Repurposed from Georgia Heard’s blog.
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Now that my whirlwind of teaching and writing has slowed down, I wanted to share some of what I’ve been doing and thinking about the last few months. I spent a month in Bangkok at the wonderful Early Learning Center (ELC) International School, a couple of days with the amazing Imagine the Possibilities program at the Princeton Day School and numerous virtual workshops in schools around the United States. I have so much to share and I have learned so much from my students, it has taken me awhile to integrate it all into my mind and heart.
Words have always held a special place in my life, offering immense power and hope. As a poet, I firmly believe in their ability to change us and the world around us. They can touch hearts, shape minds, and bring beauty and wonder into our lives. To me, poems are like prayers, sent out into the world to help us endure challenges and ultimately, make our world a better place.
During my time in Bangkok, alongside the bustling cityscape of skyscrapers and endless traffic, I launched a special poetry project with my students. In conjunction with ELC’s theme of botany, we explored the concept of sowing hope through poetry.
I gave my students heart shaped paper, seeded with wildflowers, and our plan was to write poems of hope on the paper and plant these poems in a vacant lot as part of the school’s rewilding project.
Here’s how we did the project:
Through poetry, children found a means of hope and wonder. It served as a poignant reminder to me that teaching poetry extends far beyond analyzing a poem or writing in a set form, but it can offer empowerment and genuine connection with ourselves as well as the natural world.
Just like Heart Maps, my students have inspired me to believe in words as instruments of change, as we work together to create a more compassionate world.
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Listen to Georgia Heard on the Heinemann Podcast discuss the forthcoming book.
How do we infuse poetry into our classrooms? This new edition of Awakening the Heart stands on the shoulders of the original edition as a roadmap for answering this question. It aims to keep the heart in teaching poetry and to help us realize that poems are so much more than a genre student or a way to analyze text for a reading test. Throughout the text, Georgia Heard threads the voices of young and well-known poets together to illustrate the power and joy of poetry. It offers useful tools, examples, and stories for teachers and instructors to translate into their own communities.
Awakening the Heart, Second Edition released on March 19th.
