Breath and Ladders

In this breathtaking storytelling, occasional English secondary teacher Val Carnaghan takes readers into her class to experience a captivating moment of poetry, connection, insight and magic.  Take a moment to listen to The Rungs, and then read on.  This post will have you intrigued to try the ideas, and watch the magic unfold for yourself.

photo credit: Jordan Steranka

The Shores

Occasional teaching can feel like running the rapids on the best of days. You are constantly a guest with the responsibilities of a host in unfamiliar spaces. The profession of teaching looks much different from my own memories of school. The rise of smartphones and the widespread use of AI were not things that I anticipated navigating in the classroom. However I do not miss the faint burning smell of the overhead machine always casting a few unlucky students in its shadow. I do not miss the weighty binders full of acetate from previous years that used to confine our learning. And the availability and ease of access to course texts via the internet means that poetry is now floating around the internet, just waiting to be discovered by anyone on the wifi. 

Poets of all ages can cultivate their own collections through websites such as Poetry in Voice. We can bravely join the dialogue ourselves by publishing on Poetry.com. We can curl up safely as passengers gliding into new waters while we listen to Poetry Unbound. And we can tap into curated collections and literacy strategies through Facing History designed to help learners of all ages explore and understand the world around us; in all our beauty and tragedy. We can do all this from our classrooms, or our living rooms, or our shared accommodations, or waiting for the bus, or the next bell to ring. 

The Current

There is a special rhythm to the hallways in schools that is all its own. There is the ebb and flow of people coming together from different directions to form a single stream, the eddies of friend groups meeting each other for a quick hello before they rejoin the current, and the still islands of those unbothered by time and the approaching bell. In and out, like lungs, these great big breaths of students move through the hall and into my classroom. Once the stream has rearranged into their seats, I take my own deep breath and dive in: Announcements, attendance, instructions, slips, supplies, seating plans, and IEP accommodations. I try my best to be "the teacher" but I can only be a hand drawn facsimile of the original, despite my best efforts. Some days, I cannot find the sound button, hidden in a hundred different places on dozens of different technology configurations - always set to someone else’s preferences. The students are quick to offer a solution. It is ok, their smiles reassure me. It is the job. 

My favourite days on the job are days when there is extra time, or time enough, to share a poem with students. “The Rungs” by Benjamin Gucciardi is a current favourite. I learned about this poem through the monthly online workshops with Facing History -  free and fun, where every teacher can be a student again. The workshops feature straight-to- classroom texts and strategies. They make it easy to join in with worthwhile debate and discussions with colleagues, and offer opportunities for educators of all kinds from all over North America to come together and learn about, and from, each other. Gucciardi’s poem is set in a classroom from the perspective of the teacher, but it is his careful rendering of his own students that wins over mine. They are drawn with breath, in their own words. We start by listening to Pádraig Ó Tuama read aloud as the students read over the printed text. (As a supply teacher, one thing you can always count on is finding a friend willing to share their ration of paper if you loiter by the copier in the staff room. I am grateful for this generosity.)

The Rapids

Before we have even heard the first verse from Ó Tuama there are murmurs travelling up the aisles to reach me at the front. 

“Pádraig.”

Some students repeat the name, connections already forming. 

“It sounds like Patrick maybe? Is that the Irish version?”

“Well Patrick would be the English version, wouldn’t it”? 

“He has an Irish accent too.”

“There is Spanish in the poem.”

“She speaks Spanish”

“I am Spanish.”

“She is here on exchange”.

“My family is Irish but I don’t know the language."

“I am learning Spanish”

“Me too.”

I manage to locate the pause button on today’s AV configuration but I give just a moment for the comments to bubble up and subside before we are back to listening. 

We are using the “Save the Last Word” literacy strategy with the poem today. And after we have listened to the recording twice, I pass out cue cards thoughtfully left on the corner of the desk by the usual teacher.  The strategy asks students to pick lines from the poem that resonate with them. The sound of pens and pencils scratching paper and the squeak of highlighters fills the room as I am handing out the cards. There are many connections. In small groups, students must take turns listening and speaking as each explains their chosen words and phrases. There is time for debate and for each student to be both listener and speaker.

Photo courtesy Nick Kozak for Facing History & Ourselves

Save the Last Word knits together the importance of speaking and listening to remind students that these are both key pieces of effective communication. A variety of texts or media pieces can serve as the core text and only a minimum of resources are needed for this activity, making it easily accessible and deliverable. The students arrange themselves in groups, while I begin making a translated copy of the handout in Google Docs from my smartphone for the exchange student. It won’t be perfect, but it’s a start. Twenty years ago, I couldn’t even imagine that this would be a possibility for supporting student learning. There are students still waiting for cue cards, so I share Doc permissions and the group finishes the task, so their friend can fully participate. (Eat your heart out, overhead machine). 

