Gray Matters, April 2026
April is Poetry Month
Creative expression as a means of exploring our individual and connective identities is an essential element of the Capitol Hill Day School culture. Poetry is a form of that expression, and has particular significance in the life of our school. For as long as I have been part of this community, poems have held an important presence.
For me, this year has been framed with the guiding question, “What makes us most human?” In August, in my opening communication, I expressed the following:
“At its core, progressive education centers the humanity of learners. As educators committed to this philosophy, we are called to create an environment that unapologetically makes time for children to be playful, experience joy and struggle, and provides space for learners to take risks, make connections, and foster relationships. With intentionality, progressive educators are committed to helping children learn to know themselves, live collaboratively and cooperatively with others, develop the competencies to navigate complexity and think critically, and be excited to learn new things.”
Poetry is a wonderful vehicle through which these ideas and concepts emerge. In the words of the writer Gustave Flaubert, “There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.”
Across the grades, our engagement with poetry takes on a myriad of forms. In Early Childhood, children delight in listening to the patterns, rhythms, and rhymes in poems. They celebrate the joy that playing with language, words, and sounds, evokes. First graders discover syllables and hone phonics skills by reading poems aloud together. They build fluency by reading and rereading favorite poems. They write their own acrostic poems.
Elementary learners discover the patterns and structures in poetry forms: Haiku, Couplets, Diamonte, Rhyming Riddles, Limericks, and Odes. They create poems in each form as a means to explore personal, family, and community identities. They read and write poems related to connections between the natural world and the self. Hailstones and Halibut Bones by Mary O’Neill is a favorite source of inspiration!
Upper Grade students read the novel in verse, Turn the Tide, by Elaine Dimopoulos, as part of their study of environmental activism. They initiate a year-long conversation on the theme of belonging by reading the poem Gate A-4 by Naomi Shihab-Nye. They read poetry rooted in historical contexts, exploring a variety of poets and styles including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Ericka Huggins, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Joy Harjo.
At Capitol Hill Day School we agree with the imperative expressed by the writer Audre Lorde.
“Poetry is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into tangible action.”
Happy Poetry Month! Here’s hoping you use April as an excuse to discover more poems.
Happy Poetry Month!
Capitol Hill Day School students recite The Summer Day by Mary Oliver.
