Good morning! This week we have a special opportunity for National Poetry Month; a podcast host as our guest for Ask a Journalist; and a heartwarming collection of student comments about their pets. — The Learning NetworkJoin our live-moderated “What’s Going On in This Poem” conversation on April 14.
What’s going on in this text? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can you find? You may be used to answering these questions about images thanks to our popular, long-running Monday feature, “What’s Going On in This Picture?,” but for National Poetry Month, we’re inviting you to try it a new way. On Tuesday, April 14, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern, we will host a live-moderated discussion about a Robert Hayden poem, “Monet’s ‘Waterlilies’.” What we and many other teachers have found is that those three deceptively simple questions work brilliantly as a cognitive strategy for helping people make meaning, not just for visual texts but for almost any kind of unfamiliar material, whether poems or math formulas or historical documents. They communicate powerfully that you don’t need an authority to give you a “right answer” — you only need your own curiosity and a willingness to go deeper. Recent Times reporting about schools
More teaching resources from The Learning Network
Many, many more poetry activities for your students
We’ve been updating this list of ways to read, write, teach and learn poetry with The New York Times every spring for a decade, and now it’s full of enough free links to lesson plans, games, exercises, poems, essays, illustrations, videos, podcasts and more to teach poetry all semester long — not just during April. Which ideas most appeal to you? Before you go, see what teens are saying about how pets have improved their lives.
We asked students if pets made their lives better. The answers delighted us. Here are a few: After long or stressful days, I genuinely look forward to coming home because I know Gizmo will be there, full of excitement. When I’m overwhelmed or upset, he quietly sits beside me, and in those moments, he brings a sense of calm that’s hard to put into words. It feels like he understands without needing anything explained.— Aria, Illinois My pets are my pigs and sheep; they make me so happy. When I go down to feed my pigs, and I walk in the barn, they get so excited, which gets me excited to see them run around and their tails wag. They are actually the cutest things ever. Sometimes when I get so overwhelmed in the house, I like to go to the barn to see my animals and sit there with them. — Averi, Iowa The best thing I have gained is basically a best friend. My cat Raha is always there for me. Sometimes he’s a bit odd and will stare at me from far away for long periods of time or try to go to the bathroom with me. But people say embarrassment and awkwardness can grow a relationship, so maybe it’s for the better. — Caragan, Illinois There’s my cat, Butterball. Sadly, he passed away last summer at 18 years old, but he’s my favorite of all. He was my cuddlebug, the one I would ramble on and on to, even though he didn’t understand. Overall, pets make your life better, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them. — Kayla, Iowa We’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to LNfeedback@nytimes.com. More next week.
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