Classrooms

"I think that I felt very comfortable writing [my poem] because I knew that the person I was going to share it with did not know me. So I think this made the experience a lot more interesting because I did not know what to expect. Overall I felt nervous yet excited. I also got to really think about myself and my family and how I view them which was pretty different.

It was a very weird feeling in a good way [to illustrate someone else's poem] because I got to see another person's work and imagine for myself what they felt while writing it. Since I do not know the person, I had to create my own thoughts on his or her poem and create an illustration about it. I think I felt very joy-filled and it was a very creative process.

I was very intrigued [by their illustration of my poem] because the person who drew mine drew a lot of eyes and I was surprised at how they viewed my poem and how each eye was different than the last. I also felt excited to see what they had imagined of my poem and how they turned that into an illustration."

"When I wrote this poem/vignette, I realized that this was a new way of writing for me since it was like a poem but longer and didn’t have to rhyme. Usually I think that I am very bad at writing poems, but this was a good in between of poems and vignettes.

At first I wondered if [the other student] had the same prompt as I did, but I never knew. I really enjoyed reading a piece of writing from another teenager who was doing the same as me and it was interesting to learn about different styles of writing of young people.

I was very excited [when I received my poem back] because I really wanted to see how someone had interpreted my piece of writing. I was very surprised and I enjoyed knowing what some other teenager saw my piece of writing and I really liked what they did.

I’d really like to do this again!!!"