The magnificent Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s humor and authenticity enchant as she shares intimate stories from her life as a poet and teacher. Amy generously offers a myriad of her favorite poets and resources. Listeners have the gift of hearing Amy read poetry aloud and leave the conversation with a clear vision of why we all need poetry throughout the year.
Thank you to Amy and the American Psychological Association/Magination Press, who are so generous in offering a 25% off & free shipping PROMO CODE (FLYER 25) for The Sound of Kindness (listen HERE)
Episode Mentions:
Amy’s Books (w/ MANY teacher resources)
Poetry Websites & Books:
Connect w/ Amy:
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
The magnificent Amy Ludwig VanDerwater’s humor and authenticity enchant as she shares intimate stories from her life as a poet and teacher. Amy generously offers a myriad of her favorite poets and resources. Listeners have the gift of hearing Amy read poetry aloud and leave the conversation with a clear vision of why we all need poetry throughout the year.
Thank you to Amy and the American Psychological Association/Magination Press, who are so generous in offering a 25% off & free shipping PROMO CODE (FLYER 25) for The Sound of Kindness (listen HERE)
Episode Mentions:
Amy’s Books (w/ MANY teacher resources)
Poetry Websites & Books:
Connect w/ Amy:
Get solutions from Schoolutions!
#solutionsfromschoolutions #schoolutionsinspires #schoolutionspodcast
[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome to Schoolutions, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. I am Olivia Wahl, and I am so excited to welcome my guest today, the incredibly talented Amy Ludwig VanDerwater. Let me tell you a little bit about Amy.
[00:00:25] Olivia: Amy has taught writing for over 20 years and is one of my favorite poets in the entire world. Her children's books have received accolades from the Junior Library Guild, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and the National Council of Teachers of English. Also known as NCTE. Amy's newest book, The Sound of Kindness, will be out in mid-August.
[00:00:50] Olivia: But, lucky, lucky you, there is a video of Amy reading this gorgeous book that you can have access to before then. Amy, it is my honor to welcome you as a guest on Schoolutions. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:04] Amy: Thank you, Olivia. I was just excited to have a chance to chat with you. It's been a long time.
[00:01:09] Olivia: It has. I love to start every episode with inspiration. And I know we all have people that have touched us in our lives as teachers touched our hearts. So, who is an inspiring educator from your life that you could share?
[00:01:25] Amy: May I share more than one?
[00:01:27] Olivia: Yes, absolutely.
[00:01:29] Amy: So I was very lucky. My grandmother was a fourth-grade teacher. My mother was a fourth-grade teacher. Um, I would pretend to teach my, my dog. Like I was like a home instructor of my dog as a little kid. And then I was very, very lucky. I've had many wonderful teachers in my life. Um, most notably, uh, I had a man named Mr. Frond is my sixth-grade teacher who had a garden with us and a chess club.
[00:01:53] Amy: And he was, um, very, he was a fantastic teacher, but he also led a different lifestyle. He did not have electricity. He did not have a television. He did not have running water. This was all by choice. He was an unusual, generous, brilliant man. And at the end of sixth grade, he gave me a thesaurus. And I don't know what he gave everybody, but I have a thesaurus from him in which he said something like, Dear Amy, I know you will use this thesaurus well, have a wonderful life, your friend, Joe Frond.
[00:02:25] Amy: And then the fact he gave me a thesaurus, he signed it, your friend, he put his first name, you know, like I just felt always such a kinship to him. And then of course, you know, we get older, we have more and more teachers. And I will say that if I were to say, where does my interest in my current work come from?
[00:02:43] Amy: It is a marriage of what I really learned from Katie Wood Ray in Learning to Read Like a Writer and also what I learned from my late mentor, Lee Bennett Hopkins, who taught me so much about poetry and so much about giving and about revision. And I have a little, my only tattoo says good books, good times, which is from the title of one of his books.
[00:03:06] Amy: And so I have just been tremendously lucky. And Naomi Shihab Nye, who I, you know, cross paths with in airports once in a while, you know, I'll just see her, but just her work, even though I don't know her, know her. Um, she's still, you know, I've many teachers I've never met as well.
[00:03:24] Olivia: Yeah. Yeah. And I've admired you from afar forever. And you know, we come from the similar neck of the woods where we live close. And I know you right now are living in a big old farmhouse and we'll, we'll get to that as well. Um, so Amy, for the podcast, something I really love about it is I see issues in public education, but then I seek out guests that are changemakers and that have solutions to actively just tackle this obstacle that we face.
[00:03:57] Olivia: And something that drives me bananas is that poetry is not, uh, highlighted more than April, which is Poetry Month. Um, and then it crushes my heart that poetry is often coached into around state test prep because teachers are concerned with students being able to analyze the poetry. Um, the solutions you offer are the ways that you craft poetry, um, to really be read all year long, and I know that's a belief of yours, um, and my favorite thing about you as a poet is how you weave nature into your writing. Um, one of my favorite books you've ever written is Forest Has a Song, um, and it makes me feel like I'm sitting outside in winter and nature. It's just spectacular,
[00:04:42] Olivia: Um, and poetry that you've shouted from the rooftops forever is a powerful form of writing for both children and adults, so what I love about you is you're so creative. You're a knitter (and I love knitting too) and I know that It's being a maker that is important to you. So what is it about poetry and making books for others that you love the most?
[00:05:20] Amy: This is a lovely question. Well, I would like to first address the first thing you said, which was the lack of poetry in schools on the day-to-day. And I think just from my fortunate experience getting to work with lots of great teachers - is many, many people are, and this is not new to people who love poetry but are afraid of poetry.
[00:05:43] Amy: I was just teaching a class to children's book writers earlier this week. And I asked at the beginning, what is something that is puzzling to you about poetry? That was just sort of just to get people chatting. And as I walked around and listened, these very talented writers, um, many of them were saying, well, I just don't really know like, what counts is a poem?
[00:06:04] Amy: Like, is this like, does it have to have this? Does it have to have that? And I think that many teachers, many writers, many just humans have not been brought up with lots of poetry in school, right? And so we do tend to gravitate towards what we know and what we feel comfortable with.
