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News
Notes #4
updates for participant schools
3/7/05
In
this News Notes:
Staying
the Course
 There
comes a time in any publication project where we all
say, "Is this really worth it?" That time may
have come for you, or maybe not yet. But it will. We
just want to urge you to believe that it IS worth
it. If you did this last year, you know what the end
result is--but even then it's easy to forget. When
we met with Tom Warner, the facilities manager at
the Kimmel Center, last week, though, we were
looking around that space at all the light and all
those balconies and remembering what it was to
connect those 2,000 Dream Flags and to hear one
amazing poem after another from the students on
stage. And Tom told us that the staff people who
were there that day told him they had never
seen anything like it. Neither had we.
[Thanks to Jasmine Zowniriw for this
photo.]
That was the
big finale, but equally wonderful was having those
flags strewn all down our 6th grade hallway and
having people walk by them every day, reading them
and admiring each student's work.
This past
week, we sent out a survey to the lead teacher at
every participant school (Please holler if we
somehow missed you.), asking about participation in
the Dream Flag Celebration on the 16th. We'll be
getting details together for that within the next
ten days and will let you know all about it. For
more on upcoming dates, see Calendar
Notes.
Meanwhile,
many of us are still in the stage of writing
dream poems (though I know some people are
completely finished their flags already) so
there are some ideas on how to do that with your
students under Dream Poem Writing.
Spring break
is not all that far away, now that March is here,
and we can say from past experience, that it really
helps to have the flags done before you go off on
break. Next week, we'll be writing tips on
decorating the flags and attaching them to a line, but
there's already lots on that under Create on this
site if you need it now. Look at
Putting Words
on Cloth
or Fabric
Decoration and Images. There's also information on attaching
the flags to a line under
Connect.
And if
you're super organized, and already thinking ahead to the
week of April 3rd or before as a time to share Dream
Flags in your school or with another school, there
are a few ideas on that under
Connecting the Dreams.
Well, March
is finally here, "When spring And life Are
new."*
--Jeff
Harlan and Sandy Crow
*From
"In Time of Silver Rain" by Langston Hughes
Calendar
Notes
Our Kimmel Center Dream Flag Celebration is
scheduled for Saturday, April 16th--about 6 weeks
from now. The program will run from 12:00-1:30.
There will be some set-up time before and some flag
viewing time after. It is a free event, open to the
public, and will be in Commonwealth Plaza, which is
the stage area in the main glass enclosed lobby of
the Kimmel Center. It's a great place for Dream
Flags because of all the light and space.
It's a good
idea to find out a few weeks ahead, what students would like to come
to the even and
can come. (Here is a note we sent to
parents last year:
web
page;
Word
document.) There can only be a few
students from each school who will read poems, so
that the program can fit inside 90 minutes;
however, there is a need for students who are
Dream Flag holders for your school at a certain
point in the program. That can be any number. We'll
send more details on numbers of student readers from
each school as soon as we have the survey
information from all of the schools--end of next
week.
We have set
up a service so that your students may
publish Dream Flag poems on the web site two weeks
before the event--the week of April 3rd--allowing
students everywhere to each other's poems. To
do this, we have to receive the poems as an email
attachment by Wednesday, March 23rd.
We're
inviting schools who can't attend the Dream Flag
Celebration--but would like to participate in the
April 16th Celebration--to send
poems to be read. Pictures of the authors will be projected during the readings. We have to
receive those poems and pictures by Wednesday, April
6th.
All of the
dates above are noted on the
Dream Flag Calendar.
Dream Poem Writing
When we ask students to write dream poems, we're
asking them to write about something that's very
broad, and approaching it may be a challenge. How can we
help them do this in the best way? . . .
