My quarterly reading class is analyzing Billy Collin's poem "On Turning Ten". As part of the activity, I always ask the students to recall one event from each year of their lives, kind of as the speaker does in the poem.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
"Try to capture the spirit of who you were at each age," I tell them. "Think of what you loved, what you believed, what was new, what you lost."
Today I looked out at the class, grasping for a timely example to illustrate what I meant. I thought of my nephew, Richard, who is also in sixth grade. "Like, at four, you loved the Backyardigans," I suggested.
"Yes!" many of them agreed, their heads nodding, their eyes misting nostalgically. And before you knew it, through the miracle of personal technology, the theme song from the show drifted dissonantly from table to table, as a roomful of 11 and 12 year olds were temporarily reacquainted with their cute little preschool selves.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
"Try to capture the spirit of who you were at each age," I tell them. "Think of what you loved, what you believed, what was new, what you lost."
Today I looked out at the class, grasping for a timely example to illustrate what I meant. I thought of my nephew, Richard, who is also in sixth grade. "Like, at four, you loved the Backyardigans," I suggested.
"Yes!" many of them agreed, their heads nodding, their eyes misting nostalgically. And before you knew it, through the miracle of personal technology, the theme song from the show drifted dissonantly from table to table, as a roomful of 11 and 12 year olds were temporarily reacquainted with their cute little preschool selves.
No comments:
Post a Comment