[00:06:20] Amy: And if we don't feel like we know what counts as a poem, then we might be more likely to say, okay, if it has five-seven-five syllables, then it counts. If I write my name down the page and then I use the initial letter of every word of my name, then that counts. If I have, you know, this, if it's iambic pentameter and it has fourteen lines, and then it's a sonnet, that counts.
[00:06:38] Amy: So I think there's this, um, almost we've made poems into like, uh, sudoku puzzles or something. That they have to fit this certain framework and be a certain form rather than, um, accepting that, you know, if you say, if you, if you wrote it and you call it a poem. Then it's a poem. It doesn't mean anybody else might like it, but like modern art, you know what I mean?
[00:07:06] Amy: If you make it and you call it that thing, then it is that thing. So, I think that something we need to; when I was at the Reading Writing Project, a lot of years ago, I do remember one thing Lucy Calkins said that really stayed with me, was we need to, you know, to help teachers provide certain conditions for students, we have to also, teachers deserve to have some of these same certain conditions. And I have lived by that. Like, I believe if I want teachers to share more poetry with children. Then I need as a teacher’s teacher to bring poems to my workshop. So have I have for whatever, twenty-something years led every workshop by reading a poem out loud, giving everybody a copy.
[00:07:50] Amy: And over the years I've gotten people writing to me years later saying, could you send me that one again? I'm reading at my mother's funeral, or I'd love to give that one poem you gave me three years ago to my sister now. And, or I'm making a collage for my daughter before she goes to college, but I can't find that.
[00:08:06] Amy: And I think just giving all of us opportunities to connect with poems and see, oh my gosh, this counts. Like, somebody gave me that poem and said it's a poem, but it doesn't rhyme, but, but I, it resonates with, I am different because I read this poem. So that is first, I think.
[00:08:28] Amy: Um, but about the maker part. Yes! I just love making stuff. Mr. Frond, my great teacher with, and living this very alternative lifestyle. And he didn't talk a lot about it. We just knew this about him. I think I credit him partly with living out here in the middle of nowhere, with never having had a television as an adult, with, um, you know, trying to get outside and do a lot with the little, and, I feel like, I just feel like, you know, I'm on the second half of the life hill now, and just really realizing how it is what we make of the day. It is what we make of the interaction. It's nothing, this is dark, but not; nothing really has meaning on its own; it’s like we give it the meaning, and so poetry, making things is a way of making meaning, and making things with words is to me, really, the ultimate way of making meaning, because it helps us understand ourselves, our people we know, the strangers we come across. I think we become more open-hearted and whole, at least I try to, through writing.
[00:09:42] Amy: So, for children, children, like adults, all of us have different access to, um, wealth, to materials, to everything, to nature, um, but with writing, words are, if we read aloud a lot to students and help access to libraries and model the power of books and write with, alongside children, then writing is a way to grow and to escape and to, um, I don't know, create new worlds. And so for me, writing is just another way of making. That's a big answer for…
[00:10:19] Olivia: I think something, you know, but it's also, it's so, um, it resonates with me because I think as a mom, um, of a teenager and a tween, um, I am, I go back to certain pieces of writing based on where I am in life, and I see that piece that connects with me differently, gives me a different perspective.
[00:10:44] Olivia: And one of your poems, I asked you if it would be okay if I read it - it's called First Flight. And every time I read this poem, I think of being a mom and that idea of wanting your children to have independence and to fly. Um, and the idea of what a first flight means, like there's, there's many first flights for our children. Um, and you know, my husband and I keep saying, Ben, he has two more years before he flies from our house and we'll always be the nest, but he's going to build a new nest for himself. And so this poem just, it gets me every time, and I want listeners to, to hear it. And you said, it's okay that I can do that.
[00:11:29] Amy: Yes. Thank you for reading it.
[00:11:29] Olivia: Yeah. Uh, First Flight…. “Mommy, I'm scared to be this high. / All owls are scared on their first try. / My tail feathers feel so tingly with fear. / You can do it. Calm down. Careful now. Steer. / I can't see a thing through all this black. / Just go to Spruce and come right back. / FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP – WHOOOSH! / FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP – SWOOOSH! / Look, Mom! I made it! Wow! I can fly! / I knew you could. You were born for the sky.”
[00:12:06] Olivia: And all I'm going to keep thinking is the flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap. Because there are moments, Amy, that there's a lot of flapping. And then I pray for the whoosh. I pray for the swoosh. Um, but, you know, being a parent is no joke. And I feel like, yes, we're teachers that goes to our core, but I also have many other identities, and I take great pride in being a mom. And so I think that what I want listeners to know, what I want children to understand is. You connect with poetry based on where you are in life.
[00:12:41] Amy: Well, thank you for reading that poem so beautifully. And when I share it with children, and I do often, with really cute puppets, and I say to them, you know, sometimes we write something that really happened to us, like it is a true experience. This really happened to me. And sometimes we write something that didn't happen to us at all. We completely made it up. But sometimes we write something that's a little bit true. And a little bit made up. So I am not an owl. Like, I am not an owl. I have never been a baby owl.
[00:13:12] Olivia: You are not.
[00:13:18] Amy: And, however, I am a mom. And I watch my children learn to tie their shoes, and ride a bike, and drive a car. So I have the feeling of the mother owl. And I can take my mom feelings and imagine them into how a mommy owl might be. And in that way, um, I think we also can open doors for children to realize like, you can have a hard thing you go through, and you don't have to throw somebody under the bus when you write about it.
[00:13:40] Amy: Like, we can write about it for fiction. Lots, I say to children, you know, lots of people who are writers, who are artists, have had difficult things happen to them in their lives, and then they make art, or they make their writing, and it's a way to have another life like it's a way you can have the hard thing, but you also can have a separate thing. And all of us can do that. It doesn't mean your whole life might not be hard, but you might be going through a hard spell and you can have your first life, which is the life you're living the second life, which is your reading life and your third life, which is your writing life.
[00:14:10] Amy: And then you on a moment-to-moment basis, when you get to choose what you do with your time, you can be you, you can go be that character in the book you're reading, or you can go pretend you're an owl if you feel like it. And to me, like that is really helpful, magical realism. I mean, I think got me through COVID, so…
[00:14:28] Olivia: Yeah, so true.
