Katherine Leney

Katherine Leney has been teaching for 32 years. She currently teaches Grade 3 at Greenfield Park Primary International School on the south shore of Montreal. For the past six years, Leney has been inviting poets into her classroom to share their passion with her youngsters. She believes that writers who are passionate about words and language can really ignite the fire in young children.

Leney’s “mystery guest” usually makes an appearance at the beginning of her poetry unit, and acts as an introduction, a déclencheur, which arouses student interest and curiousity: “I tell them they are going to meet a real live special kind of author called a poet.  They often already have questions and I write these down on chart paper.  During the course of the visit, their questions are usually answered.” She says students are attentive and engaged in their learning and writing during this visit.

What they like most, she says, is that there is a nice balance between talking, listening, writing and sharing. One activity that really “taps into their creativity and their funny bones” is “The Crazy Shoe Poem” which tends to be fun for all the students, and is especially non-threatening for the “reluctant” writers. Leney follows up “The Crazy Shoe Poem” with the publishing of a class book called “Our Crazy Shoe Poems” which each child gets to bring home for an evening to share with the family. Another popular one is the “Delicious Word” activity, which often evolves into a word wall, where favourite words are collected and displayed. 

“I find there is always a special energy in the class during the visit and after the visit too.  The students are excited about what they are doing and their writing comes more naturally.” She says that one poet, who visited last November, sent her class an e-mail about a week or two following his visit and the children were really excited that he was still thinking of them.

Leney believes that children can be turned on to poetry in a variety of ways— by reading aloud to them, by sharing the books in her personal poetry collection with them, and even by acting them out.  Sometimes, she says, they try to draw the images that some poems create. “We read and sing lyrics and the students are always amazed that songs are really poetry put to music.  I encourage students to keep a log of the poems they read. We create poems. We research the lives and works of various children’s poets.”

This term she hopes to link poetry with Sharon Creech’s popular book Love That Dog. “Hopefully, they will see how poetry and journaling can open up lines of communication between people, and actually help people through life’s sometimes difficult experiences.”

While Leney works hard to cultivate the students’ love of poetry, she recognizes that there is something special about a professional who is not distracted with all the other aspects of classroom life a homeroom teacher has to take care of.  For her part, Leney finds the classroom visits motivating and energizing: “I find it is a ‘delicious’ hour for me, where I can put the students in the hands of a pro, and just enjoy the ride!”