Caveat: Trash is…

I had a student who expressed an interest in English-language poetry, after it came up in some TOEFL-style listening passage we were working on. This is so rare as to be almost sui generis.

I said, "You really read English poetry?"

"Sometimes," she said. This was just barely plausible – she attended an international school when her family lived in China, for a while. "So I had to read it."

"OK. Did you like it?"

"Sometimes. I had to make a poem."

I showed a lot of enthusiasm for this. She asked, "Do you want me to write a poem?"

"Sure," I said. "That would be great."

"I will write it on the whiteboard," she announced. This is what she wrote.

picture

The moral of this story: when a seventh-grader offers to write a poem for you, use caution.

[daily log: walking, 7km]

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