[00:14:30] Amy: That, but living in the country. Yeah. So we lived in the suburbs for the first many years of our marriage. I grew up in the suburbs. My husband is an ecology teacher and a biology teacher. And he was the one who wanted to live in the country and he wanted to have three to five. acres. And I said, well, why on earth would we need so much land?
[00:14:46] Amy: So we bought this completely beat-up old farmhouse with twenty-five acres, and yeah, and here we are all these years later. I think what's great for me, I mean, I miss things in the city, you know, I love the action of the people and all the tiny interactions is that Hidden Brain episode talked about of, you know, the person in the coffee shop, you get to chat with and the person on the street.
[00:15:10] Amy: But the other night we were outside sitting on the porch, and my husband heard this whooo whooo noise and he goes, huh! It's a screech owl! You know, like we really do hear the owls and we really can go for a walk and our children could run and never hit a fence. And, um, as they did, you know, when we lived where I loved before, but I, nature is just ever-giving. So you can be in a bad mood and go outside and suddenly, it's okay, you know. So I feel very thankful. What we lack in, um, the integrity of the structure of our home and the fun of neighbors, we do gain, um, in other ways. Inner
[00:15:54] Olivia: Inner peace, Amy. It's all about quiet and inner peace. Uh, oh my gosh. Well, and I, I've always wondered, you write in so many genres. I mean, one of my favorite essays you've written is Drop Off Cats. Um, at the, I love that essay. At the back of A Journey Is Everything. And you know what? I've got to say, I have used that as a compare-contrast with the horrific five-paragraph stupid essay of why you would choose a dog versus a cat or why you're a cat person.
[00:16:23] Olivia: And I've used yours as the model of no, no, this is what real writing is. So I mean, it's, it's just gorgeous. And you've written in anthologies, you've written professional books for adults, teachers. Is your writing process always the same? How does it differ for your audience? Like, take us through it.
[00:16:45] Amy: Okay, this a little bit of a tricky question because I feel that I need to script the answer that makes me sound like a more thoughtful writer than I, in fact, am.
[00:16:56] Olivia: Baloney, no!
[00:16:56] Amy: Because I am not a very, I don't have certain hours I write every day. I don't, um, I'm not very well disciplined. I said to kids sometimes, you know, if you like writing short things and you're mind, you know, like maybe you have ADHD and you're interested in a lot of things. Poetry might be the, the form for you.
[00:17:19] Olivia: It might be good.
[00:17:20] Amy: I love mixing it up. Yeah. You know, I like that I can write about this, and I can write about that, and then I can come back to this, and I can come back to that. So, I do, I love the essay form and that Drop Off Cats was initially in, I think it was like a local, our local NPR station used to do these listener commentaries.
[00:17:37] Amy: I think it was one of those. Um, and, and then Katherine, you know, Bomer generously picked it up for the journeys, but I, I like telling stories. And so the essay form is interesting because it's all about a story and a meaning, right? It's the making the meaning of all these cats that showed up at our house.
[00:17:58] Amy: And what I think students don't always realize, and I don't always realize is that you don't have to know what something means before you start to write about it. You can just start writing about something that's interesting to you, and through the act of writing, you discover what it means. Like, it is through the writing that you realize the meaning of the story, that somehow, you know it's an important story to you, but you don't know why.
[00:18:23] Amy: But by writing, you worry it, like you do, you know, a stone in your hand. So, so, yeah. So the poems, I just like to you know, I, again, wish I, I need a better process, um, I mean, discipline.
[00:18:38] Olivia: You don't, though.
[00:18:39] Amy: I do a poem every Friday on The Poem Farm. That's really important to me, the blog, it keeps me doing it because, you know, at least one person reads it. And then I do a poem every day in April, and I have for many years, and that helps me because I know classes follow it. So, like, there, it is helpful to me to have an automatic, instant audience to make me work because I'm sometimes better at pleasing other people than, me. So if I just am going to write for me, right?
[00:19:05] Amy: Getting a book published takes forever. It's like really, it's very hard and it's, I don't, I'm not, I don't really like the business end of things. I just like writing in my notebook and, um, but the essays, it was great. Like when we used to have that with NPR, our local paper has a column that you can, you know, sort of write in.
[00:19:24] Amy: Poems are Teachers, my teacher book with Heinemann. Is really, was really, um, a labor, a labor, but truly of love because I did feel very grateful to Katie Wood Ray for all I learned. I was in a workshop with her when Wondrous Words came out and we got like the first copies of it. We were, you know, and she talked about it. And that book, I read it a bunch of times because It was so, it was so, it just changed how I thought about writing.
[00:19:54] Amy: And then I had studied, you know, worked and wrote, written a lot of poems for Lee Bennett Hopkins. And then I realized, oh my gosh, all these things that Katie's taught us about reading like writers, not with poetry, like I'm learning, I'm doing with the poems that I'm trying to write for Lee.
[00:20:11] Amy: So these two things, like I'm understanding poetry better. Through this way of seeing writing or other people's writing as teach, a possible teacher for me. I thought, well, this is really new to me. Like, maybe this would also be useful to teachers and might provide a, um, legitimate reason to bring poetry in every day because it's not just about the poetry it's about, well, you know, if you learn how to write strong beginnings and endings, then you're strong beginnings and endings can, in your poems can translate to all your other genres that you write in.
[00:20:45] Amy: So. I know that teachers, some teachers who really want to share poetry, may, maybe, don't feel support. It's not a unit in my grade or whatever. So really spending time trying to articulate how poetry can inform our other writing was, was not in my, um, real wheelhouse, but I thought it was really important to do.
[00:21:10] Amy: And I was so grateful to the over fifty contemporary children's poets and over one hundred children and teachers who shared their poems in there because I felt since Katie, you know, taught me about looking at the mentor, understanding what the mentor did, trying it yourself, like in a book without mentors, it I, as a teacher, would not go check out a hundred books to try and find these moves.
[00:21:34] Amy: So, I was, I'm very grateful to those people who shared those. So that was, but that was not, that was hard because that's a lot, that's a fat book. And, um, it was, I just don't write things that long. So, um, but I am glad, I'm glad I did it. And with the support of my daughter, Georgia, who was like cataloging them and making sure everybody signed the permission forms, you know, wonderful to have a high school student you can hire in a time like that.
