Poem of the month - The School Where I Studied by Yehuda Amichai The School Where I Studied BY YEHUDA AMICHAI TRANSLATED BY CHANA BLOCH I passed by the school where I studied as a boy and said in my heart: here I learned certain things and didn't learn others. All my life I have loved in vain the things I didn't learn. I am filled with knowledge, I know all about the flowering of the tree of knowledge, the shape of its leaves, the function of its root system, its pests and parasites. I'm an expert on the botany of good and evil, I'm still studying it, I'll go on studying till the day I die. I stood near the school building and looked in. This is the room where we sat and learned. The windows of a classroom always open to the future, but in our innocence we thought it was only landscape we were seeing from the window. The schoolyard was narrow, paved with large stones. I remember the brief tumult of the two of us near the rickety steps, the tumult that was the beginning of a first great love. Now it outlives us, as if in a museum, like everything else in Jerusalem. Next week we will begin a new year of schooling in my home. My daughter is in 11th grade now and I'm doing my best to raise my game in order to challenge her ever-expanding mind. We’ve been exploring a poem every week since our first year of homeschooling. In fact, that’s how we began our homeschooling journey. I was lost in a sea of curriculum choices and well-meaning advice, and just didn’t know what to do! Since my daughter loved to draw but hated to read, a friend suggested I use poetry as a bridge between art and reading. We would read a simple poem together, discuss it, and then she would draw her interpretation of how it made her feel. Years later, here we are still doing our poem of the week. But things have changed! My daughter is older and wiser, the world is different and more baffling than ever. So, our poetry selection has grown to fit the needs of my daughter’s curiosity and the answers she is seeking from our world. I picked The School Where I Studied by Yehuda Amichai to start us off on our first poem of the week. Here are some of the questions I will pose to my daughter to kick-off our discussion: 1. What do you think Amichai meant by, “I have loved in vain the things I didn't learn?" 2. What aspects of life could you compare Amichai’s, “botany of good and evil?" 3. To me, “windows of a classroom always open to the future” is such an interesting phrase given much of what is taught in school is historical. What do you think? 4. Now that most students are doing school from home, do you think the way in which they learn will change? 5. Did this poem bring up any memories or reminiscence for you? 6. How did your perspective change of the author and the poem after you read the last line? For further discussion we will be learning more about the writer after our exploration of the poem from: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/yehuda-amichai. If you are looking for more learning ideas for your own homeschool and would like support in how to create lesson plans customized for your child, or would like to order a custom lesson plan on a particular topic contact me through my website: https://www.blossom-learning.com/.
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