Thread by @PaulWHankins

Some English 11 pieces (Dear, __________") inspired by @JasonReynolds83's "Dear, Dreamer" this week in #Room407. You can find the ten-minute film at Vimeo.

@JasonReynolds83 Some have asked for the link to @JasonReynolds83 in "Dear, Dreamer" (ten-minute film). vimeo.com/338777680. While the film was running, I took down a page full of quotes and phrases from the film. Shared with students. Students used these captured lines as riff lines here.

It's fun, too, because I am having early conversations with these students about pushing a poem forward. About design. About presentation. Here's the poem I wrote with them. #Room407 #THIS407

I think, too, teacher friends, what made many of these little looks into the lives special was someone coming alongside and underneath the poems/presentation asking/guiding: "What word? What's this? What about? What if?" And, then, the under of the presentation.

It took very little effort to present the poems. Remember, creativity is an approach not a person. A little card stock paper and glue and poems become the natural puffer fish they can be. A small stanza now becomes a ball room in which we can look up and around. . .and move.

And whether a student is six or sixteen, to have an adult come along and help you to make that poem that was a just a little bit rough come out with a certain sort of "look at me now" brought a little pride to the table. And to the heart.

One thing I learned this week. Some of my students have not been doing school projects because. . .one. . .they lack the Hobby Lobby mobility. And, two, they are not comfortable with scissors let alone spatial appreciation and arranging.

One of our #Room407 invitation-become-mantras is to "play in prototype." For some of my students who I am just meeting right now, seem to be "glued-down when the due date dawns." Arranging and appreciating in prototype is a pathway to quality work with our older students.

"Dear Overthinker" is a new student to us at SCHS. Not quite sure what to make of this large, white, male teacher at the beginning of the year. Our breakthrough, I think, was in the suggestion of that "thought bubble" she came up on her own. And I got really excited about it.

I'm excited to see when "Dear Creator" begins to put those fractals together into something solid. Maybe by the end of the year. In the pieces, we see Jason's words and her arrangements of them. I'm visualizing more parallel poems perhaps for her moving forward.

"Dear Classmate" came about from a teacher push on the idea of the shift from YOU to I in owning a piece of poetry and one's space within the classroom. You could write a book about students who really need to claim their own space but give it up in earnest to the others daily.

And "Dear Artist." You think I'm NOT paying attention to this poem-as-introduction at the start of the year? Think I won't be inviting this person to be a design and presentation leader as the group does its work this year? I have another heart, another set of eyes and hands now.

And when all of the pieces are finally finished this week, the two English 11 classes will go up on the cabinet doors. Thoughtfully-arranged. This is you. This is you in here. This space. Your work has found its way to the wall--to the door--again. Welcome to #Room407. #THIS407

For our teacher friends looking in on this. . .please. . .resist the notion that this looks too simple or too "EL-Arts and Crafts." Do you know the rigor that presents of owning/claiming one's identity? Dream? Want? Write poems about them. On paper. Affix them to something solid.

@JasonReynolds83 @threadreaderapp: Would you please unroll me so that I can share this idea with even more of my teacher colleagues and friends?