Photos from Silicon Valley STEAM Festival

The Silicon Valley STEAM Festival was amazing. It was loud and proud and fun and jammed with people, planes, cars, food, music, robots, and bubbles. Not a place you'd expect to find poems, but there we were!  Here are some photos of the scene, the kids and their families, and the poems we wrote. I worked with Erica Goss, newly minted CPITS poet/teacher and current Los Gatos Poet Laureate.

Click through here to read the San Jose Mercury News article about the event. Lots and lots of photos of cars and planes.

Here's Erica in the booth. We made our own CPITS sign, and had three tables inviting people in. We had chalk on the tarmac, but it didn't turn into kids writing on the ground. Please notice our Proceed With Kindness sign!  The inside of the booth was also decorated with bright colored paper chains and the chalkboard sign. (Erica wrote the great prompt on the chalkboard!!)
We hung sample plane poems from the paper chain. 

The booth had three tables: on this one I had anthologies, student poem bookmarks (it was really windy so we kept them in bundles, which meant that they didn't get taken unless we offered them) and business cards, CPITS flyers. There would have been Kleenex (see not about wind) and we had hand sanitizer, which a LOT of people liked. 

The longest table had white paper taped down, with poem prompts written in bright colors. We had planes and luggage tags for poems, different colored pens and pencils. This section was shady and had chairs.
This was the POEM MAKING STATION.

The third table had the magnet poetry. This usually draws a lot of people, but I think most of the crowd were too overstimulated to play. Later in the day more did. 

Here are some of the kids and the poems they wrote. We had a lot of fun. 

At the end of the day, this is what three exhausted, wind-blown poets look like!

Erica Goss (CPITS poet/teacher), Amanda Williamson (Cupertino poet and CPITS friend), and me, Jennifer Swanton Brown (Santa Clara County Area Coordinator and poet/teacher)

"Write A Poem and Make it Fly Away!"" 

Here are some close ups some of the way the different poems could hang or be attached to strings or sticks. Holes at the top made the poems hang well from a string or bar. Holes at the nose of the plane made good "kites" and also could be tied to wrists. Sticks at the bottom made poem-plane puppets. One smart kid thought of tying the luggage tag behind the plane -- so I wrote an example of that to show (she took hers away before I could get a photo!)

This is friend's math limerick poem. It shows the custom stamp we made, too. "This is my poem" with the date and the CPITS website. This got stamped on every poem that walked out of the booth. 

This is Erica's poem. 

Planes are loud!  Planes are loud!  Poems are quiet. Poems are loud, too.

This is my daughter's STEAM haiku. 

This poem reads "There was a sad war and a sad song"
Kids are amazing. 

CPitS Symposium Registration Open Now!

Join us!  Great for classroom teachers as well as poets of all shapes and sizes!

Casa de Maria Retreat Center, Santa Barbara, September 11-13, 2015

Friday writing intensive led by Marsha Delao. Friday night poetry performance by Marsha Delao and Amanda Gorman; Saturday Morning Keynote by Nels Christianson; Workshops on poetic craft, teaching strategies, open mic, surprise appearances, and more!   

To sign up: info@cpits.org or follow CPITS on Facebook to get the latest program details. 

• Download: Class & Presenter Descriptions
• Download: Registration Form (PDF) or Word Version Registration Form

May 2015 CPITS Newsletter

Is here!

Read about awesome doings in Marin, Mendocino, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Save the date for the September 11-13, 2015 CPITS symposium!

Zyzzyva Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera

This is a great interview! Read about this amazing man, his tenure as a CPitS poet and his tenure as the Poet Laureate of California.

ZYZZYVA: Generally speaking, how does teaching inform and renew your own writing?

Juan Felipe Herrera: Well, my students are brighter than me, and they are more original than me and much quicker of mind—so I am very fortunate to be in their company. I learn a lot. The shape of their poems, for example, their innovative translation approaches, their leaps into international and multicultural poetics … and their ideas.

Photo by Randy Vaughn-Dotta.

Kids' Book Review: Review: Rip the Page!

Karen Benke (this book's author) is a CPitS poet of long standing and poetic breadth. This looks like just a great book. And I am enjoying the blog, KBR, which reviews kids books in a colorful and delightful fashion. Read about it here: Kids' Book Review: Review: Rip the Page!

Kickstarter Project for Amazing Lesson Book

California Poets in the Schools is currently raising money through Kickstarter to publish a lesson book: 50 lessons in celebration of CPitS' 50th anniversary.

Consider a pledge of support!

Or, at least watch the sweet video (click on the link above) -- kids reading their poetry. A real treat.

Mendocino CPitS Anthology

The wonderful Blake More, Area Coordinator for CPitS in Mendocino County, has just completed her editing of a new K-12 anthology, published by the Mendocino County Office of Education. You can follow the Mendo PitS at their website. Blake More also offers her insight as a long-time poet/teacher at her own website. It's a wonderful colorful space.

  

Here is a sample poem, written in Spanish and then translated into English, by a pair of third graders. The poetry alone is lovely, moving, full of life. The opportunity to collaborate as young artists across cultures is the best example of what artist in the schools programs can offer.

IN THE MOON / EN LA LUNA

In the moon
there is a star
In the star
there’s tears
In the tears
sparkles
In the sparkles
there are blossoms
In the blossoms
there are daisies
In the daisies
there are fish
swimming away in the ocean.

En la luna
hay estrellas
En las estrellas
hay lágrimas
En las lágrimas
hay brillo
En el brillo
hay flores floreando
En las flores floreando
hay margaritas
En las margaritas
hay peces
nadando en el mar

by Jocelyn A., Grade 3
trans by Jocelyn and Susana H.

 

Poetry Crossing

A wonderful lady, fellow-CPitS poet/teacher, and awesome Emily Dickinson impersonator, Phyllis Meshulam, has a fun fun fun and colorful blog called "Poetry Crossing: Thoughts on poetry lesson plan book for K-12." Check it out for wonderful ideas about poetry teaching. 

Phyllis, a poet from Sonoma County, has contributed multiple lesson plans to CPitS anthologies over the years. This poem of hers, published in the 2002 CPitS Statewide Anthology, attempts to put in writing the movements of a poet performing in American Sign Language. Poetry is not all on the page or in the ear, it can also be performed by the body without sound. 

The Angel of Muscular Wings

Impressions of an American Sign Language Poem by John Roades

The poet is a skyscraper of a man,
          but flexible,
portraying the New York skyline,
          one humming tower at a time.

His hands take flight like airplanes
          with their fragile cargo;
his body, receiving the blow,
          explodes, and reconfigures

as the Angel of Muscular Wings
          that catches the couples jumping,
          the incinerating ants.
But, in reality, he is just human

sprouting feathers before our eyes
crocheting keratin
into fire-retardant sings
so as to represent those

who know to run
toward disaster:
          earthbound gestures
          eternally generous. 

Phyllis H. Meshulam 

There are lovely videos of deaf poets on YouTube. For example, here's "The United States of Poetry" by Peter Cook. This video includes a spoken rendition of the poem. There are also videos of poetry signed but not spoken. Your students might find the experience of seeing a poem in ASL quite astounding, if they've never known a deaf person or seen ASL performed. 

Enjoy!