Students embrace the holiday
Bob Bonnar
NLJ Editor
Students in Nikki Bartlett’s 7th grade language arts class embraced the holidays that have been celebrated since they returned to school in the new year, and their teacher is excited about the perspective it gave them as they tackled their poetry unit.
“We had started off quarter three with a study of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which we then tied to Langston Hughes’ poem “Dreams,” Bartlett said.
She explained that the Hughes poem is very short, and consists of only two stanzas of four lines each. The rhyme scheme is a, b, c, b, which means that the second and fourth line of each stanza rhyme.
“Since the study of this poem fell so close to Valentine’s Day, I decided to have kids try their hand at poetry, but writing their poem in the same style as Langston Hughes,” Bartlett said.
The assignment wasn’t universally embraced by the students at the beginning, the teacher admits, but she said they eventually warmed up to the task when she invited them to share their honest feelings about ‘love,’ whether they be good or bad.
“The assignment was met with moans and groans from some of my students, but most kids were eager to give it a shot. They had the choice of writing about love positively or negatively. It just had to remain school appropriate, of course,” she smiled.
In the end, she was really impressed with the results, and eager to invite the community to enjoy the poems as part of their own Valentine’s Day celebrations this year.
“Seventh grade is a tough year, period, and this seventh grade class is truly starting to shine,” she said. “I am proud of their work ethic and willingness to try something out of their comfort zone.”
Stay away from love
For love is a dinosaur.
You like it, and then it dies,
It will leave you bitter and sore.
Stay away from love
For love is a black cat.
It is bad luck and feral,
It won’t eat fancy feast, but it will eat your rat.
By: Marshall Merchen
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Hold fast to love
For love is a smiling face,
The face you see every day
That you look at as your special place.
Hold fast to love
For love is a heart.
It can be broken or mended.
It is love’s place to start.
By: Julie Day
Stay away from love
For love is like a raccoon.
It will soon crush you
With the force of the moon.
Stay away from love
For you will say wow
But afterwards you, to her,
Will become a cash cow.
By: Zach Brown
Hold fast to love
For love is your life with your cow dog.
When your cow dog is not around,
It is hard to find your way chasing cows through the fog.
Hold fast to love
For when your favorite cowboy hat is gone,
You cannot be happy
For the next morning’s dawn.
By: Pate Tavegie
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Stay away from love
For love is fuel to a fire
That will burn your heart
With a desire.
Stay away from love
For love is a horrible
knife
That will hurt you
And cut a hole in your life.
By: Ian Simmons
Stay away from love
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For love is a deep dark abyss,
Only ending in heart break,
Giving you another person to miss.
Stay away from love
For love is believing someone is there for you,
And watching them walk out the door,
The most terrible feeling anyone’s ever gone through.
By: Camilla Drake
Hold fast to love
For love is nice
And if you don’t love
You should eat raw mice.
Hold fast to love
For if you don’t
Your heart will be
broken.
If you love, it won’t.
By: Ryker Hespe
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Love is in the air
Get out your gas masks.
Love leads to broken hearts,
It takes your life and turns it into depressing tasks.
Yet you must hold onto love,
For if love withers,
Your heart breaks,
You turn into cold that makes you shiver.
By: Liela Paulson
Stay away from love
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For love is radioactive,
And it is as painful as cancer
When you have 4 kids running around active.
Stay away from love
For love is expensive,
And it punches a hole in your wallet
When your lady friend is in the hair salon, ah! She is on the
offensive!
By: Nate Stickland
Stay away from love
It can drop you to your knees.
You might think it’s ranch,
But find out it’s bleu cheese.
At first love tastes so fine,
It hits you like a comet,
But then reality bites,
And it tastes like bleu cheese vomit!
By: Cole Wehri
Hold fast to love
For love is a flowering garden that never dies
Love is a frolicking gazelle dancing through the grass
Like a heart that swears it never lies.
Stay away from love
For love is a ruin of the heart
Love is a dark sky turning everyone blind
Like a torn canvas pulled apart.
By: Gilly Haugen
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