Teacher_04.htm

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Teacher of the Year 2003
Acceptance Speech given in San Francisco, CA, April, 2004

Devika Brandt
Greenwood School
Mill Valley, CA

Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here.

I have been excited about language for as long as I can remember. I love the way words feel in my mouth and the music of a well-written line. It is the sharing of this excitement and the act of paying attention that is the essence of my teaching. If you notice your world, you engage all your senses. You really see and smell and taste and touch and hear the world around you. Springtime is a wonderful time to do that. In the early morning when the sun is out and warming all the budding flowers, there is such a sweetness to the air. I recently walked through a gorgeous garden with the Marin Young Poets Society, and we looked and smelled and listened and touched our way through it. At one point, after smelling so many luscious lilacs, I asked them, "What do these lilac flowers smell like?" Not an easy question. How do you describe a smell? One suggestion was that the scent was quiet. Others said a soft scent, or a powdery scent. We talked about what they looked like as well. Bouncy. Floating. Like bunches of grapes growing toward the sun. And what do they sound like? What do they sound like? Whispers. A sigh. And the wisteria. Wisteria that had climbed so far up into the redwood trees that when it blossomed and hung down, it was like a purple waterfall dropping from the sky.

The only way we can come to observations like these is to take the time to really see. To be aware of the world outside of ourselves, and then inside ourselves as well. How do you feel in spring? What does spring weather make you want to do? Do you feel joyous? Energetic? How do you say that with a picture? Imagine you are taking a photograph of how you feel and what you want to do and how it looks and smells and sounds around you. But this camera you are using takes pictures with words. So with this camera you find out that feeling joyous to you means that you get out your bright orange t-shirt and wear it with your shocking pink pants. And your knee high striped purple socks. With blue tennis shoes. And that feeling energetic means that you want to jump on a trampoline so high that you could catch a cloud in your mouth and eat it like cotton candy. And perhaps you didn't really know that before.

So if you are paying attention, becoming aware of the world around you and inside you, and using your word camera to write it all down, I believe that this awareness can bring you to true joy. What a joy it is to be so alive in the world. And if you are truly aware, you will also experience pain, for there is great pain and suffering in this world, especially when we are experiencing it with all our senses. But awareness is the first step toward compassion and then to action. Out of our joy and our compassion we have the possibility of helping each other and caring for our planet. All of this from a poem.

The other piece of my teaching is acknowledgement that there is no wrong way to write a poem. What a delightful task to undertake, what freedom there is, when you know that you can only do it right! Of course, I do have some absolutes. Like: You always write the poem first and then title it. Except for when you don't. And then we write titles as fast as we can and choose one to write a poem for. Because it's so much fun! Or: You should always have an idea of what you want to write about. Except for when you don't, so you just start writing about the first thing you see and if you relax and write the next thing you know those cows you saw dotting the green hillsides are like seeds in a watermelon which makes you remember summers at the river on a hot day with bare feet and cold watermelon and off you go into your poem. The only real absolute I have is, Is it clear? Does it say what you want it to say? It is so important to share ourselves with our words, because words can make a difference. Words can show us a world that we didn't know existed, open our eyes, open our hearts. And although we can always improve upon our writing, make our point more clear, choose a better word, or word picture, there is always something good to say about a poem. We all need to be appreciated for what we do, where we put our hearts. Encouragement, acknowledgement, make us want to continue the work, do our best, keep our hearts open.

I am so very grateful to Pamela Michael and Robert Hass for acknowledging me by naming me River of Words Teacher of the Year. It is an honor that means so much to me. And I am eternally grateful to the Greenwood School for allowing me to do the work I love and to share my joy of language with so many children.

I would like to leave you with a poem I recently wrote. It's called " Ode to the Yellows of January."

Ode to the Yellows of January

light fades down

from a bluejay sky

onto a clutter of buttercups

of daffodils of mustard and sour grass

a jumble a jungle a riot a circus of yellows

buds froth from the acacia

like butter dripping from corn

golden eruptions

disturbing the sodden weight of winter

I am hungry for spring

-Devika Brandt

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