Two Catonsville women use poetry to instill selfesteem and inspire elementary school students

By Danielle Rexrode
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Every Wednesday for eight weeks Francis Duffy’s fifth grade class at Beechfield Elementary School greeted Tillie Friedenberg and Phyllis Yingling with an enthusiastic shalom.

A traditional Jewish greeting, shalom means peace in Hebrew. And spreading peace through poetry was the mission of these two driven Charlestown volunteers.

Tillie, a published poet of more than 16 years, and Phyllis, a former teacher and children’s author, met with the fifth graders for one hour each week to teach them about poetry and guide them as they wrote their own poems about peace.

Creating confidence
“It has been a really exciting experience!” says Tillie. “Poetry is such a wonderful tool for building self esteem. You learn a lot about yourself and the world you live in from poetry. I told the kids before we started that once they read their poems out loud in front of a group and once they saw their names and their poems in print they would feel just great inside.”

With Tillie’s guidance and Phyllis’s support, 19 new poets crafted poems about peace.

“Three years ago I started reading poetry to fourth graders at Lansdowne and Beechfield Elementary Schools,” says Tillie. “I began teaching the children at Lansdowne how to write their own poetry, but I didn’t have time to get back to Beechfield. So this summer I coordinated with the principal at Beechfield to teach the fifth grade.”

Phyllis taught the hearing impaired in Baltimore City Schools for 13 years.