Dear 4th Graders, When we think about the time we’ve spent with you over the past 4 months during our Homer 2 Hip Hop Poetry Residency, the words that come to mind are: Proud. Inspired. Moved. We are proud because it hasn’t been an easy year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of you have been learning from home, and if you are in the school building, we are sure it feels really different. All of us have had to get used to brand new ways of learning during this time. We are proud of the fact that despite all that, you showed up each week to our poetry residency ready to try new things, challenge yourselves, and be inspired. You participated, you asked questions, you wrote, and you bravely shared your words each week with your classmates. We are so proud of the way you showed up with presence and enthusiasm, despite the challenging circumstances. We are inspired by how in touch you are with your creativity. We are remembering some of the glorious lines you wrote as part of your “Ars Poetica” community poems: Poetry is like having 100,000 lego pieces and turning them into a huge robot. Poetry is a feather in the air. Poetry is a graceful pixie of writing. Poetry is glueing something to the paper and making it stick. We will never forget how those incredible images just came flying out of you! We are inspired by your willingness to take risks, like dance to your own color wheel poems, or read your poems in the different dramatic ways we practiced with guest artist Joel Francois, like roaring or whispering. We are moved by the way you brought your whole selves into the poems that you wrote, sharing about your families, communities, cultures, and home lives. Through your “I am From” poems and your ghazals about a place, we learned about all the places within New York City that you hold dear, from your very own neighborhood of Jackson Heights, to your beloved parks, to the PS 69 school building. We learned about all the places within the US that you can’t wait to visit again, from Pennsylvania to Florida, New Mexico to Las Vegas, and from Kansas to New Jersey. And we learned about all the countries all over the world that hold places in your hearts, from Bangladesh to Ecuador, China to Mexico, Colombia to the Phillipines, D.R. to Nepal, Tibet to Albania, Macedonia to Afghanistan to India, and many more. We are savoring the power and emotion expressed in these poems. “Home is the names I will love forever, even when we are on different continents.” “I am from me crying non-stop saying goodbye to my family because I was moving to New York…” “I am from the song I learned as a baby and kept in my mind, a song my dad made for me..” “I am from the smells of incensio, I am from the Philippines, where sige means go ahead.” Thank you for sharing with us so much of yourselves. We celebrate you, and all the ways we have gotten to know you more deeply through our classes together, and through your poems. As we move into the spring and summer, we encourage you to keep writing poetry, dancing and making art of all kinds! We believe in you, and can’t wait to see what we’ll do together next year! Until then, Ms. Samira & Ms. Libby
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Teaching ArtistsSamira Sadeque |