Yay for Programs!
Last night I had my first real program. It was a poetry night held at the local community center. We used the teen room, which was great, aside from the basketball noise from the room next door. I didn't notice the noise at first, I was so nervous. I have been rather worried that no one would come. My presenters--Youth Speaks Seattle canceled on me the day before. I didn't panic. I looked up some quick poetry workshops and made up a little exercise that was flexible as to how much time would be spent.
About 15 kids and 5 adults (parents and the teen coordinator) showed up. Three of the kids were winners of the poetry contest in December. I introduced myself and the program,then had the winners stand up and read their poetry. After that, an older boy got up and read a poem that he had written earlier that day. It was a powerful piece and everyone was impressed. We clapped and I handed out the awards to the three winners. We ate pizza, then started the poetry exercise. All of the kids participated, including one of the contest winner's younger brothers. When it came time to read what we wrote, he got up and told about how bored he was. It reminded me of my son. I got to use his as an example of using repetition in a poem to bring your point home. It was really cute.
Because of the cancelation, we did get done about 20 minutes early, but everything went really well. The parents and the teen coordinator thanked me for setting everything up and it helped my confidence to no end to have this event go mostly as planned. Yay!
About 15 kids and 5 adults (parents and the teen coordinator) showed up. Three of the kids were winners of the poetry contest in December. I introduced myself and the program,then had the winners stand up and read their poetry. After that, an older boy got up and read a poem that he had written earlier that day. It was a powerful piece and everyone was impressed. We clapped and I handed out the awards to the three winners. We ate pizza, then started the poetry exercise. All of the kids participated, including one of the contest winner's younger brothers. When it came time to read what we wrote, he got up and told about how bored he was. It reminded me of my son. I got to use his as an example of using repetition in a poem to bring your point home. It was really cute.
Because of the cancelation, we did get done about 20 minutes early, but everything went really well. The parents and the teen coordinator thanked me for setting everything up and it helped my confidence to no end to have this event go mostly as planned. Yay!
posted by srcsmgrl at
10:16 AM
2 Comments:
AWESOME.
first programs are the hardest, eh?
i'm curious to hear what the poetry exercise entailed.
By
david silver, at 6:33 PM
Well, I dug an exercise off the internet and twisted it for my own use. I had the kids write up a list of memories from the day (clothing, people, quotes, etc). Then they picked a few of them, or only one, to write their poem about. It was mostly a brainstorming/topic finding exercise. I encouraged them to continue working on the poem at home. Most of them read what they had in front of the group.
By
srcsmgrl, at 9:30 AM
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