Candles Burning at Both Ends (Just Get Me to Sunday for a Day of Supposed Rest). Day #5, #WriteOut '25. Field Note Poem (with love for Ann E. Burg)

I spent yesterday doing workshops in middle school classrooms for preparation of Derrick Barnes visits on Friday. One elementary and two presentations at a middle school. I managed to get a hike in before heading to campus for a lecture on Sudanese history, after rescuing several Yellowjackets in their last days before winter death. I'm assuming these are the males that have mated with the Queen so she can lay her last eggs. Only a few Queens will survive, only to go elsewhere to build new nests. Hopefully not in my house next time. 

I was thinking about teaching Force of Nature, a poetic narrative by Ann E. Burg, and how we had such success with it last year in the inauguration of the Center for Climate, Coastal, and Marine Studies. Dr. Robert Nazarian allowed me to choose a special guest and I chose one of my favorite writers for young people. I also taught her books in my graduate courses and we had a lot of success reading her "Field Note" poems as a model for our own writing. (You can read an article Dr. Nazarian and I published on Force of Nature in the California English Journal, p. 8-10 - it wrote itself)

This morning, I'm resurrecting those lessons with a mini-activity in an Explorations of Education course. Our readings this week were about establishing writing routines and figuring out a way to allow young people to feel they are writers, on their own, without the need of teacher assignments. Nature journaling is one way to accomplish that. 

As part of best practices for teaching writing, I'm modeling a poetic field note of my own based on this year's Choice Board. I love this time of year, because I get to participate in a National Writing Project tradition. I went with the nature living in my home (sort of) as a place to launch my thinking. 

Field Note - Day 5

b.r.crandall

They’re not bees, I learned, 

because I hired an expert

after rescuing two or three

daily from a porch-tomb

aquarium that drove their manic

wings insane.

Cup. Envelope. Cover. 

Open door. Release. 

Oh, to be free.

They built a condominium

between sheet rock and paneling

in my dining room,

these yellow jackets enjoying

their population bonanza

in the warming temperatures of 

southern Connecticut. 

Last spring, my students

read about Rachel Carson, 

her poetic notes and drawings

captured in a Fletcher notebook.

Today, I’m heading outdoors again,

thinking about writing, teaching, 

and the buzzing of my own ideas.

Ah, but it's an 8 a.m., there's traffic, and I need to get on the parking-lot corridor soon. Here's to the fellow writers out there.