It's April And There's Poetry Everywhere

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Fifth-grade writing teacher Kristin Westberg with a few of her sidewalk poets, where the
Middle School sidewalk ends. "For the children, they mark, and the children,
they know / The place where the sidewalk ends." -- Shel Silverstein

In April when the sun is shining and the dogwoods bloom, poetry is definitely in the air.

That may be why--though poet T.S. Eliot dubbed it "the cruelest month"--April is National Poetry Month.

Poetry was definitely in the air--and all over the sidewalks!--on April 8, when Grade 5 Writing teacher Kristin Westberg took her "sidewalk poets" outdoors to scatter poems along all the concrete walks leading to the front Middle School entrance.



Too delicate to be graffiti, the children's poems in pink, blue, and yellow colored chalk meandered gleefully over the walkways and down to the basketball court.



The students had created anthologies of their own poems and took their best outdoors, creating a carpet of words, rhymes, and drawings that rolled out in time for carpool.



After they had finished "publishing" their work, promised rain held off for a day, so Westberg took her classes outdoors "to tour their classmates' poetry and reflect on the themes and figurative language they see."

It is the nature of poems and poetic feelings to be ephemeral. So, you might consider it a form of poetic justice that the rains predicted for this weekend will wash the students' poems into the ground water--just beyond "where the sidewalk ends."