PORT TOWNSEND — Each student at Grant Street Elementary School brought home a copy of Open a Blue Ocean Door, the eighth annual version of a student poetry and artwork anthology, this week.
Beginning Thursday, each classroom received a stack of books that were distributed to each student, each of whom had written a poem contained in the anthology.
The volume was produced under the auspices of Peter Braden, a first- and second-grade teacher at the Port Townsend school who has managed the project since its inception.
Braden collected poems and artwork and sorted them into related chapters. He put them on a page and sent it to the printer.
Animal poems
“This year, we didn’t get so many ‘I love you, Mommy and Daddy’ poems, but we got a lot of animal poems,” Braden said.
“There is a lot on local animals, which means they are paying attention to place-based learning.”
Consider third-grader Jordan B.’s “Wolf chasing the beasts as swiftly as a bullet striking his dinner” or “Lizard runs away on her tiny feet. Wild cat is still hungry” from first-grader Shyann P.
While students gleefully point to their own work within school boundaries, last names are not used to protect their privacy, Braden said.
The end of the book features a “first name index” so the kids can find their own poem and those of their friends.
This year, third-graders are reading from the book that came out when they were in kindergarten, saying, “ ’Look what I did,’ ” said Braden, 51, who has taught at Grant Street for 26 years.
Braden said each of the school’s 341 students, from kindergarten to OPEPO (Optional Education Program), contributed a poem and received a copy of the book.
About 30 extra copies were printed to be distributed to staff, administration and relatives.
The book cost about $3,000 to produce. That is financed by donors and advertising.
“Every year, the poems get better,” Braden.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
