Speyer 8th Graders Hold (the First-Ever) Zoom Poetry Recitals During COVID-19 Social Distancing

Words are powerful tools, but right now, they’ve been more difficult to utilize. Sometimes we just don’t have the words to convey what we are feeling, how we are doing, or just the world at this moment. However, something pretty amazing happened on Friday that gave us a restored hope in finding words to help us cope with what was happening. 

Our eighth graders held (perhaps the first-ever) 8th Grade Zoom Poetry Recitals During COVID-19 Social Distancing. They were the culmination of their Distance Learning poetry unit, during which they tackled three key questions: Is it a poem? Why did she write it? and, Is it any good?. They were then tasked with writing six original works.

Their works were inspired by poems they studied: a place (WB Yeats’ "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"), a person of influence ("Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers" by Adrienne Rich), different perspectives on something ("Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens), science and technology ("A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne), strong emotion (William Carlos Williams’ "The Red Wheelbarrow"), and the number 14 (actually, for this last one, they were challenged to write a sonnet inspired by William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130").

As they studied this unit on poetry, Humanities teacher Mr. Deards encouraged them to use what is happening to them, around them, beyond them when they were writing, reminding them that “poetry, rather than letting us record what we know, allows us to uncover what we don’t know.”

What we witnessed on Friday were two Zoom poetry recitals, where each eighth grader read one of his/her poems to family members, faculty, and each other. The Zoom recitals were hosted by two class members and the students facilitated the whole event themselves. Themes varied (depression, favorite places, friends, connection, infinity, and more) as did the form (villanelle, sonnet, free verse, etc.). But many poems were about this time, how they felt about what is happening. A few lines from some of their work over these weeks: 

With the present never ending, the future never coming, and the past never escaping,/One could question whether time is true and real

I am wearing a mask/because I don't want to talk/and these gloves on my hands/are there ‘cause I don't want to feel/what's real

This makes me wonder/If the real end of things can ever be/Scheduled

These Zoom poetry recitals are a testament to many things – how our amazing teachers are successfully translating what happens in person in the classroom to a virtual setting, the strength of our curriculum that transcends the space it happens in, and the eagerness our students have to explore and stretch and reach deep within themselves.

Moreover, it’s a testament to the community is Speyer. Not many teenagers would be willing to share, to be vulnerable in the ways our eighth graders were. They encouraged each other and rallied around each other, listening to each other without judgment. They felt safe to do it. They felt comfortable enough and brave enough because of the space that has been created here. This is the amazing community that is Speyer. 

So, yes, this gave us a little ray of hope, in what we have and what we can look forward to embracing in person once again.