[00:22:00] Olivia: It takes a village, um, and I'm telling you, like, something you said, and I'm fascinated to know, you are a notebook keeper. You do keep notebooks. And I know in this digital age, especially over COVID, a lot of children were forced to jump on Chromebooks, to do all of their writing, to be able to show the teachers. And I remember Henry was in third grade at the time, my younger son, and I pushed him to keep a notebook. And I was so grateful that his third-grade teacher also really valued the writing process and having children start in a notebook as a workbench.
[00:22:36] Olivia: Um, and then jump out of the notebook to draft in a Google Doc. But, um, what do you do with all of your notebooks over the years? Do you keep them for inspiration? Where do they go?
[00:22:50] Amy: Well, yes, at first I would like to say what you said about COVID and notebooks and that time, you know, we're still kind of, I mean, I still feel like it's taken me till almost today to dig out of, from that hole with a, you know, teaspoon. And, uh, during that time in March of 2020, I had no school visits. Everything, of course, was canceled. So I did teach seventy-two notebooking videos at my YouTube channel, one a day until the last day of school, because then I had a reason to get dressed and could pretend that I was a teacher. And so it's kind of funny because I run into a lot of people who still use them or talked about using them with their own children at home.
[00:23:33] Amy: And I do believe, for me, that, writing by hand is a very different, it's a very different writing experience than typing on a computer.
[00:22:45] Olivia: I totally agree.
[00:23:45] Amy: So I certainly use computers, I like computers, I have nothing against computers, but there is a different kind of organic sense of writing with my hand, and I would hope that children over time won't lose that. I do know that in many schools that since students did write just on Google Docs, because they were home and everything was on a Google Doc and their conferences kind of went by the wayside, writing conferences, that in many places that became, it is sort of easier in a way to just start there. I mean, it isn't easier in terms of the writing’s better, but it's more expeditious to do that.
[00:24:19] Amy: It's more efficient in the moment, perhaps. And so, I hope that over the next couple years will find a way in schools to bring children back to notebooks where they disappeared. Um, and, you know, real conversations around writing. So, yeah, that said, I have kept notebooks over the years and always feel like I should go back and reread them.
[00:24:42] Amy: And yes, it's true, you can mine your memories and, you know, learn how you repeat the same petty patterns over and over and when will I ever learn. But, um, my father died during COVID in August. Um, I got, I got a teaching job teaching fourth grade on August 19th, 2020. And my father died on August 21st. And so my father lived three hours from me and I hadn't taught in twenty-two years.
[00:25:07] Amy: So I was teaching fourth grade in-person and I had remote students. And then every weekend, my husband and I went home to my dad's to clear out his house. And, um, you know, all kinds of things like my grandparent's taxes from 1944, you know, lots of things.
[00:25:22] Olivia: Amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:22] Amy: So during that time, I was struggling, to be a person and a teacher and a mom of young college students. So, that said, I just was overwhelmed by actual physical objects, uh, in my new classroom, in my father's home, in my own house, everywhere. So, this is going to sound super dramatic, but on Halloween 2020, which was not; I didn't do it because it was Halloween, and I didn't do it because it was a full moon, though it was, I made a really big bonfire and I burned all my notebooks in it.
[00:26:03] Olivia: Come on!
[00:26:05] Amy: And I had all these, you know, those reusable shopping bags, and cause I had this huge shelf of them and I'm like trying to incorporate my dad's stuff into the house and my stuff into the house. I'm like, oh my gosh, I need a new start. Like I need, I'm a teacher. Like I'm not even writing poems anymore.
[00:26:21] Amy: I'm not on my blog. Like I, these have got to go. I don't know what it was. Honestly, I think maybe it was, I feel like I've spent half my life collecting stuff and now I've spent the second half getting rid of it and if I can get rid of those notebooks, and then I can get rid of anything. Like, because in a way, they're the, you know, they're the, they're my life.
[00:26:38] Amy: So I'm putting them all in these big shopping bags, and my husband, who's lovely, is saying, Amy, I think really, um, this might be a little hasty, like, maybe we could just put them somewhere else and you could, you could, you know, and my kids who are adults are going, you know, mom, those are our childhood memories.
[00:26:56] Amy: Those are our…you can't just…
[00:26:58] Olivia: What are you doing?
[00:26:59] Amy: And I'm just watching them burn and I'm just putting them all in these bags, these shopping bags, and I brought them out and I had this really, it's not funny, but it's funny to me picture of them all in the fire. Which I love to show students because I show them all on the shelf and then I show them all in the fire.
[00:27:13] Amy: Because I just think, you know, they were at that moment, a burden to me. Because I think it was, I'm a sensitive person. And I think, like I was picking strawberries two days ago, and you're talking about, you know, having two years left with your kids.
[00:27:37] Amy: And now I'm that lady in the strawberry field who stops mothers of adorable toddlers who are singing, Oh Mr. Sun. Sun, Mr. Golden Sun. Look, Mommy, the jackpot! Find a strawberry here! Like, I'm hearing that, and I'm the lady in the red shirt, because we always wear our red shirts picking strawberries, going, you know, this is going to go over by really fast. Like, people used to do that.
[00:27:51] Olivia: It's the same.
[00:27:53] Amy: But it really, you know, and I'm like, you know. So, I think, in a way, maybe keeping them was just too much. So, so they're gone. And I like children to know that too, that that's okay. Like, I don't have to own the thing for the thing to have mattered to me. Like I, because I wrote the things in those notebooks, I am still changed by them. Like I still remember the memories better.
[00:28:19] Amy: I don't remember them as well as rereading them, but they are more, I reinforced the memory through the writing of the memory. I don't have to own the notebook. And I did not write mean things about people. So I was not worried that if I die, they're going to all know I hate them. Like, it was not about that.
[00:28:37] Olivia: No, I wouldn’t think it was such.
[00:28:38] Amy: But I also know that people really want to know. I mean, I have friends who are authors who are like, I'm giving my notebooks to the I don't know, the New York State Author Library, you know, whatever. I am like, oh my God, no, I don't want anybody to know any of how messed up my head is. Like, you can just read the little books that are out there and that'd be the reflection.
