“I Hear Fourth Grade Singing” inspired by Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes

Does anyone remember in second grade when we read parts of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” by Walt Whitman during our Brooklyn Bridge study? And then in fourth grade we came back to Mr. Whitman during our Lower East Side immigration unit while reading “I Hear America Singing?” And then even more recently, we re-discovered another poet from second grade, Langston Hughes, who had a response to Whitman’s poem which he called, “I, Too, Sing America,”

What a pleasure to revisit poetry over the years with you…. and how lucky we are to have poetry to help us along.

So here we go, today, we are going to channel Whitman in an attempt to paint a little scene of fourth graders….picture this….

I Hear Fourth Grade Singing

d: I hear Ben singing as he gets into character for a social studies simulation…a society man in coat tails and top hat at the Jacob Riis Tea Party, or a recent immigrant in a crowded tenement looking for a space in which to sleep…

j: I hear Colette singing as she wields her pen and paintbrush creating for us another way to look at our experience at the farm, of meticulous morning glories or of a scene of migrants traveling on a train north

d: I hear Cooper singing, really singing, in beat box mode, again the farm inspires….
I wake up every morning and I talk to my friends

j: I hear Dora singing as she secretly plans another double Jake day, gathering provisions and decorating t-shirts.

d: Each singing what belongs to them and everyone else

j: I hear Eli singing as he shares his thinking and how he checked his work during math poster presentations, “How many milliliters in a case?”

d: I hear Emily singing as she creates many graphic novel panels instead of one – just because her ideas cannot be contained in one panel…no way.

j: I hear Freddie singing as he gets up the nerve to speak in front of the lower school at our first lower school gathering of the year and by the last one in May, he is a pro.

d: I hear Gus singing as he builds our red bench ….. and as he comes up with precise summations of our social studies themes and explorations.

j: Each singing what belongs to them and everyone else

d: I hear Jack singing as he describes our field trip experiences in thank you notes, to Richard Serra, your sculpture “felt like a huge game of hide and seek” or to the judge of the Naturalization Ceremony, “I noticed that everyone (in the courtroom) had a huge smile on their face.”

j: I hear Johnny singing as he helps his classmates who are stuck poking computer keyboard buttons to no avail, singing as he solves their google drive and blog problems, singing as he asks big philosophical scientific questions.

d: I hear Kate singing as she stands before an audience, arm raised as a member of the mink brigade, poised, delivering her lines with perfect pitch and timing.

j: I hear Lila singing as she sits proudly and bravely on a stool at lower school gathering singing a song from Pippin or as she boldly takes on the role of Jacob Riis in our year-end play.

d: I hear Margaret singing as she leads the way in our math challenge sessions, and singing as she works wonders in partnerships encouraging her peers to work more, think again, do it again, better this time.

j: I hear Meadow singing as she channels Barack Obama loud and clear, singing as she aims her strong voice into the microphone on the Brian Lehrer Show.

Each singing what belongs to them and everyone else

d: I hear Olivia Bagan singing as she makes deep connections between work at school and discoveries in the bigger world.

j: I hear Olivia Propp singing the praises of hard work and determination in her editorial on child labor, singing again in her mastery of multiplication combinations.

d: The day what belongs to day – at night the homework creations of Oni, carefully rendered, providing us all with inspiration for what to do next in our curriculum.

j: I hear Piper singing as she quietly turns in a reading or writing response which is not quiet at all but full of big ideas that need to be shared.

d: I hear Polly singing as she emcees at Lower School Gathering, singing as she plays the role of a factory inspector or and really singing as she shares her special projects and handmade games.

j: I hear Tilda singing as she goes into the character of her immigrant personna and recreates the exact gestures seen in Augustus Sherman’s original photograph.

d: I hear Zach singing, as he says what we all are thinking in ways we could not have imagined conjuring up ourselves

j: Singing with open mouths…

d: When is snack?

j: And their strong melodious songs

d: Inside voices please.

j: Singing with open mouths

d: We are hungry to learn!

j: And their strong melodious songs

d: We have many ways to show you what we have learned!

j: Just look at our poems, our paintings, our journals, our blog posts, our dances, our movements, our math posters… listen to our discussions

d: Hear our sighs…sometimes learning is a strenuous song,

j: See our smiles…..

d: Watch our spontaneous conga line!

j: Sing on into middle school all you writers, artists, readers, mathematicians, poets, musicians, humorists, and good friends.

d and j: Sing on !!!!!……