I learned this poem, The Eagle, in second grade. I can remember it like it was yesterday. The poem. The feathers we had to explore. The bird feeders we crafted with cardboard, suet, seeds, and peanut butter. The vocabulary we explored – it was never about the word, it was about the experiences. I remember looking at the sky and asking my teacher if that’s what “azure” looks like. I remember falling in love with the rhythm of a good poem, even though I didn’t enjoy (and still don’t) fiction reading. I can remember drawing an eagle and creating a book to share my research. I can remember listening to a recording of the sounds of eagles on a tape. She didn’t demand us to learn it, nor need to bribe us with a score. She merely fed our curiosities like hungry little birds. And we were hungry.
30 years later? Kids are still just as hungry, but we have a superstore of possibilities available to us. The poem? It’s still just as great as it was when I was 8. Creating the bird feeder? Now I could have a live streaming webcam to observe. Designing a book? Now there are apps like BookCreator and iBooks Author to allow me to make my book interactive. I could record my reflections of the poem or talk about the azure sky in a blog post. I could design a self-filling birdfeeder using Little Bits. I could build a Lego eagle and write my own poem. I could use Squishy Circuits, feathers, and lights to create an eagle. I might use a paper plate and masking tape to build a nest. I might use Scratch coding to recreate the visuals of the poem as I process what it means. I could.. I might… If…. possibilities. Not just things to do, but sparks to ignite a fire.
I say it all the time, but we really are teaching in the best time there is. Sure, there is “stuff” in the world we cannot control. Stuff that can suck the energy out of teaching and leave us drained with negativity. But that isn’t what we should, or can, focus on. There is one thing that is bigger and better… pure learning. And what I remember in second grade is the very thing that wakes me up in the middle of the night thinking with an idea. The world is full of awesome and feeding curiosity with opportunities and then watching kids soar like eagles? That feeling never changes.
The Eagle
BY ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
