Every day in April I will attempt to write a first draft of a new poem, and post them here. Please feel free to follow along and share. Happy National Poetry Month!
In this job, you have two choices:
become a grammarian, or become a linguist,
choose to teach correct or teach context.
You can red pen everything wrong you see,
correct and scold and inferior,
or you can fascinate at the way
some children use red blocks to build a blue castle,
make splatter painting sentences
we call kindergarten level fluency
or Polluck level creativity
based entirely on how much agency
we attribute to their home language.
Yesterday, Darreion asked me if Hell was a bad word.
I say, “It depends on who you are.”
I say, “It depends on how you use it.”
I say, “It depends on where you are.”
He says, “What if I say it to you?"
I say, “It would hurt me if you said 'go to hell',
but I wouldn’t mind if you said ‘Hell Yeah'.”
He says, “What if I say it in your classroom?”
I say, “That wouldn’t be — professional.”
When he comes into class, he searches for a pencil
he can sharpen and use for the day.
My classroom floor is littered with markers
and abandoned writing utensils,
sketchy drawings in the margins of unnamed papers.
When other teachers ask why I allow my students
to read graphic novels in class, I tell them
that the only difference between a comic and a paragraph
is who believes it qualifies as literature;
telling children that what they love to read does not count
is just another way of calling their masterpieces scribbles.
When we walk in a line to the cafeteria,
emerging from the door he cackles with energy,
sculpts our hands into a fist bump, shouting,
“Hell yeah, Miss, it’s lunch time.”
--Gloria C. Adams, “Red Pen”