Crossroads students learn coping skills through poetry

By GWENDOLYN GRAY

Special to Leader-Press

 

“What a poet writes is often his life, when someone listens they experience it for the moment, but it was the author that lived it and shared it.”

 

Ron Sursa, Special Coordinator at Crossroads High School, gave this advice to the audience of Crossroads High’s first poetry reading. Sursa’s words emphasized how poetry, a Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills requirement, carried over to the lives of everyone beyond the classroom. Crossroads High School hosted its first poetry reading with three presenters including Valencia Blount, a Copperas Cove resident, who presented poetry that she felt related to teens.

 

Sursa recited original works including “The Locket” and “The Day Time Stood Still.” Sursa asked the students to close their eyes as he read “The Day Time Stood Still” to help them create an image of what it was like be in New York on 9-11.