Homebase Crew:

Here is a link to our CWW photos. Enjoy them, and find an appropriate one to include with your CWW blog post.

https://picasaweb.google.com/107577768696250033145/CWW#

Fish is Fish Poem

Dear Fish…

Fish,

every belief, every creature

has their own meaning and characteristics

some have feathers or hair instead of scales

not everything is a fish

but everything is unique

Fish,

you can glance out of the water,

but the world without water is not for you

you may picture that world

with its grass, animals, and trees

but know that not everything is the way you see it

Fish,

try to enjoy your surroundings

appreciate what you have: an underwater paradise

be grateful for who you are

and for what you can do

Imagine and Imagine

Fish,

you are free to explore the water world

fish can not walk on land they can only go in the sea

you have to understand that we are not all the same

and that is okay

Your pal,

Frog (a.k.a. Mr. Z’s SS Class 2014-5)

Reading Log for Students

Reading Log

Mr. Z Presents - What's the Point of Poetry?

As a young child I enjoyed hearing poetry. I liked the rhythm and the rhyme and often the silly or funny topics that poets wrote for children. But once I got older, and the poetry got more serious, I struggled to enjoy it. At that point, the only thing I really liked about poetry was that it was short. Fortunately my feelings about poetry have received an injection of fun over the past few years as I’ve learned to look at it differently. This year, during the poetry unit, I learned a lot from some very special teachers, and as a result, my love for the genre continues to grow.

Michael Salinger and Sara Holbrook, the visiting poets who taught some of our poetry classes during the unit, showed me a lot about the process of writing poetry. One of the most important tips centered around revision. They taught me to create “versions” of the poem I was working on. The title of my first draft is called “Version 1”. I make a copy of the completed Version 1 and then begin tearing it apart for a “Version 2”. At this point I’m cutting out unnecessary words, finding the right sensory detail to make my ideas objective and not subjective. Later I might create a Version 3 and focus on elements of poetry like alliteration or rhyming. If you look at my poem “Cool”, you’ll see the final result of this process. That poem looked very different in its original form!

One thing that I now really love about poetry is the way it can capture a moment. I had a lot of fun using a photo of my kids playing with some dogs when we were on vacation in Australia. Writing from an image like this helped me to remember and include sensory details that I felt in that moment. Then I went one step further and wrote the poem “Orchard” using a string of prepositional phrases. I found that this process really helped me to put the moment into words.

Finally, a poetic element I’ve been trying to utilize within my poems is alliteration. I am aware of the sounds of words, and I enjoy combining words that share the same beginning sound. Often I feel this technique enhances my poems. You can see this at work in the poem “The Beauty of Simplicity” in lines like “humming in the hallways” or “cluttered chaos”. I’m making conscious choices now as a poet with my words, and I like the result.

Moving forward with my writing, I think that poetry will be a genre that I’ll write more frequently. I also see ways to use poetry when I’m writing in a different genre to help me work on building an image or to play with the sound of words. I’m glad to say that this year’s study continues to build on my love for poetry.

A "Self-Portrait" Poem: "Listening to Grownups Quarreling" by Ruth Whitman

This poem spoke to me immediately, starting with the title. Growing up I had two very loving parents who saw eye to eye most of the time. However, there were occasions when they would argue or fight, and those moments were scary for me and they left a strong and lasting impact. The poem even mentions a brother “standing in the hall against the wall with my little brother”, which was exactly my situation. In fact, often my brother and I would take sides with our parents in arguments. So as I read a line like “blown like leaves against the wall by their voices” I was taken right back to the emotion of those moments where you could hear the air - absolute silence - in between the yelling. This line spoke to me because in those moments of parents arguing, it was like my breath was yanked from me and like I was pushed away from them - slammed outside the door, kind of like blown leaves.

Now that I’ve read the poem a bunch of times, I really have come to appreciate what the poet, Ruth Whitman, is doing with imagery. She packs this poem with amazing similes, including the one I mentioned above. One that really stands out is when she describes her head “like a pingpong ball between the paddles of their anger”. What an image! I really get the idea of being smashed back and forth as you watch the two people you love so much arguing back and forth. You want to jump in and help, but their “paddles of anger” keep hitting you. That final line about “paddles of anger” also really adds a lot to the simile, because it gets into the raw emotion of the moment.

A final poetic element that Ruth Whitman used effectively for me was the personification in the line “I heard the claws of the rain pounce”.  Rain is often soft and gentle, but a rain that comes with the anger of a quarrel would be sharp and painful. Therefore, the claws imagery works really well to remind me of the emotions I felt in those times.