[00:29:00] Amy: So, yeah, so they're gone. But I did, I think it did make me...it was like a good lesson in detachment. I'm not really sad. Like, kids ask, are you sad, like, that you do miss them? And every once in a while, I'm kind of like, gosh, I wonder. But I think it's better. I still think it's better they're gone.
[00:29:18] Olivia: I think it's freeing, and man, that, I think, that's a great story.
[00:29:24] Amy: It’s a crazy story. But I did look it up, of course, right? Because everybody's done everything before you've done it now. And you can find out about them on the Internet. So I did look up, like, burning all your notebooks, right? Like, I googled some crazy phrase like that. And I did read an essay by a woman who had previously done the same thing.
[00:29:40] Amy: Uh, when I was thinking about doing it, just for, you know, moral support. And it was, it's kind of an interesting, different, um, I don't know. Uh, it was helpful to read that somebody else had done it, and they're still here to tell about it, you know? I think sometimes you need to think, like, I need this thing. And then When you don't have it and you're still okay, like that's…good.
[00:30:04] Olivia: It's pretty, it's pretty remarkable, isn't it? Something you're making me think about too is, um, several things you had just said. One of them is poetry has to run all year long because it's that important. And it's something I've tried to tuck in with teachers for students is rethinking the different phases of the writing process and redefining what developing means in a notebook. Um, because I work with lots of students that just slam out their first draft and it's really collecting where it's just starting to kind of do a brain, this dump of everything that is coming to your heart.
[00:30:50] Olivia: And so I paused and what I saw kids doing is they'd write out the first draft. They would choose that as their draft. They'd go into develop it by just rewriting the draft. So when you asked kids to jump out of the notebook and to move into drafting, revising, editing, they were like, no, I'm done.
[00:31:07] Amy: I’m done…I just recopy.
[00:31:08] Olivia: See, it's in my notebook. Peace out.
[00:31:09] Amy: Yeah, they turned into human copy machines.
[00:31:10] Olivia: Right? And so I finally thought like, we have to look at developing with a big heart around it. We have to look at revising with a big heart around it because I ask, it doesn't matter what mode of writing you're living within. It could be narrative, opinion or argumentative, informational -poetry has a place in every single one of those modes. It does and so I've given examples, you know, if your kids are writing fiction or animal fantasy or realistic have them get to the heart of their character by writing a poem about that character.
[00:31:45] Amy: Yeah! Or in the character’s voice!
[00:31:45] Olivia: Absolutely! Right? So that idea of developing; poetry has a place there for me in every single unit of writing, because it's a gorgeous way for students to get right to the heart of what they're trying to say. And that's how I'm using it. And a lot of teachers have given feedback to say, I've had students that were reluctant writers or that just didn't want to get voluminous writing down, but giving them autonomy and choice and agency to get their character's voice out there or the topic they're writing about through a poem - it was a shift for them, and I think that's powerful.
[00:32:29] Amy: It is. And oftentimes those students who see themselves as struggling in more long form writing, write the best poems with the most moving transformational poems and to not give them that genre opportunity, I think often we just miss a lot of beauty.
[00:32:47] Olivia: It's a big miss. And so, um, something I followed of yours for a very long time is The Poem Farm and you've mentioned it. Um, I also, I'll include links to all of this in the show notes, so people will have access to your variety of goodness and the way you put yourself out there in the world. Is there, could you, could we pause and could you read a poem to us, one of your favorites?
[00:33:07] Amy: I would love to read a poem to you. So
[00:33:10] Olivia: I would love that.
[00:33:10] Amy: So, I also, um, may I read too?
[00:33:15] Olivia: Please.
[00:33:16] Amy: Okay. So I think what you said about, um, I just want to find this one, what you said about poetry, Katie Ray said something ages ago, she was talking about picture books and she said, you know, a picture book is like the container. So the book is the container, but the picture book itself, could be one poem, or like The Sound of Kindness is or it could be a nonfiction book or it could be a story or it could be an essay, but the picture book itself is just the container, but it could hold any one of these genres.
[00:33:48] Amy: Right? So when we look at poetry, we could say the same thing. Like the poem, this little set of short lines, is like the container, the vessel, if you will, but it could hold a poem. I mean, it could hold a story, or it could hold information, or it could hold advice, or it could hold, um, an opinion in the container of the poem.
[00:34:09] Amy: And so, I want to just read you one that is one thing and one that's another thing. So this is from, Write! Write! Write! And this is a poem called Revision Is, and it's just a list. And ages ago, I went to a workshop where somebody, and I tell you, I wish I knew who it was, but whoever you are, this is for you, credit, um, said that pretty much everything you read is a story or a list.
[00:34:30] Amy: And it's very helpful to, at the outset, sort of know, like, is this thing I'm writing a story or is this thing a list? And sometimes something's a list and it has stories embedded in it, right? Or it's a story that also feels like a list. So this is a list. And it's called, uh, Revision Is. And Ryan O'Rourke is the artist and he does really cool lettering.
[00:34:46] Amy: So this is Revision Is… “Revision Is… a little bit bummer / a little bit Yes! / a little bit risk / a little bit guess / a little bit play / a little bit fear / a little bit fuzzy / a little bit clear / a little bit imagine / a little bit do / a little bit old / a little bit new / a little bit shuffle / a little bit loss / a little bit add / a little bit toss / a little bit maddening / a little bit fun / a little bit faith / and then… / you're done.”
[00:35:14] Amy: Um, so it's just a list, right? And it has, it's just a little bit a million times, but then always, right, when we look at these list structures, they end with some kind of a twist, right? So that's how you know it's over. Yes.
[00:33:25] Olivia: List with a twist.
[00:35:26] Amy: With a twist, right., I sat in the office, So, this one is from the blog and from The Poem Farm, and this comes from a story. I was in a school with a great teacher years ago, and she was a special education teacher, and she said, I just have to tell you this story of something that happened with one of my students. So she told me this story, and I remembered the story and I wrote it down in my notebook later. And then that's the other thing I think that a notebook is really helpful for.