I finish handing out the cue cards and gather two students without groups to join me. They are happy to help me out when I let them know that I need a group too. And then, we are working through the activity with the instructions glowing large on the screen at the front, giving students the agency to chart their own paths through the poem.

The Sun 

Students are starting to move their desks back into rows after finishing the last round, when someone asks, “what about the cue cards?” I am happy to be reminded because it had actually slipped my mind, like sending down the attendance some days, or remembering a name with a very familiar face on others. 

“Thank you, yes”, I reply. 

The class quiets momentarily as I ask them to write out their favourite quote from the poem on one side, and an explanation why on the other. Notes and quotes is a tried and true literacy strategy that works with any text, and resonates with many students. 

“What were your favourite parts?” I ask, as group members nudge each other and point their cards at each other, volunteering friends from across the aisles. I let the question settle, silently counting backwards from 5, determined to give enough wait time for the students to break the silence, despite my own mounting anxiety. 

“I liked the “listening with the heart” bit,” someone offers to the room, “because you can speak from the heart too”.

“You need both.”

I nod encouragingly, slowly letting out the breath I was trying not to hold. 

“And what B says”, chimes in another, “like you don’t even know what it is but they are the most important words in the poem.”

“I chose that one too. It’s important because the poem is more about listening, not about speaking. He needs to be heard.”

Heads nod in agreement.

Two students at the back beat their chests and repeat the word “thumping” in their best impression of Ó Tuama’s reading.

“Listen with your heart” one calls out. I resist the urge to mention the timeless power ballad by Roxette with a similar name. It is not about my connections today. 

A quiet student who joined the group with me but preferred to write out her responses hands over her card, motioning me to read.

“B rolled the dice to cross the border all alone. That was a big risk.” I read.

More agreement and thoughtful faces. 

“Many North American stories start with that same journey, many families took risks to come here,” I add, passing back the card and thanking the student. “First Nations, Métis, and Inuit families were moved to make room, often against their will, and far away from their traditional lands”. There are many sides to each story. 

“It’s brave. They’re brave” the exchange student says.

There are many nods of agreement as the word “brave” floats around the room. There are sober faces and several looks of recognition. This poem resonates with many students and the Save the Last Word strategy opens up space for their own understandings to develop as they listen. 

“And the colours”, adds another, “the green dice and the starburst wrappers. It reminds me of the colours on a stoplight. Like permission to come and go, or permission to speak. B has permission now but maybe he didn’t before.”

It reminds me of my grandfather,” says another. 

“Me too. He has fuzzy dice in his classic car, but they’re not green.”

“And what about the title?” I ask, aware of the clock on the wall and the shifts of students sitting too long. “Who are the rungs?”

“We are,” several students respond. They know this answer.

“It’s how we can hold each other up by just listening. Undrowing yourself means letting go or letting others carry you for a bit,” pipes up a student from the corner, headphones on, hood up, listening just as keenly as the others. 

“Yes, we can”. I agree. Yes we can. 

Photo courtesy Nick Kozak for Facing History & Ourselves

Jumping Back In 

“So what do we do with the cue cards?” someone wonders. 

I look around the beautifully decorated classroom, full of colourful film posters and books lining all the shelves and even the chalk ledges, begging to be read. There is a book for every student in this classroom, there are books waiting for students who have not yet arrived, and books that students who have long left the halls, still remember fondly.

“Let’s put them up”, I respond. 

There is a flurry of activity as I ransack the unfamiliar drawers for a stapler and students line up at the back, handing it over to each other, again and again, as they add to the bulletin display. There is enough room. And as the last cards are secured the bell rings and the students are joining the current in the hallway again, to be great big breaths in their next classrooms. 

And before my next group for the day swirls in, I take a breath, and a second, to admire the row of cards and marvel at the ability of Gucciardi’s poem to bring students out of their shells and consider their power as listeners, and as helpers. I am reminded of the quote that “books can be mirrors, windows, or sliding glass doors” by Rudine Sims Bishop. I think they can be ladders too; they are someone’s story written down, asking for a listener, longing to be heard out in the sun, if only for a moment. 

If you and your students loved this wonderful poem as much as my students and I did please consider adding your location to our “Rungs Readers Map” using the QR codes below. 

Let each little dot stretched across these lands and traditional territories be a rung on our collective ladder as educators; to remind us that we are not alone, and that every day we give students the chance for their stories to be told, and heard.