The sixth grade language students boarded the bus at Sussex and arrived at the Missoula Senior Center, pencils and paper in hand, ready to write with Dana Fitz Gale and event organizer Lida Running Crane. Students and seniors sat together at tables at the back of the room. Gale read a triggering poem about place, then it was time to write. The quiet was punctuated only by the flutter of paper, the scratching of pencils. Everyone had a unique and wonderful interpretations of the exercise: some people told stories students incorporated into their own poems; others poems of their own; students wrote poems about their own memories.
At the end of the time together, everyone took turns reading, enjoying the variety of memories from camping trips to first jobs. One of the participant’s first jobs was as a telegraph operator! It was a great morning for kids and adults alike. We will do this again at the Senior Center on February 17, at 10:15 with Sharon Jones’s class from Lewis and Clark Elementary School. Stay tuned!