There are a
number of resources on this site under
Create,
particularly the "Teaching
Ideas for a Short-But-Good Dream Flag Poem Writing
Unit", but here are some other ideas people have
used:
Brainstorming
In
some classrooms, they started with a discussion,
to help
the students see that Hughes is not writing
about the dreams we dream at night, but about
our wishes and hopes. Some of his poems area
bout dreams, (like “Dreams” or “The Dream
Keeper”) but others ARE dreams—poem about what
we hope for (like “Daybreak in Alabama” or
“Stars”). All are dream poems, and all are good
models for the kind of broad thinking that can go
into your own dream poem.
Here’s a
list of nine dream poems from the anthology
"Dream Keeper and Other Poems":
-
“The
Dream Keper” (page 2)
-
“Dreams” (page 4)
-
“Fairies” (page 10)
-
“Dream
Variation” (page 57)
-
“I, Too”
(page 63)
-
“Mother
to Son” (page 64)
-
“As I
Grew Older” (page 70)
-
“Stars”
(page 75)
-
“Daybreak in Alabama” (page 77)
To help
students begin to think about dreams, teachers
at The Philadelphia School lead a discussion of “The Dream Keeper.”
They talked about what the “too rough fingers of
the world” might mean. Students came up with
everything from segregation to a fight with your
friend to a war to homelessness. They also
discussed “Mother to Son” and talked about what
the tacks and splinters probably could have
been. In one classroom, students brought in
visual images, phrases, and newspaper headlines
to create a "too rough fingers of the world"
collage.
They
followed this by asking students to think about
a dream. It could be for the world or their
community or their family or their friends.
In another classroom, the teacher wanted to
help the students think about dream poems and
think in metaphors. Students were asked to read
some of the Hughes dream poems, choose one, and
make an illustration that was a metaphor for the poem.
(This is a tough assignment, but everyone
succeeds if they try to think about the idea of
the poem, not just “what it says.”)
Writing
Here is a
series of dream poetry assignments. They are
intended to go from easy (structured) to hard
(unstructured), to help students think metaphorically, and to
help students get away from the idea that
rhyming defines poetry.
-
Write a
dream poem of eight lines or more in which
the first words of every line are “In my
dream . . .”
-
Think
of your dream and then think of five or more
metaphors that describe it. Write a poem of
five or more lines in which each line is “My
dream is. . .” followed by the metaphor. For
example, “My dream is an eagle.”
-
Write a
dream poem of eight lines or more in which
every other line rhymes. (This is difficulty
and may emphasize the difficulty or writing
meaningfully with rhyming.)
-
Write a
dream poem of eight lines or more with no
rhymes.
-
Write a
dream poem of any kind at all.
After the students wrote a
couple of dream poems, they
chose one for their Dream Flag. It's great to
help them think about the audience for this poem
by going to the web site and looking at all of
the schools on the
News page or by
playing the poetry part of the
video
of last year's Dream Flag Celebration for them
if you can. You might also want them to look at
Buddhist Prayer flags since they were the
original inspiration for Dream Flags.
Formatting
Last of
all, they need to format the poem, thinking
about line breaks, stanzas, and the fact that is
has to fit on an 81/2 by 11 in. piece of cloth.
If you want to teach about line breaks, stanzas,
and the way a poem's format is important, this
is a good chance to do it.
Connecting the Dreams
If
you're planning ahead and want to think about how
you can "connect the dreams" once your flags have
been made, here are a couple of ideas that have
worked for this.
The
flags were put up in a public place. The
students were given time to carefully look at
the flags, noting lines in the poems that stood
out to them as beautiful or powerful. Then, back
in the classroom, they went around and read the
lines out loud. It created a kind of composite
poem in its own way. Talking about the theme or
possible title for this collection of lines was
a great way to discuss what comes out as a theme
of the lines.
One
school invited another over to share flags.
There was an opening group meeting, then the
students were put in small groups to share their
poems. Each student read his or her poem to the
small group. Each small group discussed the
poems and selected one for reading to everyone. After a snack,
all students came
together for those readings along with a sort of
ceremonial tying of the Dream Flag Lines and
some songs. It was a great time for everyone.
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