Last week Julia won second place in the K-2 group at PACT's (one of the four "schools" on campus) Poetry Jam. The top three contestants in each category (K-2, 3-5, 6-8) moved on to the campus-wide competition which was last Tuesday night. Now since only PACT has elementry age students it really only meant that the first, second, and third place winners were competing against each other again, but this time at night, on a stage with house lights, and again with a microphone.
Julia decided that she wanted to try to win first place after the first competition and I told her that I thought she should use her other poem since it was a bit more complex and longer (and she already had it memorized as well). So she worked on Keep a Poem in Your Pocket all week, including memorizing the author's long French name. All was going well. I turned in a copy of the new poem at school earlier in the day only to find out that SHE COULD NOT SWITCH POEMS!!! So with only three or four hours before the big event I had to break it to her that she had to go back to the first poem. She, of course, was not happy about this. We practiced during the short time she had left, including her new intro. She was frustrated because she was saying things like either the wrong title or the wrong author's name.
But when the big moment came, she marched up to the microphone and "forgot" her entire intro including saying who she was and jumped straight into the turtle poem. She did a fine job. Her voice was steady, clear, and not too fast. She really did a great job, but she forgot the intro and so she was docked a bunch of points. In the end she took third place. But she was awarded with a giant white ribbon and her mouth dropped and she squealed, "I won a RIBBON?!" The audience got a good chuckle out of seeing her excitement and true joy. It was a great moment. Of course I had planned to share it all with you, but the darn batteries died just before Julia took the stage..........
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