What Will You Be? Imagining Careers

Rainbow Sprinkles

Photo by Amy LV

Holiday Sprinkles

Photo by Amy LV

 

Click the arrow to hear me read this poem to you.

Students - Last Friday, I went shopping at one of my favorite shops - Lantz's in Warsaw, NY.  This is a little shop with a lot of food, all in bulk.  I came home with bags of wasabi peas, honey roasted soy nuts, lemon drops, graham cracker pretzels, and lots more.  But once again, as always, I was struck by the rows and rows of beautiful sprinkles in every color!  The two pictures above only show some of the sprinkles at Lanz's, all that would fit my screen.

When I took those photographs, I did not know what I would use them for.  I was simply struck by their beauty and wonderfulness.  The picture waited inside my camera in the same way that a favorite line waits in my notebook.

This is a question poem as you can see right in the title.  And it's a question that children are asked often, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  Well, I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher.  But there are times that I imagine training dogs or designing doll clothes or testing ping pong balls. Jobs are fascinating, how many and how varied they are.  And it's great fun to invent jobs as I did (a bit) today!  What will YOU be?

This week over at my other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks, Barry Lane shares his notebooks and offers a generous giveaway of two of his books about writing and a CD.  A winner will be drawn on Sunday, September 30...the beginning of Banned Books Week!

A Favorite Shop

Photo by Amy LV

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Painting Stripes, Painting Poems - #259

Students - I did not plan for today's poem to be a free verse poem.  In fact, I did not know what today's poem would be until late yesterday evening when I was on a long drive home.  I'd been on a long drive yesterday morning too, and so I was looking at a lot of road stripes.  This got me thinking about something which I've always found fascinating: other people's jobs.  Did you ever think about the fact that almost everything you touch or do or use is connected to someone else's work?  Someone's mother or father stripes the roads, stocks the shelves at the grocery store, manufactures pencils, examines x-rays, everything.  All of these jobs are so important.  Here is what a road striping truck looks like, in case you were wondering.

A few weeks ago, a local man died when his road striping truck was hit by another vehicle.  I guess I have not stopped thinking about this tragedy, and in a way, I wrote this poem to honor him.  I didn't know this man, but I do wonder if he had a child and if he ever took his child out to see his work.  Writing this poem, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be the child of a road striper, how proud I would be of my dad's straight lines helping everyone drive safely.

Sometimes we find writing ideas (or they find us) through the news.  Listen to bits of news, read magazines, let the outside world in, and see what it takes hold inside of your brain and heart.  The most meaningful things to you will grow roots and bloom into writing pieces, and you may never know which those will be until you face a blank piece of paper.

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