Mrs. Maughan’s Classes Make Pithy Tees

SJHS students may have noticed all of the paper t-shirts outside of Mrs. Maughan’s classroom. Her class recently completed their “pithy t-shirts,” a project where students picked a poem of their choice, and chose a “pithy” sentence out of that poem. According to Mrs. Maughan, an English teacher at SJHS, a “pith” is usually a line of great meaning or significance. She said, “Students then create a t-shirt from their statement with a corresponding design or picture.  T-shirts in real life often have silly statements or pictures... these have more meaning!”

Mrs. Maughan’s class has been studying poetry for a little while now, and finished up with the pithy t-shirts. “Toward the end of the unit we studied ‘pith’ which is the essential part of the poem,” said Mrs. Maughan. According to Mrs. Maughan, the t-shirts were not directly part of the curriculum, but the ability to understand poetry is. Trent Bagley, a ninth grader at SJHS, said, “It helps us understand better the concept and the goal.”

“This is one application I use to help students better understand poetry and get more involved in it,” said Mrs. Maughan. Ben Stewart, a ninth grader at SJHS said, “I enjoyed it, it was a good departure from daily activities and was very interesting.” You can find the t-shirts outside of Mrs. Maughan’s room in the seventh-grade hall on the north side of the building.