When I was trying to determine the next prompt to share with people, I was seeking to find a word that would feel open-ended and a word that could invoke a potentially healing writing process. When I thought about the word healing, the word remember came to my mind. The word remember and the very [...]
Disruption
When I think of this year, I think of disruption. Much has been disrupted. In both good ways and in really hard and harmful ways. Our time was seemingly disrupted. Our schedules. Our pride. Our ignorance. Our busy. Our ways of gathering. Our ways of being. Our ways of teaching. Our ways of celebrating. Our [...]
Dance With Them
Written right after I got my tree tattoo in August. The trees and the moon danced together tonight. They created silhouettes and and shadows of praise. Each silhouette and shadow a form of darkness that brings glory to the bit of light shining just enough. What a glorious sight to see darkness being swept into [...]
“Hope” is the Untouchable – That Touches Us
Written at the December Red Clay Writing Conference. Inspired by Emily Dickinson's poem "Hope" is a Thing With Feathers. Hope is one of those words I have been thinking on a lot lately. I have recognized that my hope cannot be contingent upon circumstances, but instead on the unseen. “hope” is the untouchable - that [...]
13 Ways of Looking at the Teacher
June of 2020 - Responding to the prompt: Using William Carlos Williams' 13 Ways of Looking at Blackbird as your model/frame/template, write a 13 stanza poem offering your 13 ways of looking at your first year of teaching Often the student Learning the most Is the teacher Learning their students The teacher must Pay attention [...]
Writing Still Heals
Written August 29th, 2020 after a month of pre-planning for a school year none of us could even fully plan and prepare for. I didn't have the words I wanted to say, but I knew I needed to write anyways. All week long I have had this craving to write. An energy building up inside [...]
Youth At The Table
A piece I wrote in June of 2020 as I was reflecting on all my first year of teaching taught me. Our youth get left out of so many conversations. We forget to see them in their full humanity - in their brilliance and resilience. This piece is one I continue to come back to [...]
New Ground
Written in May of 2020- playing around with narrating from a voice that is not my own. But, this is a piece I resonate deeply even though I was not seeking to write my own experience when I wrote this. I am breaking new ground. New ground of understanding how I have always felt that [...]
Set Free In the Ink
WoW Found Poem from G. Lynn Nelson’s Writing and Being: Embracing Your Life through Creative Journaling (The first half is a Collaborative piece with Christina Gillespie and the second half I began to shift out of the Found Poem format and let the piece go where it wanted to go) Written in June 2020 during [...]
Let it be. Let it breathe.
Most writing pieces that I do feel quite incomplete, especially these days. I write just to let my mind rest and unravel, in small inches, some of my processing, This year is one with too much to process. I really do have to take everything in such small steps in order to carry on through [...]
