Shiny new pencils, schoolyard bullies and the joy of gym
An Ottawa children’s book author picks her 10 favourite poems about heading back to school
Kalli Dakos knows all about back-toschool jitters.
The Ottawa children’s book author has listened to hundreds of schoolchildren pour out their feelings on everything from the difficulty of making friends to the joy of gym class.
She’s used those ideas as inspiration for a dozen books of poetry about elementary school life. Over the last three decades, the former reading teacher has also given poetry workshops to kids across North America.
As parents scurry to buy binders and new jeans, it’s also important to acknowledge the feelings churned up by the start of a new school year, she says. And poetry can help. “Poetry gets parents and kids talking. You can share a short poem, it gets them talking about how they feel about going back to school and parents, hopefully, will discuss and help the kids.”
Some feelings are universal on the first day of school.
“The average kid, it’s going to be a mixture of excitement, anticipation, hope for a good year, and a little bit of nervousness. Is the teacher going to like me? That’s huge to kids. Am I going to like the teacher? Am I going to be able to do the math on the first day? Is the work going to be too hard? Am I going to be bored?”
A child who has had good experiences in school will probably go back feeling fine.
“But a child who’s had difficult experiences, or who struggles with reading, or writing, or math, or all of those things, that will impact how they feel about going back.”
In her poetry workshops, Dakos helps children express feelings by writing about them. Many kids, for example, write about the difficulty in starting at a new school, and feeling alone on the playground. “Many poems are about — ‘I finally met a friend.’”
Writing poems is cathartic. “It gets it out on paper, where they can see it. Sometimes the poem has answers in it that they didn’t have.
“There is wisdom, even in the youngest children, that comes out in their writing.”
And surprisingly, in a society where the intimate details of people’s lives are broadcast 24/7 on everything from Facebook to talkTV, children don’t always have a chance to express their feelings.
“We think we are in a society where kids do,” says Dakos. “But that’s not true for a lot of children. And so if you give them permission in a poem ... I mean, I’ve had kids write about a pet that died four years ago, and they get up to read their poem and they are in tears, and you can just see the grief that is still there.
“I had a child once whose uncle had been murdered, and it was like, she couldn’t stop writing the poems. It was like she found a place to put those feelings.
“It’s a form of therapy, a way to deal with feelings, to put them on paper, to look at them, to be able to understand them, to have insight into them. Oh, it’s powerful.”
Dakos grew up in Ottawa, but lived in the U.S. for 25 years before moving back in 2004.
To help parents and kids prepare for the year, Dakos has provided 10 of her favourite back-to-school poems for Citizen readers to enjoy.
Several are reprinted here, and you can find them all online at ottawacitizen.com/arts.