[00:35:55] Amy: If you just jot down things that are happening to you every day, then later when you do need to write a thing for a, for an audience or a purpose, you have all this material. Right? It's like I buy way more yarn. Like, I'll die on a pile of yarn, and I'm not making a fire of that, but there's a lot more yarn, and I'm probably actually going to knit into anything, right?
[00:36:20] Amy: But similarly, like, I have a lot more in those old gone notebooks that will not be made into anything, but I still gather it all up, right? So she tells me the story, I jot it down, a while goes by, and then someday I'm like, I gotta write a poem, right, because it's Thursday or whatever, and the blog is tomorrow.
[00:36:37] Amy: So, like, I don't know what tomorrow's is going to be right now. Like, tomorrow I have a blog post and I don't know what it's going to be. So, she, I'm like, oh yeah, that story that teacher told me. I'll write a poem about that, right? So, because I dotted it, now I had it.
[00:36:49] Olivia: Yeah, the kernel.
[00:36:50] Amy: Well, this poem is called Small Story (for Zoey). And Zoey is the girl, the name of the girl this is about. Small Story (for Zoey). I saw the brother hurting / and I saw the sister watching / and I saw the sister cutting / a small corner of her blanket. / And I watched the sister give it / to her hurting little brother / that small piece of her own blanket / that he lifted to his face. / And the brother rubbed the blanket / on his cheeks all tearstain-spotted / and his sister whispered something / and he said “I love you too.” / And I hope I will remember / when I see somebody hurting / this small story of the sister / who knew just what she should do.
[00:37:28] Amy: So that one's a story, right? The first one's a list, this one's a story, and it's happened to somebody else. I did not witness this, but in writing of the poem, I could pretend I saw them do that. And so I think writing gives me and children, right, and adults, because we're just children who are bigger, uh, permission to change the world a little bit like I didn't get to see that, but I can pretend I got to see it and that makes my life better, pretending I got to see that.
[00:37:58] Olivia: You're reminding me of a moment that I had totally forgotten. And I don't know if you remember this. I was doing a lot of work in schools in New Jersey at one point and I would get there really early because I hate being late. And I would sit in the office before children, um, had come into the building.
[00:38:16] Olivia: But this particular school, kids would come in slowly because they were all eating breakfast. And every day I sat in the office and no one knew I was in there. It was like behind a wall and I would sit there and the kids were coming in and they all had these, little stories of things in their lives. And, and I watched the women that were in the office take care of everything from cut fingers, from children, not having just meeting every need.
[00:38:47] Olivia: And I started in a notebook to jot down in the guise of if the walls of the office could talk, these are the stories that they would share that go completely unnoticed because the office is a constant machine. And I just remember that I wrote those, I'd forgotten until now, and I, I remember, I think I sent them to you and I just, I wanted, I felt proud of them and…
[00:39:13] Amy: Did you share them with the office there?
[00:39:17] Olivia: I should! I didn’t.
[00:39:19] Amy: Because it’s such an honor like what you're saying about the people doing that work. Yeah.
[00:39:24] Olivia: Yeah, I just I had a moment and I think like, you know, we capture these small nuggets, but they are so meaningful because people, they do make a difference and poems do as well. Um. And I think the other aspect you've spoken to is that Sharing our Notebooks, it was another blog that you kept alongside the YouTube series, if I'm not mistaken, um, while you were teaching.
[00:39:48] Olivia: So you did say that you jumped back into the classroom and that was a hard time for you. I cannot imagine, um, that time in your life during COVID. I didn't know your dad had passed. So let's flip the switch. What are some positive memories or what, what do you remember from that time when you jumped back into the classroom?
[00:40:09] Amy: Well, I got to be a fourth-grade teacher, like my grandma and my mom. So that was great because I had taught fifth grade when I was really young. Um. So I came, I worked in a district, a really lovely school system that I had done some staff development with, and I was very grateful to get this job as an ELA teacher.
[00:40:25] Amy: So I had two in-person ELA classes in the morning and two remote ELA classes in the afternoon was the way that worked. And, um. I think, I mean, let's just be honest. I hadn't taught in a really long time. I've been in a lot of schools and I never didn't recognize how difficult and challenging and important teaching is, but it is, you also remember it even more doing it.
[00:40:49] Amy: So, so I was really out of the loop, um, and, um, wanted to do a very good job. And I would say I did the best job that I could at the time. And if you were to evaluate, not you, but if one were to really evaluate it, I'm sure there, I would have been found wanting in a million ways. However, the good things is where we'll stay right now.
[00:41:12] Amy: And I would say there are a couple things, right? We read a lot. We did write in our notebooks. And that was beautiful to see what children did. We read, you know, children read a lot of their own books. We read a couple of books together, which was also lovely because being some students remote and some in-person, that kind of shared book, we read Tuck Everlasting.
[00:41:33] Amy: And I had, we had kittens. My daughter was home during COVID. We were fostering kittens at the time. And. We kept two kittens named Tuck and Winnie, you know, when we read Tuck Everlasting, so I got to show my in-person and remote students like a tiny video each week of Tuck and Winnie and how they were developing, because we had read Tuck Everlasting, so that book was just so beautiful to connect us, we read old books.
[00:41:57] Amy: Um, we've also read My Side of the Mountain, um, and I had this Peregrine Falcon Puppet for which one of my lovely students knitted it a scarf for Christmas. So my little Peregrine Puppet.
[00:42:09] Olivia: Impressive.
[00:42:20] Amy: Yes, she was the best teacher gift ever. And, uh, but the best memory I have is really we, I did commit to sharing poetry every day. And so what I did, what we did, is I picked one poem a week and for my in-person students, I wrote it on a chart paper. Yes, it is true. I had a Smartboard in the room and I used it for lots of things, but I did not want to use it for the poem. I just didn't. I wanted to have a chart paper. So I had all these big old poster boards and I hand wrote the poem and I had it on these, um, my pants hangers, right?
[00:42:47] Amy: And I hung the actual poem on the Smartboard, which was off, and I'm just going to make a point right now to say to teachers, it is completely fine. And I would argue even a wonderful thing to turn your Smartboard off when you're not using it. So that students see that using a screen in our classroom is an intentional choice.
