Poet-Trees Deliver Beauty and Meaning

Parker has long upheld the value of poetry as a vehicle for scholastic enrichment and personal expression, a fact highlighted by events such as the Jeanne Harris Hansell Endowed Fund for Poetry presentations and Parker’s other community poetry celebration and reads. Someone who understands this value and works to incorporate poetry into his curriculum and beyond is 8th grade English teacher David Fuder.

Every year, one of the topics Fuder is sure to include is “copy-change poetry,” in which his students pore through shelves of poetry books for inspiration to create their own poems. However, this year he wanted to tweak this annual experience and connect their interest in poems to the community outside of the class. Leveraging some inspiration from former Parker faculty member Mary Dilg, Fuder had his students find poems they felt were worthy to share, with a few even writing their own, and prepared them to hang in Circle Drive, creating the first “Poet-Tree” for the community to enjoy!

“The desire to connect students to the outdoors and to the community by way of poetry was probably motivated in part by the ways the pandemic has kept us indoors and kept our students relegated to fixed spaces throughout the day,” Fuder explained. “And our campus is surrounded by beautiful trees and bushes that we can’t forget are there.” While bad weather delayed the initiative, the students were excited to finally take their laminated, hole-punched poems and tie them to the Poet-Trees using brightly colored yarn.

Fuder and his students were very happy with the culmination of this experience. “I was so pleased to see a student choose a poem by my former student, Julian Randall,” he said. “That felt like a full circle moment. Hopefully, this can bring joy and wonder to a passerby or a parent waiting at pickup. And thanks to colleagues Patrick Stanton for the laminating and Gabrielle Rose for the colorful yarn!”

We are very proud of Fuder and his 8th grade students, and we encourage everyone to take some time out of your day to enjoy the beauty of Parker’s Poet-Trees.