Poetry is like Bread
Introduction to Poetry
I was never a fan of poetry, reading it or writing it. I felt like I wasn't creative enough to make an impact in my poetry. Whenever I wrote it, I always had this focus on rhyming since that's the only thing that I took away from poetry in school. So that continued to affect my confidence in poetry because I wasn't creative enough to think of rhyming. I would always try to reflect my poetry from Where the Sidewalk Ends. Shel Silverstein's ability to find creativity within his language was something I wanted to copy. He was so clever in the ways he chose his words, placed his words, and his illustrations. His poetry told a story without being straight forward. It's something I enjoyed reading, but thought I could never write like that.
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So my initial feelings about poetry impacted my lack of confidence in teaching poetry. If I'm not able to do it, how can my students do it? I feel like that's such a selfish way of teaching, but kids are mind readers and would be able to see that I am struggling with it even though I would try my best to hide it. I was personally a part of teaching poetry at the end of the year right before EOGs when I was student teaching. It wasn't my idea, but I thought it was important to teach students about figuratively language. It's something they soaked up and really enjoyed creating and reading about. We didn't do anything further because we knew their love of it was reflect in their EOG performance. Now that I've reflected on my own teaching practices, I see how wrong that is!
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Poetry that sticks with me is the clever use of words. Poetry is not entertaining when the words are either very literal or specific. It's so entertaining having to deconstruct the choice of words and having to understand the author's point of view. The more I read poetry, the more I'm starting to see how I would want to be as a poet. I think if I was introduced to this kind of poetry at a younger age, my view would have shifted into a more positive feeling.
Initial Feelings About Poetry:
Teaching poetry is something that was terrifying to me. I didn't enjoy it in school. I never saw it in school. The only time I hever had a chance to "teach" it was to focus on figurative language. This is so common! I think poetry is scary because it strides away from typical standards and focuses primarily on the heart. The poet has full control of the words, the appearance, the subject, and the length. It's hard to teach it when you don't have any control of it. This isn't something we should be scared of, but there are so many expectations that are floating around our classroom that make us scared.
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Personally, my experience with writing poetry went like this: I was told to write a poem without any idea of what it looked like or sounded like besides a rhyming scheme. I would write a poem that made no sense in order to fit the rhyme scheme. I would get a bad grade. This situation is the opposite of how writing should actually go, in any way or form. I could tell that my teachers didn't like poetry by the way that they talked about it. I could tell that they didn't want to teach it by their lack of effort in the lesson plans.
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Then my experience with reading poetry went just as bad: I remember reading a poem in middle school one time about a man on a boat. I read it very literally and thought that this story was really about a man on the boat. When the teacher asked what the poem was about, I quickly raised my hand (because that was the student I was) and said "this poem is about a man on a boat!" WRONG. Apparently, this story was about Abraham Lincoln or some other president. I remember in that moment being so confused and quit poetry. If I didn't understand that this poem was about Abraham Lincoln, how the heck am I supposed to know anything else about poetry? We continued to deconstruct the poem through SOAPSTone (Speaker, Occassion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, and Tone) on the side of the poem only looking for those details. Never any creativity. I feel like so many people go through a similar situation with poetry. No interest from the teachers, besides standardized testing, and that reflects the no effort from the students.
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When you find someone/something that is inspired by poetry, it inspires you. I feel like Georgia Heard is my inspiration. Her love for poetry is reflected in the lessons that she explains and the meaning behind her choices. She is getting the readers just as excited as the kids would be in order to teach poetry. When I read this book, the fear of poetry vanishes.
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I think the main reason why people don't attempt poetry in classrooms is because they don't know how to start it. Georgia started poetry with her own love of poetry. Seeing herself as a poet didn't make it as scary to start making students into poets. She sees in poetry in everything that she does, therefore she finds so many inspiring ways to not be scared of poetry.
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Georgia Heard's book Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School is a great read for teachers who are scared to teach poetry. I'm only on chapter 3 and I turn from a scared future teacher into a impatiently waiting future teacher. I want to include all the things that she tells you in this text. My goal for this blog is to provide some of the insights that she told me in this text.
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Poetry doesn't have to be scary. Just like with anything you do, if you see yourself as a poet, you can turn your students into anything that they want to be.
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So where do I even start with Georgia Heard's ideas? She is so knowledgable about this subject and it's intimidating to talk about because you want to be just like her. One thing that I think is so important when discussing any sort of lesson plans, is thinking "what would I want to hear from a teacher if I was the student?" Putting yourself in your students shoes is the best way to determine if the lesson is not only beneficial, but something that they would want to hear. Heard's ideas of messages that should be said to students is exactly what I would hope to hear as a student:
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Listen deeply to images, thoughts, and feelings from both you AND your students.