[00:43:07] Amy: Like I'm turning this on because we were doing this thing, but it is not like Fahrenheit 451 like default, default. But that we're surrounded by just like rolling images. We, we don't it's, it's not good for our attention, I don't think. And it's good for students to see well now we're going to do this so we'll turn this on not I have to always be attached.
[00:43:28] Amy: Um, and I am, when I'm in schools now, I ask, may I just turn this off? Yeah, so I had the poem on the screen hanging there. And it was; I just want to explain this because it was so simple. So, teachers, this is so simple, like even I could do it in grief. Um, so you hang your poem on the Smartboard, or if you're home, I also had a digital poetry notebook so that my at-home students had this, right?
[00:43:51] Amy: It's hanging there. It's Monday. I read the poem out loud so students could hear it in a, you know, nice poemy voice. Then we all read it together. Then students would say, could I read it by myself? So like a few students would read it on their own, right? Monday. Everybody hand copies the poem into their little composition notebook.
[00:44:11] Amy: This is super old school, but you hand-copy the poem, which is really good because you're paying attention to the line breaks. You're paying attention to the punctuation. You're paying attention. Copywork is a good thing, I think. So we're doing that and everybody does that. Then Tuesday comes that we all have it in the book.
[00:44:30] Amy: It's, I hang it on the Smartboard. We, I read, no, now I don't read it. I don't think, maybe the second day I did. But we all read it together, and then she's just like, May I read it? Right? So that, we, straight through to Friday. That's it. That's how it goes. And if you're absent because you have COVID, that's okay.
[00:44:45] Amy: You know it's not okay that you have COVID, but it's okay. You can still do your homework because it's also digitally there so you can still copy it. Because it's there. So then that's that week. The next week comes. It's Monday. We have poem one hanging. We have poem two hanging. So we have a new, we introduced a new poem on a new Monday.
[00:45:04] Amy: We all read poem one. We all are familiar with it. And now I read poem two. We all read poem two. A few people volunteer. They'll be copied in their notebook. You follow me? So it's the exact same thing, except we're not, we're not letting go of poem one yet. Now we don't do this. all year that we keep all the poems.
[00:45:19] Amy: So then week three, same thing. So we have three poems. Now, by this time, children all have poem one memorized - without being told to memorize it, right? Because now they're going, can I just, can I read of my eyes closed? Yeah, sure. Go ahead. So, but if they peek, I don't care. So they, so we, so now we have three, right?
[00:45:37] Amy: They have three written in their notebook. We've, we've recited them. And now on week four, Monday, we drop off poem one, we slide over poem two and three on that Smartboard, because it's a great chart rack. And then we add poem four, which has now become poem three, right? So because one is now in archived onto the clothing rack.
[00:45:57] Amy: And as we go, children would say things like, could we just read Treasure Words. We haven't read in a real long time? You know, so I'd go get it and we'd do that. And what was so beautiful was just the, it was such a chaotic time, but we were really anchored by those repeated words and images and phrases and voices.
[00:46:22] Amy: And I made sure to pick all kinds of poems by all kinds of people and all kinds of forms and some rhyme and some don't. So of course, when we wrote poems, they had had lots of models. And there was one, there's this beautiful poem by Rachel Field. I'll give you the info for the show notes called Something Told the Wild Geese.
[00:46:38] Amy: And you can also listen to it as a song, and it is beautiful as a song. So we all wrote it, and I said, you know, this is also a song. Played it, it's beautiful. And then one day, I don't know how many days in it was, one of the boys in my class says, can I be the one to read it? He'd go, can I, can I sing it?
[00:46:59] Amy: And he, he stood up and sang Something Told the Wild Geese in that fourth grade, beautiful, clear boy voice. And it came out of nowhere. It was such a gift. It was like, you know, those times when you're teaching and it's like the angels are singing somewhere and they were, but it was him and all the kids just couldn't, you know, believe that it was so beautiful.
[00:47:21] Amy: So then the year goes on and then we end up with thirty-six poems at the end of the year And some are long, like I gave him some that were really hard and really long because they go, Oh, this is really hard and really long, you know, but then I give him an easier one and at the end of the year. They had, like, a few class periods to, like, catch up the ones they missed, you know, so they'd have this complete little book.
[00:47:41] Amy: And then each class, on their own, said, asked, On the last day of ELA, can we just, can we just read all thirty-six poems together? And I was like, yeah, that's a great, that's a great last class. So we did. We just, they had their notebooks and I had them up there and we just read them all out loud together. And that was, uh, you know, it was a real, it was a gift to me.
[00:48:05] Amy: Oh, and I bought like a machine that, um, you know how when you have, I'm trying to see if I have, yeah, you know, when you have a pencil, it has like the foil on it. I wrote a thing about this for somewhere - oh, Colorado Reading (CCIRA). Cause, um, you know, like you get a pencil and it's got the foil on it. I bought the machine that you can, um, print, you know, foil the pencils.
[00:48:32] Amy: So I made four, I took four lines from four of the poems that we loved and then I printed them into the, you know, I don't know - yeah this is from Words Are Magic from Rebecca Dotlich's Treasure Words, that one I mentioned - because it when they were favorites. And then I tied them together. So they each got four.
[00:48:53] Amy: And then when I gave them to them on the last day, they were, they all knew. They said, oh, this is from Rebecca's Treasure Words. This is from Lee Bennett Hopkins, whatever. They're like from Langston Hughes, whatever. And, um, so that was fun. It was like, um, I would say that is the one thing I'm very glad to have invested. And it did not take a lot of time. You know, reading a few poems at the beginning of class, and it did create,
[00:49:28] Amy: I think, one of the things that happens in public schools, the nature of us all coming from so many different places and different philosophies and different whatever, um, the things that bring us together are like The Pledge of Allegiance, and nothing against the Pledge of Allegiance, but it's sort of a whole school thing. It's, it's, there's something about beginning the day with a poem that is very ritualized and beautiful and centering and community building. And so, um it is sometimes I feel like the most nourishing things we let go.
[00:49:53] Olivia: Yeah, I agree. And it's really short-sighted.
