Poem In the Making -- Or -- Process Flow??

This is a the cover of a thank you note I received from one of the third graders who came to hear me speak at Discovery Day, Regnart Elementary School's annual day when community members come and tell the kids what they do for a living.

Even though I don't make my living as a poet, I love to talk to the students about how a poet lives and works. They love me, too, which is the best reason to go. I get four third grade classes, for about 35 minutes each. We write a poem together as a class, I give them prompts, they shout out, we write on the board, we argue about which word is best, and their classroom teacher writes down the finished project. Then I answer the inevitable quesitons: "do you have a book" and "are you famous" (no, and no) and we all break for lunch. Then their teachers make them write me thank-you notes, which I love love love, especially the ones that say "Mrs. Brown, you are the BEST POET EVER." Who wouldn't love it??

Anyway, this year, one of the boys drew this on his thank you note. It's a picture of the process -- me writing on the board, the kids all shouting out their ideas. I love it, because it's not one of the overly cute and perfectly scripted letters that third grade girls are so good at. I showed it to my boss, and he was amazed -- this kid may have a future in business! What a kick.

And here's the poem we were creating:

School

Third grade floats as high as Ms. Cavanaugh.

We are smiley, shyly, shoelaces,

highly smart.

We float to another galaxy, like a television.

School obeys, does what we tell it to do,

comes up, starts dancing

with screamy, colorful moving pictures like a TV,

floating

squeezed tightly in a box.

Don't you just love it??