Sara Holbrook author/poet/educator
April 2, 2006
It is rare that I visit a school and get to come home for lunch, but Memorial is right down the road from my house. I had a great time with the writing club and with an honors English class writing. In the afternoon, the two assemblies went well. But in between, I visited
March 28, 2006
I drove home from a great visit to Perseus in Erie, PA today only to sit down to watch another expose about yet another teacher engaged in appropriate conduct with a student. Purportedly.
How come the teachers I met today in Erie never make the news? The ones who attend
March 25, 2006
Ajax (the special needs dog) is eating a pencil under my desk. I’m dressed for the gym but stalled here at the computer. I read the news — or most of it. I’m afraid to look at the article about the melting polar cap and disappearing glaciers. I already struggled through
March 23, 2006
Let’s say some school district, a big district, is putting together scripted lesson plans for the third grade, a program that is destined to grow up through all the grades. It is organized into 10 minute segments so that every teacher in the district can be at the same point at the same time
March 23, 2006
Goshen is in prairie country, flat and windswept. Tuesday morning dawned clear and cold — extra cold. The reception at school however was warm and welcoming. The students from Parkside are camping out at a school called (appropriately) Praire Elementary while their own school is undergoing an extreme makeover. But before
March 23, 2006
Poem the poem — Parkside teacher Matt Cooper had his fifth graders rewrite some of my poems, to “poem the poem,” as he describes it. Here one student rewrote “Which Way to the Dragon” as Which Way to my Teddy Bear.”
March 19, 2006
Universal peace signs and lots of smiles.
March 17, 2006
In China, rules are in place that require a visa to move from one province (like a state) to another. If a family moves without this visa to find work, say from a farming community to the growing city of Shanghai, they become illegal immigrants and thus are not able to enroll their children
March 16, 2006
Children at the Chinese Migrant School recite poetry by heart. Then I taught them a poem in English — my shortest poem. Everyone laughed and laughed.
March 15, 2006
Jammers from Puxi perform a poem for four voices. Missing in the student poetry are poems about street crime (as so many are in the USA). Maybe because there is virtually no street crime in Shanghai beyond a pick pocket here and there and even that is rare compared to other large cities.