[00:49:57] Amy: But it's so easy because they're not loud. Like, sometimes the most valuable things are not…like, read aloud, you know, just for the sake of reading aloud a beautiful book. People go, whoa, but this I have to do. Like, this, like, is it, you can evaluate, I can't evaluate how much the read aloud made them human. Or how much this poem made us a community because I can't prove it. I have so many demands on me. And it's scary to be a teacher in this culture, you know, world of America right now. And so how do I, how do I justify reading a poem every day? How do I justify reading aloud a book without accountably talking after every sentence, right?
[00:50:44] Amy: So I do think having just like one or two things that a person can say, like I believe in this so much that I'm just doing it at all costs.
[00:50:57] Olivia: Well, and I think there's two pieces. There's two pieces there, because if you know what you believe and your practices mimic those beliefs, and it's lovely to have research to have your back too, but if you believe that community is everything to support effective learning and teaching, then you're not going to let go of those things, but we make time for what we care about, right? And it…yeah….
[00:51:20] Amy: Right but I think it's hard in how fast the culture is and how plugged in we all are. I think sometimes we don't know what we believe. Because we’re told so many things that we have to do…
[00:51:33] Olivia: Well, and that's where it's me, that's the calibration…yeah.
[00:51:36] Amy: That, so like, making some space to like, clarify, like, I can be a happier mother for longer, or happier writer for longer, happier teacher for longer, happier wife for longer, if I know what I believe about my role there. And can hold to it because all the bad things are still going to happen. But if I have my little mast that I can hold on to, no matter what bad storms come, at least I didn't betray myself.
[00:52:08] Olivia: Yeah. Yeah. That's it's huge. So what would you say our call to action is then to ensure that we hold sacred to what we believe? That's pretty global, but you know, to make sure that what matters to us, like poetry or whatever else you adore as a teacher keeps going?
[00:52:27] Amy: Well, I think it's, I have always tried to remember, I think having written a lot myself makes me a very kind conferrer with other writers. Like, when I speak to a five-year-old writer, I don't, it's not that different of a voice than if I were speaking to you. Like, I think it's, I think if we can all remember, and myself included in this, I'm not saying you should remember, but I need to remember and do try to remember that this 5-year-old, 6-year-old, 7-year-old, 8-year-old, whatever-year-old in front of me is just younger than me.
[00:53:05] Amy: Like, that is a full human who someday might be my doctor or my neighbor, or do you know what I mean, the guy who helps me out because I'm sick, you know, and he's my neighbor, you know, or he's the guy who mows my lawn and he teaches me how to do it or…like, I don't know who that person is going to be.
[00:53:25] Amy: It's not just because they're going to benefit me, but they're going to be, I don't mean personally, but me as anybody, right? Like all these young people and a lot of the students I'm teaching, they're so much smarter than I am. They're just younger. Like, it's not like I, yes, happen to have the power in the room at the moment.
[00:53:41] Amy: Cause I'm teaching them. But that child is going to be like a fully old human, just like I am now. And what can I offer this child as a person? And I think with poetry, with reading, it's, I think, I think the call to action is, I'm trying to be clear, is to focus on the person, the people and who they will become in ways beyond standards.
[00:54:19] Amy: The standards are important. We want children to know how to read well. Yes, they need to know how to sound out words. They need how to do long division. These are skills that, as a teacher, it is my responsibility to teach well and carefully and in a research-based way, that's effective. And also, it's important that I remember that at the center of this person doing long division in sounding out words is a human being who I hope will want to sound out words because the poem matters to them or because the book is getting me through this hard time.
[00:54:59] Amy: Not, the end game isn't the sounding out. The end game isn't doing the long division, right? The end game is I have this business that's really important to me and so I need the math to be right in order for my sales to work, you know, because my goal is…
[00:55:14] Olivia: It’s authentic. Yeah.
[00:55:15] Amy: So how do I help see a big picture while I'm doing all of these very, um, important goals that can be evaluated, you know, for remembering that not everything can be evaluated in the moment. There's a, there's a, there's a long game here too.
[00:55:35] Olivia: Well, and I think one of my favorite things I'll end on is I adore your book, The Sound of Kindness. Adore it. And, I truly believe we can all be a lot kinder to each other. Um, and pause before we react, pause, pause to write a poem, pause to think of every human we're interacting with.
[00:55:59] Olivia: If they're young, they are a full human, just like you articulated. And The Sound of Kindness is, we need to look and listen for kindness everywhere through people's words, through actions, and live and breathe it. So Amy, you live and breathe it in a million different ways. And I'm grateful for you on earth. I'm grateful for you and your writing. And, uh, I'm just, I'm grateful for you being a guest. Thank you.
[00:56:26] Amy: Olivia, thank you so much. It's just such an honor to be here. May I read one final poem?
[00:56:33] Olivia: What a perfect way to wrap our conversation.Yes.
[00:56:36] Amy: This one is, this is With My Hands. It's a poem all about making things.
[00:56:40] Amy: This is a kind of crafty book, but the last poem is called With My Hands, which is the title. This is illustrated by Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson, a married couple, and this is With My Hands. “When I make something new / I am never the same. / I can never go back / to the person I was. / For the thing that I made / is part of me now. / I changed it. / It changed me. / I am different because / I brought a new something to life with my hands. / If you are a maker / then you understand.”
[00:57:13] Amy: And I think that’s a better call to action. To help children be also just makers.
[00:57:19] Olivia: Makers, make things, make the world better. Beautiful.
[00:57:24] Amy: So thank you for making the world better with this really great podcast. That's such a generous inspiration to all of us educators. It really matters.
[00:57:33] Olivia: Thank you, Amy. Take care.
[00:57:34] Amy: Thank you. You too.
[00:57:37] Olivia: Schoolutions is a podcast created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Special thanks to my guest, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater. Also, a big thank you to my older son, Benjamin, who created the music that's playing in the background. I would love for you to share the podcast far and wide. Leave a review, subscribe on YouTube, and follow us on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and Facebook @schoolutionspodcast. If you'd like to become a Schoolutions sponsor or share episode ideas, leave me a SpeakPipe voice memo at my website, www.oliviawahl.com/podcast, or connect via email at @schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Please keep listening. Let's continue finding inspiration together.