I am exhausted, dehydrated, and a bit overwhelmed, but I think it went well. I volunteered half-time at day camp teaching poetry workshops. My kids got to go to camp for a nominal fee, but mostly I did it to support my friend who was running the camp (for free) and to keep building my experience and rep as a children's poetry teacher. (I seem to have forgotten about the rep goal. It's not like anyone took home a card.)

three out of the four workshops were brand new because I'm crazy like that

I have now been teaching poetry workshops for kids for five years, and I have 20 different lessons ready to go complete with sample poems, hand-outs, and a minute by minute break down of the lesson. How many of those did I use? One.

It's not that I mind repeating myself. Heck, I taught Composition 101 three times a year for fifteen years. But I decided to use this as chance to explore, and I wanted to have poetry units that perfectly matched the camp's themes. So, I nearly went crazy trying to find a lesson about using your body to write poetry.

I did find a great website though, a British poetry society http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk, that provides excellent children's poetry lesson plans. And I really do mean excellent. I'm pretty picky about poetry lesson plans. Most of the ones I bump into are about being silly or making forms. Nothing wrong with either of those things, but I want to teach the heart of poetry. I want to teach taking risks and imaginative thinking.

I taught looking with your third eye, a Kenneth Koch lesson I've been wanting to try for twenty years. I gave everyone a googly eye to put on their forehead and we saw with our third eye all the things we couldn't see with our regular two eyes. That was the use your body day. I just added a body part.

Day 2 we did seeing like a tree. That's the one I've done a lot. What does a tree see? What does a tree wish for? What advice does a tree have for you?

Day 3 was making monsters. This is a great intro to similes. The kids make a list of body parts, a list of things they think are really yucky, and then combined. So, you get lines like "My monster's arms are rotten bananas. My monster's tentacles sound like squeaky chalk."

Day 4 we tried kennings. I think this was the least successful. A kenning is "a concise compound or figurative phrase replacing a common noun. It comes from the Anglo Saxon era, where swords had names like "death-bringer" or "wound-maker." Beowolf has a lot of kennings. We used them to make riddle poems. David's group came for a workshop this morning. Here is his poem:

Canyind carvr
cave carvr
see macre
life macre
river macre
bed filr
What am I?

The bed filler threw me a bit, but I guessed it.

spelling doesn't count

I was prepared for kids who couldn't write. I had lots of counselor helpers who could scribe for the kids. But I wasn't prepared for kids freaking out about spelling. I had kids crumpling up their papers in frustration before I had a chance to make my "spelling doesn't count" speech.

yes, second grade boys like writing poetry

and kindergarten boys and third grade girls and. . . Really, everyone who tried it had a blast.

clipboards are awesome

I went a little crazy buying supplies--three packs of paper, when I needed half of one, three packs of decorating paper when we ended up using the supplies on hand, but I did make one fabulous purchase--clipboards. It occurred to me during training that trying to write on pitted picnic tables with the wind blowing your paper around would be kind of difficult. I didn't think about the freedom a clipboard affords. You can leave the table and sit quietly under a tree. You can get some elbow room and mental space. Since I bought the clipboards with camp money, I am giving them to camp, but if I ever run outdoor workshops myself, you can bet I'll be investing in clipboards.

I have mad kid skillz and sometimes they aren't enough

I am really good at managing kids. I design questions that everyone can answer successfully. (What tastes yucky to you?) I add wiggle activity to help the kids who can't sit still. I can take the disruptive girl and give her a helper task that turns her from a liability to an asset. But seriously, I was not winning with David's group. I learned from their counselors that this group had been extremely hard all week, and this was about the best they'd been. But still, my bubble popped a bit that I couldn't keep them from talking out of turn, over each other, off topic, and barely sticking with the task. (David and his two friends were actually quite fine; it was the rest of the group. It says a lot when David's listening skills are near the top of the group.) But after practicing kennings all together, I sent them off with their clipboards to work in small groups and suddenly, we had a different world. We had a one to three ratio with the counselor to kids and the kids excitedly wrote their poems. I mean they really got into it. Now, if only I got to see them again, I would know what to do.

now I know how to sell it

At camp training, I stood up in front of the counselors and told them about the poetry workshops, but I did not do a great sales pitch. I didn't know what they needed to know. Now, I could tell them: your group doesn't need to be able to write; it's a great quieter activity to balance out all the running around; kids are not afraid to write poetry or be creative, especially the younger ones; they'll not just write, but decorate and present, and they will be so proud.