I'm "Daring Greatly" and Writing Poetry!

I've been toying around with the idea of poetry in my mind ever since I heard Nancie Atwell speak at the IRC. I have since bought her book Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons and participated in a poetry blog hop - you know, since April is National Poetry month! Then, today in my second and third grade collaborative plan meetings, both grade levels decided to do poetry so I thought today would be a good idea to try it out. It makes sense - try out what we want our students to do? And if we are expecting our students to read poems and then write them, why shouldn't I be expected to do so, too?

Additionally, I recently read this blog post about being vulnerable. I also bought the book she reviewed, but haven't got that far into it just yet... In thinking about putting myself out there with poetry, I'm thinking about how much vulnerability it's going to take to do so. While you put yourself out there for compliments, you also put yourself out there for criticism and judgment. And then, I opened the book and read this quote:

So after reading that, I was sold. Here's my first stab at poetry.

Have you read the Wheelbarrow poem? It's in one of my favorite poetry books, Love That Dog, and I'm going to mimic it with my own version below, but first the original...

The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon

the red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
-William Carlos Williams

And now...here's my wheelbarrow poem!

Standardized Testing
so much depends
upon

the scores of
standardized tests

complete with school
labels

listed in the town
newspaper.
-Michelle Brezek


Can you tell I have been reading too much Diane Ravitch? :-)

Okay followers - who wants to write poetry and dare greatly with me tonight? If you do, please leave a comment with a link to your post so I can read yours!

Happy Wednesday!