April in the Library and National Poetry Month 2016

http://www.quote-coyote.com/quotes/authors/p/plutarch/

By the time April rolls around I am exhausted. We have just celebrated Teen Tech Week in the library, and I am gearing up for all the end of the year tasks that I do that don't happen to relate to the library. These tasks include preparing for the induction ceremony for the National Honor Society, completing duties as AP coordinator that take a huge amount of planning and logistics, assisting the val and sal with their speeches, and getting the script for graduation ready for the big day. The class of 2016 graduates on May 14th which is very early, and the last day for the rest of the students is May 25th. 

If I want to celebrate National Poetry Month, we need to design and plan easy to do activities that the students can handle themselves or that take little work from me. One thing that I will do is send out a poem every day of the school week via email. I am not a big fan of email blasts, but I am careful to put National Poetry Month in the subject line. That means the students and staff members know exactly what kind of email they are receiving. They can choose to read or delete as they see fit. Usually, I just put the text of the poem in the email. This year I decided to change it up a bit. On Friday, I sent out the picture that you see at the top of this blog post. One day last week, I sent out a link to make your own poems online with magnetic poetry words. I asked students to share with me the poems that they created via email. I did not get many, but you can see some of the results below.

by Lindsey, 9th grade

by Nile, 8th grade

by Tyler B., 9th grade

by Tyler H., 9th grade

I have asked the members of the high school book group to volunteer one day in a week to read a poem over the loud speaker during the morning announcements. I am not sure if that will happen because I have let them know that they need to practice. I also need to hear the poem before they perform it for the whole school. I am still waiting. 

The book group members came up with a great idea to make poetry mad libs and invite students in during lunch one day to play them. We were going to create them ourselves, but I think that we might find some online to download. I will let you know.

To end this post, I am going to share a poem that I student sent to me. She wrote it and thought that I would like it because it was poetry month. She has been reading her emails!

Unexpected Love
By Nina, 7th grade

People say that life
Is full of open doors.
I just happened to be
Curious and loved to explore.

I opened a strange door -
The one that led to you.
I fell into a wonderland,
And my heart fell, too.

I never knew that the
Stars could shine so bright.
I never thought to think
In the middle of the night.

I never knew how easy
It was to make me cry.
I never knew how easy
It was to make me smile.

Life is a mystery -
One for us to solve.
But for this case,
It was no mystery at all.

As time and life went further,
I knew that my heart grew.
I was sure of everything,
Because I fell in love with you.