Teaching Adult ESL with Poetry

All the things you don't know in this life until you look. I've been teaching poetry in the schools in California for about 6 years now, and I'm just finding out so many things. For instance, there are many teachers who use poetry to teach English as a Second Language (ESL). Here's a great link I found -- thre are some lovely ideas here and some great poetry books cited. One of the poems discussed is "Margaret's Party" by Joni Miller. I'll have to find the whole text of that one.

AAHRPP poems

I wonder if anyone else out there has ever thought about writing poems that celebrate AAHRPP (that would be the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs). I'm thinking poems in strict form: haiku, limerick, villanelle, even sestinas and sonnets for the ambitous ones among AAHRPP-fans. How about this:

Our AAHRPP deadline is June.
We will finish our submission soon.
If they like what we do
They'll accredit -- woo hoo!
Our praises to all they will croon.

(For those of you who would like to follow suit, it's pronounced "a-harp")

A New Blog

So, now I'm up to three blogs, a FaceBook place, and several Yahoo groups. Why can't they figure out how to make all this stuff happen in one place?

First Blog: First Poem

If there's someone to turn to
I'm full
If there isn't
Then I'm empty.

Published when I was 9, in the fifth grade, in the Palo Alto Times. Thanks Miss Cava, wherever you are. You were a great teacher. I thank you for this gift of poetry in my life.