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Students find their voices through poetry project

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PABLO – It is not uncommon for poetry assignments to bring out extreme like or dislike on behalf of school-age youngsters, but teacher Carolyn Pardini said nearly all of her students are hooked on a poetry-intensive, 12-week writing project sponsored by the Missoula Writing Collaborative. 

Salish and Kootenai College Instructor Alex Alviar has been coming into the classroom at Pablo Elementary school to teach two classrooms of fourth graders. Midway through the project, Pardini said her students hang on Alviar’s every word. 

“He’s a fantastic teacher,” Pardini said. “They just eat them up. Their poems have been great. It’s just been a great, great experience. I’ve learned new teaching techniques and the kids have been exposed to poetry and a really dynamic guy.” 

Pardini said Alviar’s focused lesson plans make a difference in keeping the children engaged. 

“They love it,” Pardini said. “One week he focused on repetition, one week he focused on line breaks, another week he focused on similes and figurative language … He’s done such a masterful job that the kids are set up for success. Some of the poems are dreamy, some are sad, some are monstrous. There’s that openness where they can put their emotions in.” 

In a recent lesson, Confederated Salish and Kootenai elder and published poet Victor Charlo worked with the children on their poetry. He read several of his poems to the class and explained each work’s meaning and the emotions and stories that went in composing them. He also showed work composed by his children and grandchildren. 

“‘Bears are yellow,” Charlo read in one stanza. “‘Bears are yellow.’ Isn’t that neat? I want you guys to do the same thing. Use our imagination, your beautiful imagination. In all things, use your imagination.” 

At the end of the reading, Charlo told the students to write a poem that required quite a bit of creativity. 

“I want you guys to make a story,” Charlo said. “It has a peacock, a cat, and there’s a dog, one of those long wiener dogs, but he’s got stripes around his belly. Why? I don’t know. The last thing, the fourth thing is a skeleton and he’s smiling. He’s got a great big smile.” 

Alviar got the students to go through their pre-writing exercising where they tap all over their heads to stimulate their minds. A chorus of giggles resounded as everyone prepared. 

“First, we get our words going,” Alviar said as his fingers started tapping all over his head. “Thinking about our peacock and our cat and thinking about our wiener dog with a stripe on his belly and our skeleton with a big smile. Let’s hit the back and get all our details, get the sides and all our metaphors, the front and our descriptions and then we’re going to countdown into writing mode.” 

And they were off. Charlo took the poems home to critique them. He said that he hoped the lesson made an impression. 

“We want to get them started young,” Charlo said with an ear-to-ear grin.

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