I had my students writing poetry today because we were studying journalism. Once I thought through the chain of what led me from journalism to poetry, I realized I’m an awesome teacher!

Or a really scattered one- I choose awesome.

Our chapter is about how journalism and news is shaped by the powers that own the media corporations. To show them the difference between good reporting and bad reporting I brought in an old copy of the “Weekly World News.” I had them “analyze” stories with headlines like, “How to tell if you’ve been abducted by aliens” and “Man electrocuted to death by a lightning bug.”

I recalled in the movie “So I married an ax murderer” the main character thought his wife might be an ax murder because of an article he read in a tabloid. The main character was also a poet. I thought, “If I throw in poetry this week, we can watch “So I married an as murder” in class and it will be considered a tie-in for the unit we just finished!”

So- poetry in class today. I had them do Haikus first. I had them each write one. Most of them were too shy to share what they had written, so I told them to only write the first line. Then I told them to trade papers, so nobody would be embarrassed to hear their poem because each poem was written by three people.

My favorite Haiku:

My pretty meadow
Pretty pretty meadow wow!
I really want it.

Then I had them write a four line “semi structured” poem, it had three dependant clauses and one independent clause.

My favorite clause poems:

Even you get hurt,
Even you are crazy,
Even I am still writing even,
In the end, I’m a crazy person.

But there’s more:

Although I have good personalities,
But I am not sure about me,
Although I hate myself,
I’m a perfect LADY in the world!

One more:

Because I have to go to restroom,
So I left you in the trash,
And, sorry, you have to wait for me,
See you tomorrow at the same time.

They crack me up.