Community Voices: SkyWriting with Sevastopol’s Fifth-Graders

Sevastopol fifth-graders at work on their poetry. Submitted.

compiled by Jerod Santek, Artistic Director, Write On, Door County

Write On, Door County and Northern Sky Theater have embarked on SkyWriting: a collaborative program in the Door County schools through which teaching artists from both organizations will conduct writing workshops geared toward creating work that can be performed. 

Using nature as the theme for this year’s collaboration, students will brainstorm ideas, then write together and independently in the form of poems, stories, graphic novels – whichever genre they wish to explore. A review committee will then select work, which will be set to music and performed at Northern Sky during the 2020 summer season.

The first of these workshops was held in late January with a group of 15 fifth-graders at Sevastopol School. One of the group poems used the opening line, “If I Lived Someplace Else …” as its inspiration. We’re happy to share the resulting poem with you.

IF I LIVED SOMEPLACE ELSE …

I would like to live in a beach house because I would like to swim.

I would be somewhere that stays warm but they get snow sometimes because I like the warmness and coldness. 

I would live in Australia because it is so beautiful and I love the wildlife.

I would live here because I like water.

It would be Disney World because I would be able to see all the Disney characters every day of my life.

If I lived somewhere else, I would want to live in Paris or North Carolina because of the beautiful weather. 

It would be Arizona because I would like to spend more time with my Grandma Jean.

I would live in a treehouse mansion with fireplaces in every room.

It would be by water because I like swimming.

I would live at my grandma’s and grandpa’s house. They spoil me and make me feel welcome. I love them.

I would live in Hawaii because the outdoors would be fun to explore.

I would live in Colorado in the mountains.

If I lived somewhere else, I would live in Australia because I love the beach and I love surfing.

I would live in Mexico because 50 percent of my family lives there, and my grandma has a mango tree there.

I wouldn’t. I don’t want to live somewhere else. I would move back.