real live students. One of those ideas was the Living Anthology Project (Heard, 1999, pp. 21-27). This idea originated from the Poetry in Motion Project that displayed poetry in the subways of New York in order “to bring poetry into the ordinary and everyday experiences of our lives” (Heard, 1999, pp. 22). (Learn more about this project here.) From this idea came variations from others who posted poems in public places to the project we can enact today in our classrooms. “A ‘living anthology’ is a collection of poems that come alive on the walls of the classroom, school, town, subway, or streets so that poetry can become a familiar and everyday presence in people’s lives” (Heard, 1999, pp. 23). Teachers can take their students on a journey around their classrooms or schools looking for places and spaces to display poetry. Students pick their places, look through poetry books for a poem fitting for that specific place, and post it. I really loved this idea because I think it is one of those rare projects that can work with all grades and abilities. I tutor kindergartners and first graders at a local elementary school with another tutor, and as of now we have yet to really decorate our room or door. I thought a poem would be a great first step in that process, so I spent a day at the library looking for poems that fit our space and that hopefully some of my students could read on their own. From the book of poems Surprises selected by Lee Bennet Hopkins I found the following:

I spent quite a while looking for the “perfect” poem, and I’m not sure why but this one stopped me. I think I picked this poem for my classroom because it connected to me emotionally. I want my students to feel powerful (especially because they are in tutoring). I also am with very young students who certainly know how to use their voice, and I don’t want the environment of the American public schooling system to take that away from them. I would love to involve some of my students in this project by taking them around the school with clipboards searching for poetry spots. I would also love to write some poems with them such as this basic spring poem for kindergartners:

I think this project is such a creative, fun, and exciting thing to do for all ages. Not only would we be getting out of the classroom on a little “field trip”, we would hopefully be making someone’s day with the poetry they could come across. This is also a low-stakes way to introduce poetry to students and to have them connect literally and/or emotionally to poetry. The Living Anthology Project benefits young poets by showing them that poetry is relatable and normal, before we drill rhyming and Shakespeare.

Heard, G. (1999). Awakening the Heart. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Hopkins, L. B. (1984). Surprises. USA: HarperTrophy.