Oh Ms Stitham, bring on thou energy !
Fuel our flagging classroom with powered inquiry!
Dive into the fishbowl--
The clear waters of an authentic exam,
The metacognitive awareness of the mind vault.
Because, like clouds and starfish, different is each student.
How are we currently challenging each student?
Do we scaffold up from the literal text with any energy?
Help them bend and stretch; help them execute a limber pole-vault
Up, up and beyond the basest factual inquiry!
“To strive to seek to find” ways for them to look hard at each exam.
Though the word connotes containment, fluid swimming happens in a fishbowl.
Humans, if they still had gills, would feel at home in a fishbowl.
Comfort and ease is not true learning for each student!
At the end of the day, in a teacher’s final exam,
We should find within ourselves a deeper energy.
A bubble-peircing instrument for releasing the seeds of inquiry,
A muscled thrust and heave to open up the vault.
“An arched structure, usually of masonry, serving to cover a space”: is a vault.
Let us, as teachers, be this for our students above the fishbowl.
Let us be brick-bastions of inquiry,
Purveyors of discernment and thinking for each student
May we do this with quad-espresso Stitham energy!
And in the end we will pass the exam.
But to prepare only for the exam
Is to ignore how we are the overarching bridge, the vault,
The inspiring encouragers of student energy,
The challengers and gatekeepers of the fishbowl.
Leave not one behind as a straggler or bummer lamb- each student!
Kicking and bleating we will pull them into learned inquiry!
And after four sestets this gets tedious—this inquiry.
Why have I done this? Is there some exam?
“Federally highly qualified” in archaic poetry forms—is this good for a student?
All my questions go unanswered, locked into a vault.
Like uneaten food-flakes drifting to the bottom of a fishbowl.
And I may not get it back, all this energy.
Somehow, some way, we should reach each student;
We should encourage individual inquiry.
We need to create and maintain our energy
To affect our students and to succeed at the genuine exam.
Answers and ideas are not locked into a vault
They are swimming, small and silent in a fishbowl.
2 comments:
This is great, Cat! Kudos to your creativity!
I know that not every day in the classroom is peaches and roses, but I just LOVE being in the presence of people who ooze enthusiasm the way Susan does.
It's a powerful thing to know that she had such success with both "at risk" students and "high achievers" alike. From the sound of it, the "fishbowl" is the way to go ... and it seems like a useful tool, but I still would really like to see it in action. I'm still a tad confused about what the students on the outside do.
In any event, I look forward to talking more with Susan about Shakespeare ... and how she was able to engage all students with the difficult language.
Burke does give a good idea about how to construct a "fishbowl" in your class. It should be in the chapter on "Teaching Reading."
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