Georgia Heard

Bringing Poetry into Everyday Life

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Georgia,

We recently attended your presentation in Saddle River and we blown away! I am the reading specialist and my friend is the curriculum resource teacher at our elementary school of 900 students. We are now so excited to share what we learned with the teachers in our school, many of whom are already celebrating Poetry Month with their classes. The following day, we were fortunate to get to meet and hear Brod Baggert (a real poetry week for me, starting with Taylor Mali at Rutgers) and tell him that we had heard about him from you the day before. (He was really excited to hear that!)So far, I have made several teachers' days: one by loaning her Awakening the Heart, another by giving her a chance to have someone validate her practice as something you recommended and a third by reading her a poem to calm her down at a really stressful time! So thank you! I also noticed that you have some posts from India and since most of my students are, I am going to follow them closely!
Carol Bodofsky
Woodbrook School

please post biographies of your life

Hi Georgia,
Will you be offering any on-line courses this year. Would love to take one!
Jane

Hi Georgia,

I'm not sure this will work but the email address we had would not send through so thought I would try this route. One of the teachers I work with came in so excited the other day after reading your books about teaching poetry. She said she never liked poetry before, didn't know what to do to teach it, and after reading your book she feels so excited to do it. She now has various poetry centers set up in her room, including a poetry window, push pin poetry bulletin board, and a center to draw pictures in response to poems students have read. I thought you might enjoy hearing about how your writing transforms lives.

We are continuing on in India for another year. It is cold and foggy here right now, and I enjoy the change of weather. Tomorrow we are going out for a bike ride through the mustard fields outside of town.

For the winter holiday we went home to California (Santa Cruz). We'd not been home in 19 year for Christmas, and it felt wonderful--lots of time with family and friends and lots of wonderful food too. The guest house we have been working on getting built for about 10 years now was nearing completion while we were at home, and we got to plant a couple of trees, a pomegranate and an olive. We named the trees, too, Persephone, and Olive Oyl. We stopped by Zurich on our way back here to visit friends we taught with when living in Singapore. (They are now working at the international school there.) What magic it was to walk through the snowy woods and see the trees covered in crystals of ice! We have lived in warm climates for so many years that the experience felt exotic.

I hope you are feeling well these days, back more to your full health.

Here is a link you might appreciate, Carrie Newcomer singing about the holiness of every things. I don't remember if I told you earlier that she came to our school in September. She came to my classroom, and I found the experience moving as she is someone alive in the presence of Life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qZyoRiBteI

Holding you in gentle thoughts,

Anna

anmcitrino@gmail.com
















I am a fourth grade teacher looking for a poetry anthology book that students could use to discover different forms of poetry that would invite them to dive in to poetry. My purpose is for them to gain an appreciation for poetry and invite them to create their own. What are your suggestions?

What is the animal Georgia is referring to in the "I am a _____________" I swim in the sea, flipping and shining. Can you see me?



WOuld you post the poem that you shared at Reading for the Love of It? The poem was about children wondering, and started off with "Why? is a word children learn early..."

























I like it very much!
-- Susie from Idaho