(above) WHRHS students rose to the challenge set forth by English Teacher Jana Battiloro. For National Poetry Month, she asked students to write uplifting poems around their neighborhoods.
Poetry Inspiration Challenge During Distance Learning
Submitted by Denis Kelly
Watchung Hills Regional High School (WHRHS) English Teacher Jana Battiloro and her students discovered the use of a different kind of chalk board and a “Poetry Inspiration Challenge” during the Covid-19 Pandemic. The exercise helped students explore one way to harness the power of their own inner poet while reaching out with words of inspiration for their neighbors and themselves.
Prior to their Spring Break, Battioro gave her students a light assignment to complete during their one-week off from Distance Learning.
“The Tuesday before Spring Break, I left a ‘challenge’ for them on Google Classroom,” Battiloro explained. Her challenge coincided with National Poetry Month.
“My challenge for you is to not only begin our celebration of National Poetry Month,” she instructed her students, “but also to spread some love. So here is the challenge: Find a poem – any poem (even a verse of a poem) and write it on your sidewalk, driveway, window, front door, anywhere you can to show it to the rest of the world. The poem should somehow spread a message of positivity, optimism, hope, encouragement, or love. Then post a picture here so we can see what you did!”
Battiloro explained, “I found myself turning to poems each day when I started my day, trying to find some inspiration and some peace. Then, my daughter started to leave messages on our sidewalk and walkway each day, encouraging our neighbors. That’s how the idea was born: That I could merge these two forms of encouragement and that this is needed, but especially for my precious students who are feeling lost and unmotivated and missing their own lives. So, I offered them a poem of encouragement by Mary Oliver, and told them to take the ideas out to others in the form of sidewalk chalk or even post on paper on a tree!
“I am so very proud of my students – all of them. Each day I try to share with them another poem or lyrics from a song – still trying to keep them connected to me and the school and to education.”
Battiloro added that she had seen variations of this all over her hometown, too.
Battiloro said the student reaction was overwhelming, but she added, also, it was in line with what she and others have come to expect from WHRHS students.
“So, as Watchung Hills students always do,’ she said, “they rose to the challenge and have been leaving messages on roads and driveways and sidewalks everywhere, since that day.”
Some of the selections the students shared included some written by other poets, and some written by them.
