Writers, teachers, teacher educators, people-who-say-they’re-not-poets-but-just-might-be (essentially, everyone)!
I know it feels too soon for April and National Poetry Month, but I am looking forward to springtime in great anticipation of living in the universe with and through verse.
During the month of April, I will post a poem inspiration (prompt) every day on Ethical ELA that you can use with students (if you are a teacher), but this poem celebration/challenge is really about writing more than teaching. Write because you can. Write because it helps you see your world anew. Write because this will be a place to experiment, take risks, be brave, be silly, be supportive of all writers all month long. You will feel a renewed connection with humanity.
You do not have to write every day in April to join us as you are welcome to write a poem as many or as few times as you wish; you can even just be a dedicated poet supporter by reading and responding to poems when you feel inclined.
A Quick Overview
- A new prompt will be posted every morning at 5:00 AM (CST) on ethicalela.com.
- Post a poem in the comment section sometime before midnight — the poem does NOT have to follow the prompt, and there are no rules about the length, form, rhyme, or topic (just keep it PG-13).
- Reply to three or more poems with encouragement and/or praise.
- It’s okay if you don’t post every day.
Guest Authors
To keep the inspiration fresh throughout the month and to support our writing, several author-educators will joining us for a few days at a time:
Anna J. Small Roseboro, a National Board Certified Teacher is a published author and poet but is primarily an educator with over forty years’ experience teaching English and Speech to students in middle school, high school and college in public, private, and parochial schools in five states. A mentor for early career educators, Ms. Roseboro earned a B.A. in Speech Communications from Wayne State University and an M.A. in Curriculum Design from the University of California, San Diego. Her newest published work is a series of books pubished by Rowman and Littlefield designed for pre-service teachers and for those teaching middle school for the first time. See those three books GETTING STARTED (2018) MORE ABOUT WRITING (2019) and NOT INTIMIDATING (2019) on her website http://
teachingenglishlanguagearts.com/.
Travis Crowder, M.Ed., is a middle school English/Language Arts teacher at
East Alexander Middle School in Hiddenite, NC. He has taught for ten years and has experience in both middle and high school levels. He currently teaches 7th grade ELA and social studies, and works with the gifted and talented students in his school. He is the co-author of Sparks in the Dark: Lessons, Ideas, and Strategies to Illuminate the Reading and Writing Lives in All of Us.
Kip Wilson is the author of White Rose, a YA novel-in-verse about anti-Nazi political activist Sophie Scholl. White Rose won the 2017 PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery Award and is a 2019 Winter/Spring Indies Introduce and Spring Indies Next title. It’s coming on April 2, 2019 with HMH’s Versify imprint. Kip holds a Ph.D. in German Literature, is the poetry editor at YARN (Young Adult Review Network), and wrote her doctoral dissertation about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. She’s lived in Germany, Austria, and Spain, and currently calls Boston home.
Aida Salazar is a writer, arts advocate, and homeschooling mother whose writings explore issues of identity and social justice. She grew up in Southeast Los Angeles where she spent many days sitting in little puddles of water on cement believing she was in the ocean. Her forthcoming debut middle grade novels in verse, THE MOON WITHIN, and THE LAND OF THE CRANES, and her debut picture book, JOVITA WORE PANTS, will be published by Arthur A. Levine Books / Scholastic in Spring 2019, Spring 2020 and Fall 2020 respectively. Her story, By the Light of the Moon, was adapted into a ballet production by choreographer, Isabelle Sjahsam, and artist, Roberto Miguel, for the Sonoma Conservatory of Dance and premiered in April 2016. It is the first Xicana-themed ballet in history.
Sign-Up (not required)
Interested? Fill out this form which is just a loose commitment to live and love in verse throughout April. You do not need to sign-up, and you can join or opt-out at any point during the month: https://goo.gl/forms/NSrITVEXnAun8LgU2
My students and I are so loving this. Thank you for sharing. Our favorites so far have been “I Am” and the Pantoum. We are writing two for each – one from the perspective of a character or symbol from a book and one more personal.
Yay! So glad. My 7th graders are loving it, too. So impressed and inspired by them, but their comments to one another are the most heart-warming! Thanks for being with us.