The Important Thing About You: A gift to your students

This year is drawing to a close. Perhaps you’re counting down the days. You're doing your best to connect with students virtually while also doing all the other things. 

And I’m about to give you an assignment - well, a suggestion. It will take you a while, so it’s best you start now. It will take lots of thoughtful work and careful observation, but I promise you it’s worth it.

Around the holiday season, you might want to give a gift to your students (though you could save this gift for the end of the school year if it's too much right now). A pencil or bookmark would be appreciated for a moment and then likely lost or forgotten. I saw a form poem/letter on a teacher website, with the recommendation that teachers copy it for each child and hand it to them at on the last day. It was nice enough, but terribly impersonal. If you take me up on this challenge, it will never be forgotten. This gift will be remembered and cherished by your students and, perhaps, by their families as well.

The idea began with a book, The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown. If you’ve read it, you know how simple and lovely her short poems about everyday things are. If you haven’t seen it, here’s an excerpt:

The important thing about
rain is
that it is wet.
It falls out of the sky,
and it sounds like rain,
and makes things shiny,
and it does not taste like
anything,
and is the color of air.
But the important thing about
rain is
that it is wet.

 -Margaret Wise Brown, The Important Book

Here’s what I want you to do: Create a document or grab a notepad and begin writing a collection of “important poems.” You’ll create a poem for each and every child you teach. 

Think of the unique qualities and quirks that make each child special. You may find that you have little to say about certain children. That should let you know you need to pay more attention to those particular kids. Since you’re starting soon, you’ll have time to gather information.

Here are some examples of “important poems” my co-teacher and I wrote for children in our class:

And here’s the most enjoyable part:

When you’re done writing and editing, print off the poems without names. Don’t worry! You’ll know which one belongs to which child! Print a portrait of each child, if you like, but don’t attach them to the poems yet.

One day, at the end of the school year, or anytime, while your students are out at lunch or somewhere else, or before they arrive in the morning, lay out the poems on tables. When your children return, give each child a bunch of post-its, or place a blank sheet of paper next to each poem. 

Explain to your students that you’ve written an important poem about each of them, but you haven’t included their names. Their task is to read each poem and jot down the name of the child they think it belongs to. (A virtual alternative might be posting the poems in a Google slideshow, Jamboard, or Padlet, and having kids read and comment with their guesses!)

Then send them off and stand back and watch. You’ll see smiles and laughter and the most enthusiastic reading ever. And if you’ve observed carefully and written thoughtfully, your students will know whom each poem is about

After you’ve given them time to read all of the poems, you can confirm which poem belongs to each child, attach the photos if you’ve printed them, and give each child his or her poem to keep.

Here’s what I love so much about this gift to children:

• Thinking about all of the wonderful characteristics of your students helps you to appreciate each child, enabling you to be an even better teacher.

• Writing these poems makes you pay careful and close attention to every child and find the best, most important qualities they bring to your classroom community.

• The poems let children know you notice them, you know them, and you recognize and appreciate their uniqueness.

• Families will enjoy reading about the positive contributions their children have made to your class throughout the year.

• Children are reminded of their peers' best qualities that they might have forgotten or overlooked, strengthening their friendships and relationships, building the sense of community in your classroom.

• These "important poems" are especially meaningful for children who struggle with academics and/or behavior and might need a reminder of their inherent goodness and special talents.

• You reinforce the positive qualities you observe in children, strengthening these qualities by drawing attention to them.

I hope you'll take this challenge on, and I hope you and your students love the poems you create! Let me know how it goes in comments, below!

P.S. - This lovely idea is not my own, but blossomed in one of the frequent collaborative conversations that happened over the two years I was lucky enough to work with my co-teacher, Safaa Abdelmagid. She is an excellent observer, as was evidenced by her detailed contributions to our important poems. We created a shared document with children’s names and added to it over a period of several weeks before editing and revising the final poems together.

P.P.S. - If you are a grownup who doesn't have a class and you're reading this, don't you think this would make a lovely class or individual gift for your child's teacher(s)? Or a gift from you to your child? Or a Mother's day or Father's Day gift? Or an addition to a birthday card? Happy writing!