Notes From Public School - Day 146

Trevor’s Precept - April 13, 2022

Look closely and listen carefully to this page from R.J. Palacio’s beautiful picture book We’re All Wonders.

Yes we are.

Yes we will.

gently rolling hills of Appalachia

The curves 

of her body 

reminded him

of the gently rolling hills 

below the mountains 

where he lived as a boy. 

Her brown eyes 

were the earth to him.

She was beautiful 

like the land, 

like the flowers 

he found 

as he roamed the countryside

barefooted,

like the leaves 

of the trees 

that sparkled green 

after the rains 

of the rainy season.

- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown eyed girl, 2022

Please support Indie writers 🙂

 Left Foot Poems by Trevor Scott Barton

This is my first published chapbook of poems!

There are 40 poems in around 100 pages of the book.

In those poems, I look and listen for beauty in the plain, genius in the simple, wonder in the ordinary and courage in the human.

The book is small enough to fit into the back of your pocket, but the poems are big enough to fill the whole, wide world.

For $15.00, I’ll hand deliver or send a signed copy of the book to you.

I’ll also write a personalized poem for you.

You can give me a topic, and I’ll work hard to make it into word art.

Please send your request to my e-mail address - trevorscottbarton@gmail.com.

I’ll be happy to send your signed book and personalized poem through the USPS.

If you’d like to pay electronically, you can send the $15.00 through PayPal @juniperzine or through Venmo @teachandwrite

If you’d rather pay by check, you can send it to me through the mail -

Trevor Scott Barton

16 Don Drive

Greenville, SC 29607

You do not have to pay until you have the book in your hand.

Thank you for supporting this indie writer and local art.

In friendship and with a tender heart,

Trevor

(auribus cordis audis - listen with the ears of the heart)

Notes From Public School - Day 144

Mr. Barton’s Precept (Monday April 11, 2022)

K - KINSHIP (We are all a part of each other)

I - Radically INCLUSIVE (Who can we invite in instead of keep out?)

N - NICE (Ask not what others can do for us, but what we can do for others)

D - DEEP (Esse Quam Videri - to be is more important than to appear to be - the essence is more important than the video - far from the shallow, in the words of one of my heroes, Lady Gaga)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2021/01/02/survival-of-the-kindest-a-new-mantra-to-rebuild-the-global-economy/?sh=a92fa8914dbd

Notes From Public School - Day 142

One of my favorite writers is Kate DiCamillo. 

She once said, “Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.”

I love her novel The Tale of Despereaux.

She really saw and paid attention there, I think.

I try to teach my students to walk around in the shoes of the characters in the stories they’re reading. 

When I read this book, I discovered that my feet fit Despereaux’s shoes well.

I so identified with the little mouse on his big quest to rescue a beautiful human princess from the rats that at the end of some of the chapters I found myself with tears rolling down my cheeks.

“Yes,” I thought, “I would have thought...I would have done...I would have seen…exactly the way Despereaux did.”

As a writer I agree wholeheartedly with DiCamillo.

As a teacher I do, too.

Writing is seeing and paying attention.

Teaching is seeing and paying attention.

Here is one thing I saw and paid attention to today.

One of my students has a younger brother who is autistic.

He is in one of the four exceptional child classes at my school.

I check in on our exceptional children and their teachers first thing each morning.

I give a fist bump to every person and sit down to talk and eat with them.

This morning, I looked up and there was my student, her left arm around her little brother’s shoulder, helping him with his breakfast.

He is non-verbal, but his face spoke a thousand words as she leaned over and tenderly kissed his cheek before heading down to the 4th grade hall to begin her day with me.

His face spoke, “My sister loves me,” and his smile shone throughout the school cafeteria as if it were a shining light.

It was a light.

His smile.

Her act of kindness and love.

My student might make an A on a standardized reading test on a random day in her 4th grade year.

Or she might make an F.

But these academic measurements cannot measure the depth of her heart and the beauty of her life.

Her heart is deep and her life is beautiful.

See.

Pay attention.

Notes From Public School - Day 139

If I were a tree,

     I would like 

          to be

              A giving tree.

Leaves a peaceful green,

     Birds could sit and sing,

          Children laugh and swing

                Upon my branches.

Fruit a joyful red,

     The sun could rest its head,

         The hungry could be fed

               Upon my apples.

Bark an earthy brown,

      Roots deep in the ground,

          The weary could sit down

               Against my trunk.

Friend the gentle breeze

     Could rustle through my leaves,

          Refreshing all in need

               Under my shade.

I'd be strong and tall,

     Give myself to all

          Until my fruit was gone,

               A giving tree.

Though I would be bare,

     I would still be there

          Reminding you I care,

               The giving tree.

Then springtime would begin,

     And I would bloom again

          To be for you my friend

               Your giving tree.

Notes From Public School - Day 138

Oftentimes, I look to poets and poetry to help me look at the world more closely and listen to it more carefully.

Naomi Shihab Nye has been helping me see and hear.

As the daughter of a Palestinian father and an American mother, she is a writer who writes fiercely and tenderly about our common humanity and the way we can build bridges to bring us closer to one another instead of walls to keep us apart. 

I've needed her fierceness and tenderness.

Listen to the first part of her poem Red Brocade from her 2002 work 19 Varieties of Gazelle - 

Arabs used to say,

When a stranger appears at your door,

feed him for three days

before asking who he is,

where he’s come from,

where he’s headed.

That way, he’ll have strength

enough to answer.

Or, by then you’ll be

such good friends

you don’t care.

One of my favorite sayings is, “Be a poem.”

I want to be this poem.