A Workshop Takeaway

 Thanks to Margaret at Reflections on the Teche for hosting Poetry Friday.  Read her wonderful post about writing camp and the ekphrastic poetry written during writing marathon.  Then check out all the other posts linking up!

          A quote from my experience Thursday:  Language is the essential condition of knowing, the process by which experience becomes knowledge.         Michael Halliday

        In a workshop Thursday, A colleague and I enjoyed listening to Peter Johnston, educator and author of Choice Words. Through examining his recent book, Opening Minds, he created a day of conversation about words, the way we use them as we speak with students/family/friends.  It was an educator’s day, yet also one of conversation about good ways to live one’s life.    Some of Peter’s philosophy reminded me of that of Haim Ginott, a psychologist of years ago whose books and influences live on.      

      

       A full description of this day is left better for an education post, but I did take away one wonderful thing for Poetry Friday, which I hope you will enjoy.  One of the participants wondered how we can take the time to include what Peter called “social imagination”, a way to extend the connections between ourselves and things we encounter, in groups and through reading and other activities.  His answer: How can we not?  And he shared the following poem by the poet laureate of New York, Marie Howe.

Its title is Hurry

and begins:

     We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store   

     and the gas station and the green market and   

     Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,   

 

                   Find the rest here!