When in Need Plant a Seed

There’s no doubt about it. In today’s world, everyone deals with social issues at times in their life. Whether it be a period of profound loss, a time of change, or a difficulty fitting in, we will all go through the pains and challenges these issues create. Often times people find a way to cope with the stress of these issues by pouring their heart and soul into a passion or an otherwise positive activity. That is exactly the way it is for the characters in the book Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman. In this short but powerful story, 13 characters in a Cleveland neighborhood struggle to fit in, to deal with change and loss and a variety of other issues.  At first they find resistance from neighbors, from society, and from within. But following the lead of Kim, a young Vietnamese girl, they take over a vacant lot and turn it into a neighborhood garden.  Together they develop a sense of community and find courage to deal with their individual issues. In Seedfolks, I think that the various characters show through their experiences that having a constructive use of time can be helpful when dealing with challenging issues.

The first character in the story who uses the vacant lot to help her deal with issues in her life is Kim. Kim and her family are immigrants from Vietnam. The story begins with her worshiping at the family’s shrine. Her father died before she was even born, and in Vietnamese culture, those who have passed on are remembered with candles, incense sticks, food offerings and prayers on the anniversary of their death. Kim struggles to deal with the fact that she and her father never had a relationship, while her mother and sisters did. So she has decided on a project that will give her a connection to her father, a life-long farmer. She walks to a vacant lot nearby and plants some lima beans. As she does, she thinks to herself that “in that vacant lot he would see me… He would see my patience and my hard work. I would show him that I could raise plants, as he had. I would show him that I was  his daughter.” (p. 3) This is incredibly important to Kim, who until now has felt disconnected with her father. By planting the beans, she hopes for her father’s spirit to see her good works and feel a sense of pride. In this way, her work in the vacant lot helps her to finally connect with her father and to overcome the issue of never having known him.

Another character who is using the garden to help deal with an issue is Tio Juan,  the elderly uncle of one of the storytellers, Gonzalo. Tio Juan has recently arrived in Cleveland from Guatemala. Unlike the young Gonzalo, who has learned to fit into his new home and society, Tio Juan is a complete misfit. Gonzalo even likens him to a baby, as he just wanders around the apartment they share talking to himself. The reason Tio Juan doesn’t fit in is that he can’t communicate with others. He speaks an Indian language that even Gonzalo doesn’t speak. He, like Kim’s father, had been a farmer, so the city life is completely foreign to him. And then, like so many characters in the book, he finds the lot. Instantly he transforms into a person with a purpose. “Tio Juan didn’t even notice people - he was totally wrapped up in the work… He’d changed from a baby back into a man.” (p. 16, 17) The change in Tio Juan is remarkable to Gonzalo and to us as readers. Suddenly we see him spritely moving around the garden, deftly working the seeds and soil, and in the process, we all learn not to judge an older person who seems to struggle fitting into a modern society. Gonzalo puts it perfectly when he notes, “I realized that I didn’t know anything about growing food and that he knew everything.” (p. 17) The lot allows Tio Juan to show his skills and his knowledge, and by doing so he overcomes his issue of fitting in.

Later in the story we meet Curtis, a muscular man bent on winning back the woman of his dreams, Lateesha. She left him when he got a little too full of himself and his handsome looks. Now he’s trying to show her that he is a changed man with her best interests in mind. How does he propose to do this? Once again, through the lot. He plants her favorite food, tomatoes, and goes through all of the challenges and pains of attempting to raise them successfully. Curtis throws himself into this work. We can truly see him growing and changing as a person as the seasons pass. He stops all of the activities that took him away from Lateesha in the first place, like bodybuilding and showing off his physique, and he devotes all of his time to the tomatoes. “That was part of the point of the tomatoes. I was showing Lateesha that just cause I got muscles don’t mean I’m some jungle beast.” It seems that the lot came along at the perfect point for Curtis. By raising what Lateesha loves to eat, he can show that she is important to him. In this way, he seems to be making progress by the end of his narrative, “I looked up at her window… there was her face, staring down.” (p. 45) Curtis’ constructive use of time in the garden appears to help him win over his love.

Time and time again the characters in Seedfolks turn to the empty lot to find solutions to the big problems in their lives. And more often than not their time spent there is rewarded. So, how do you handle the big issues in your life? Perhaps taking a lesson from the 13 characters in this story could help you deal with that problem that’s nagging you. Either way, pouring time and energy into a passion is time well spent. Who knew it could also help you conquer life’s toughest issues?

Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedfolks

Personal Essay: Sweating Away in Singapore

Sweating Away in Singapore

There are a lot of things to love about living in Singapore. You often hear people who live here cite the city-state’s cleanliness, its safe feel, its modern skyline, countless tourist attractions, such as its incredible zoo and night safari, its rich cultural diversity, and, some would argue, its weather.

It’s true that there is value in the almost constant sunny, warm days, not to mention never worrying about a “polar vortex” striking. However, I have lived on this balmy, tropical isle for 12 years now, and if I were to speak truthfully, I’d say that Singapore’s weather really frustrates me.

When I get to complaining about the weather here, the number one target for my ire is the oppressive humidity. I don’t need any encouragement to get me sweating. I can drip with the best of them. Often I joke that I even sweat in the mighty Singaporean air conditioning.

That’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. Truly, as I plan for each outing around town, I have to carefully consider the “Steve Z Sweat Mark Factor” when choosing clothes. I don’t sweat just a little, like my wife - and I never actually see any sweat marks on her - no, I do it right. The mere action of walking a few meters, say to the nearest subway (known as MRT) station a couple hundred meters away causes my shirt to become vacuum sealed to my body.

And it’s actually worse when I stop. That’s when my personal Niagara Falls really starts to gush. Even after all of these years, I allow myself to be tricked into the idea that I have arrived at a walking destination sweat free. I hustle to where I want to go, nervously focused on the fact that I haven’t begun to sweat. I feel a sense of accomplishment that after a two minute walk outside I won’t look like I’ve just finished running a marathon.

And then I stop moving, and for the next ten minutes I’m mopping myself off with the sweat rag I have to carry wherever I go.

Recently my daughter started to attend the early childhood center at the school where I teach. This has been an exciting new stage in life for her and for me. I get a little extra time with her in the morning on our way to school. It also provided an unexpected opportunity for me to start my day a sweaty mess.

After arriving at school, I would bring her first to my classroom to finish eating her breakfast. Then we’d race down to her room for drop-off only for me to turn around and make the outdoor journey back to my classroom at a gallop as to avoid a late start. I was beginning each day huddled under the air con in my room, unmoving, with all of my students giggling at their gross, and drenched, teacher.

And it's not just the crazy humidity and sweat that gets me riled up. The weather here actually restricts my enjoyment of the great outdoors. If I don’t wake up at the crack of dawn and get started with a hike or an outdoor activity, I usually give up on the idea altogether. There have been countless times that I want to take my kids out to the playground or the pool only to have my (Singaporean!) wife say that it is too hot and sunny to be outside. So, begrudgingly we make alternate plans. Usually these involve a mall. (Oh, joy!) At least I won’t worry about sweating while we’re there. They are always kept at sub-Arctic temperatures.

And it gets worse. I can never relax and enjoy being outside in Singapore. I actually have to consider my wardrobe when the plan is to be outside for any period of time. To avoid unwanted attention due to huge sweat stains, I can wear exactly two colors: black and white.

As if the heat and humidity wasn’t enough, Singapore's complete lack of seasons puts me right over the edge! I’m a person who grew up in the American Midwest, so I need to see the leaves turn color in the fall.

I need to feel the cool, crisp air of October.

I long for a couple good “packing snow” dumps, so I can get my fill of making snowmen, having snowball fights and going sledding.

I yearn for the first few days of spring when the sun finally warms the skin and I can peel away the winter clothes.

Here in Singapore I get none of that. I get a whole lot of… well, you’ve already heard what I get a whole lot of.

People always say that if I stay here in Singapore long enough, I’ll “acclimate.” These are usually the same people who don’t sweat a drop when they play sports in the middle of the day over here, so while I want to believe them, I have my doubts. And until the day I do acclimate, you can find me inside. 

In the air con.

Myth 2.0 Project

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Mythology 2.0

Let's face it, Greek Mythology is full of memorable characters.  From Prometheus to Pandora, we learn their flaws, follow their actions, and feel their pain.  I wonder what it would be like if these characters lived in today's world and had access to all the 21st century tools that we have.  How would they communicate their stories?  With whom would they share them?

I couldn't resist with trying it out with one of my favorite characters, Prometheus.  First, check out Prometheus's Fakebook page where he posts updates on him playing with fire.  Then follow him on Twitter.  You can also read the plan he wrote on Google Story Builder.  Finally, see the text he sent his mom from his iPhone.

I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed creating them.

Fakebook Sample:

View Fullscreen | Create your own

What is Twitter?

Twitter Sample:

Google Story:

Mr. Riley's sample

iPhone Chat Sample: