A Slice of Life -from StatesmanJournal.com

poetry contribute .... ok, what's this? Technocrati tags up at the top of my entry?

1. Testing my Adobe Contribute

2. I thought this was a nice entry from one the local paper's bloggers

Quoted from:

A Slice of Life - StatesmanJournal.com

Finding creativity and freedom for a child

Typically we spend Saturdays getting ready for soccer or baseball games. This weekend began definitely different. Instead of a baseball, our youngest son got in the car clutching a poem. We were on our way to Willamette University’s Mark Hatfield Library where the Poetry readings were to be held.

I would have liked to go to this: but isn't it nice we can not do things, and still read about them?

The children began reading their poems. Words fell into order and rhythm that seedm to mirror Willamette’s natural running stream, void were any ambition other than the student’s unique awareness, hopes, or dreams. Each poem created glimpses of their world as they see it. Like a river without a dam, they took the audience where they wanted us to go, into their world and away from ours.

There are few places left in a child’s education where they can experience the freedom poetry and creative writing has to offer. The playground, maybe. But the swings and merry-go-round are gone. And there are oh so many rules. They can no longer defy gravity in a swing, pumping higher and higher until they feel they can fly. Or spin faster and faster until they fall into sheer dizziness on the merry-go-round.

... I remember one time, a bully came to the park and spun the merry-go-round so hard that children were flying off, hitting other playground equipment, eating bark chips, moaning in pain, crying. ahhhh .. memories.

Their classrooms once sacred place shared only with classmates a teacher are overrun by machines along with urgent interruptions like district e-mails, principal announcements, assemblies, or fundraiser plugs. The flashy technology as enchanting as it is teaches them only what adults want them to learn. Beyond the creative use of word processing, most of the data generated shares little about a child’s thinking and what little about what they’d like us to learn from them.

yea, what's the deal with the fund raisers? I never did that when I was a child.

Poetry and creative writing on the other hand does just this. Like finger paint the child can spin and swirl words together until what is left is exactly what they want adults to know about themselves and their world.

posted by Jeanine Stice