Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Keen Observer



Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Keen Observer

Unless
you
bother to watch for hawks, unless you try
to
find a preying mantis hiding in the garden, you do
not know that there is something
beyond
what
is obvious and easy. You
have
to stop assuming that you have already
seen it all, mastered
it all. You
must become a keen observer or you will
never
grow.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018




5 comments:

  1. I love that you've turned this into a mandate for being present and awake and mindful...

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  2. I sense a growth mindset theme emerging in this poem and the one yesterday, I think it was. As always, I love the inspiration quote.

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  3. Ain't that the truth. And isn't it wonderful that this is precisely what you are modeling for your students each and every day. xo

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  4. I love the dual ways of looking/seeing that this poem celebrates, and how it dovetails into growing as a person as the quote suggests.

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  5. I love the way you have developed what I might call a hybrid Golden Shovel: long lines which bring the specific examples or narrative, interleaved with the one-word lines which carry the intent of the original quote. It feels different than the "elaborated" GS form and it's working, maybe particularly for young readers.

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