Perspective is everything...

Today in class we made tableaux (frozen images) of lines of a poem to see if acting it out would help us better understand imagery and come to meaning. Once in the frozen image, students would be tapped once to say what their character would say in this moment, twice for what their character might be thinking. This pose by two of my inspirational and courageous students for the lines, "You beat time on my head / With a palm caked hard by dirt" from "My Papa's Waltz" really captivated me. It made me pause and think about the connection between how our own expressions and actions look vs. the underlying thoughts and emotions behind them.

In a funnier take on perspective, my kids shared stories where their perspective has changed since childhood:
-"My mom told me and my younger sister that she got us at Toys-R-Us. When I leanred the truth later on I told my sister we were going to exchange her. The next time Mom said we were going to the toy store she cried and protested."
-"I thought if you said 'baby' 100 times, you would get one. I was trying to understand why we got my sister and how I could send her back."
-"My friend and I counted up to 199 and didn't know what came next. I argued that it was hundred-hundred."
-"My grandma didn't come back for a while and my family said, 'She's getting you toys.'"