A Poem, A Poet, A Winner

April is National Poetry Month. This month I held a poetry contest. I asked readers to write a poem about teaching. The winner receives their choice of one of these two great books: Practical Poetry: A Nonstandard Approach to Meeting Content-Area Standards by Sara Holbrook or Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School by Georgia Heard.

Drumroll please...

And the winner is Kevin Hodgson. He didn't just write a poem, he wrote a poem aimed at the heart of subjecting our children to standardized testing.

The winning poem...

Here,
amid the silence of your
muted mind,
I hear only the dull scratching
of lead on paper.
I imagine:
the stories you want to tell;
the arguments you want to make;
the poems you want to recite;
the songs you want to sing --
if only
you weren't shackled to your desk
with four little bubbles
in front of you
and a number two pencil
whose point is aimed squarely
at the machine assigned as
automated audience.


-Kevin Hodgson
Kevin posted this poem in a super cool format worth checking out at Prezi.