Still Teaching. Still Learning.

In my prior life, I was an educator. It didn’t take me long to realize that while I was teaching children, they were teaching me too. And now, still, I am learning.

After sharing the Wishes poetry anthologies with faculty at Hendrix Elementary IB World School in Boiling Springs, SC earlier this year, I was invited to lead a poetry workshop for their Camp Curiosity summer students. Hendrix is a culturally and economically diverse school, and has the claim to fame of making an appearance in Peter H. Reynolds’ picture book, When You Dream Big.

You might think that asking children to write poetry from their hearts during the heat of the summer would be a daunting task. Indeed, one of the boys asked upon entering the library: “Is this going to be work?” (His apprehension was immediately dispelled when he saw the NO RULES anchor chart on the white board.) But experience has taught me that children yearn for ways to express themselves.

And just as with Wishes and Wings and Wishes on Wheels, once the premise of creating a self-portrait through words was explained, the children were eager to share what they think and feel about themselves.

This is true for most of us, I believe. When we lose our inhibition and regain that childlike freedom, and when we remind ourselves that there are “no rules” in how we choose to share ourselves with the world, the ideas flow. The words come. The art is made.

And it may be that we choose not to share that part of ourselves with the world. Journaling, poetry, or painting can be just for ourselves. We can even write letters to ourselves and tuck them away to be read and re-read when we need to hear our own words again. Maybe who we create for matters less than the fact that we create at all.

So what I have learned from children’s poems - whether they were written in a hospital wing, or using assistive technology while in a wheelchair, or during a summer camp designed for some of our most vulnerable young community members? I’ve learned that we all have something in common, no matter our circumstances. We all experience joy, sadness, worry, and hope. And when you read their poems, you feel the wonder, you see the dreams. You learn that what you see on the outside doesn’t always reflect what is on the inside. That everyone has a story to tell and sometimes, a child tells it best.

With every good wish,

Lisa