Head of School's Message: February 29

John Finch
The seventh grade Poetry Night is a Chandler tradition. Under the guidance of English teacher Ashley Laird, students assemble a portfolio of poems and select one to read in front of their classmates and parents at an evening event, held this year on Feb. 9.
To prepare for the event, Ashley reads hundreds of poems and helps the students go through multiple revisions. Good poetry is not spontaneous.

Students read their poems covering almost as many themes as there are personalities in seventh grade. They included nature, sports, homelessness, and procrastination. Standing in front of an audience and giving voice to powerful emotions are nerve wracking challenges. The lessons learned are profound and fundamental. The students find their writing voices, express themselves with confidence and develop their public speaking skills. It was a memorable occasion.

Other than the annual Chandler event, attending poetry readings is not high on my list of preferred activities unrelated to school. I was leaving Pasadena’s Central Library on Feb. 20 after dropping off and picking up some books, when one of the volunteers asked me if I would like to listen to L.A.’s poet laureate, Luis J. Rodriguez, who was presenting in the library theater. The tone of her voice and the pleading look on her face made it impossible to say no, and so I went, not knowing that L.A. even had a poet laureate, and never having heard of Luis Rodriguez. An hour later I left as a fan.

Luis Rodriguez has lived a colorful life as a novelist, memoirist, and poet. “Art is the heart’s explosion of the world. There is no more powerful force for change in this uncertain and crisis-ridden world than young people and their art,” he said. His memoir,Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. is more well known than his poetry, and tells about growing up as a gang member in East Los Angeles during the late sixties and early seventies. He read poems to the audience about Los Angeles from his Music from the Mill collection, and spoke about the decline of poetry in America. He said that poetry needs to be published everywhere and noted that in Japan, several Japanese poets were published last year who sold over three million copies each, whereas in the U.S. one thousand sales of a poetry book make an Amazon best seller list. “Poetry is not as important to us as it is to the rest of the world,” he said.


Ashley Laird and our English teachers are inspiring poetic expression at Chandler through their teaching. It’s up to us to encourage our poets to continue writing and reading poetry by turning to the genre ourselves from time to time.

For the fourteenth year, Pasadena Public Library is sponsoring One City One Story. This year’s book selection is Orphan Train by Christine Baker Kline. Several Chandler faculty and staff members are reading it. I am scheduling an extra parent coffee at 8:15 a.m. on Thursday, Mar. 24 for anyone interested in discussing the book with us.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the Lower School Sports-A-Thon on Thursday, and at the invitational track meet on Friday. Chandler students will be poetry in motion at both events.
 
Most sincerely,
 
 
 
John Finch
Head of School
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