Help students realize that poetry doesn't always have to be a time to talk about your favorite things and happy moments. A big invitation to poetry is the emotion you can use to form your own writing. Through the use of the Self Portrait Living Anthology Project other people's work can reflect many different parts of yourself. I love what Heard meant when she said, "By shifting the focus of the anthology project to poems that were mirrors of who the kids were inside, rather than what they liked, it gave deeper meaning to the poems and added a personal dimension to their search."
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The classroom is a safe place where every voice is respected and heard.
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I love the way that Heard phrased sharing writing. She is sending invitations to students to try something new. They are gifts that you can give to one another when needed or even when it's not needed! She created a safe place just by the way she presented tasks.
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Poetry is only going to go well if students see it everyday! Place poetry anywhere and everywhere you can.
I have a love/hate relationship with instructional books for teachers. They provide me with so many great ideas and lessons which is wonderful, but sometimes they say something and it makes me mad that I didn't think of that on my own. Heard's ideas are so easy, yet I would've never thought of it on my own without Heard's guidance. In order for students to see it everyday, you have to show it everyday. It's so obvious. Why didn't I think of that first? I love how she includes poetry in all parts around the classroom and school. Continuing with the Living Anthology Project, posting poems in common spots around the school will have all students reading it, whether they realize it or not. Having poems about feeling stuck in life on a fish tank. Having poems about needing something more on the water fountain. Having poems about anything could be placed anywhere around the classroom. It's that simple. Inspire them all day everyday!
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Include your students in the larger world of poetry and poets. Teach them all about poetry outside of the classroom as a mentor text.
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Poetry Study Centers is another way to help students see more poetry in their lives, but now they can interact with them in many different ways. We want them to see poetry beyond deconstructing it for EOGs. Here are some of the poetry centers Heard included in Chapter 1 of Awakening the Heart:​
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Appreciation and Love of Words Center
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Listening Center
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Discovery Center
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Poetry Window and Observation Center
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Illustration Center
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Performance Center
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Music Center
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Revision Center
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Poetry Editorial Center
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Poetry Reading Center
I could go on and on about each of these stations, but there is no station that I am against. All of these are beneficial and NEEDED to grow love of poetry.
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Truly believe that every one of your students has the potential to be a poet - especially the struggling ones.
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Everyone is a writer when it comes to poetry. There can be six word memoirs or long narrative poems. Either way, students are expressing their emotions and life stories. That's the only part that matters with poetry. We shouldn't be worried about the quantity of words or poems that are being made by the students. Of course we want our students writing as much as possible, but those who struggle may need more time. It's the QUALITY we are searching for. We need to see that students are taking advantage of this language outlet to express emotions. Our job is to give them as much mentor texts or inspiration in order to help them grow through copying authors and using strategies.
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CELEBRATE writing. Celebrate each student's unique way of looking at the world.
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Publish the work that students create. Share the work that students create. Students are expressing some deep emotions or important stories in their life, so make it important! Students will begin to notice if writing just becomes a grade in the grade book. We need to show them that their voice matters. We are teaching them that their Writer's Notebook is a form of communicating, therefore we need to provide a time daily where students can share their writing. Try to publish as many of the poems too. Have your students inspire others to look in the world of poetry.
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DON'T WAIT UNTIL MAY TO TEACH POETRY !!!
DUH. MAKE IT IMPORTANT.
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You could listen to me talk all day about Georgia Heard's work, but you could also listen to what she has to say. She knows her stuff and this TedTalk shows it. If you like what I've said so far about her work, just wait until you hear her!
Georgia Heard referenced a lesson to help students find themselves in poetry. The Self Portrait Living Anthology Project is an exploration through poetry to find oneself in someone else's work. Having a diverse selection of poetry is important when completing this assignment. Students will explore through many different types of poems to find something that matches them. This doesn't necessarily mean something that they like. It is meant to be deep and emotional just like poetry should be. Something so simple could be turned into something so meaningful.
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When thinking of how poetry was introduced in my class, there was always a printed out poem. The only book that I knew that consisted of a collection of poetry was Shel Silverstein. Even then, all the poems reflected his creative and fun approach to playing with words. Being introduced to mentor texts that have a diverse selection of small poems could help students find themselves in a big world of poetry. We want an opportunity for students to discover many different and approaches to writing. Firefly July and All The Small Poems and Fourteen More are great examples of poems that could reach many different types of readers and writers.
Firefly July written by Paul B. Janeczko and illustrated by Melissa Sweet is a collection of poems that relates to the seasons. Every poem is written by a wide arrange of authors, such as Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and many more. It's so easy to find a relationship within this book from the diverse backgrounds and simple subjects. The poem Sandpipers by April Halprin Wayland reminds me of my grandma on our summer beach trips. I even sent her the poem because it reminded me so much of her. I feel like if these poems don't reflect emotionally to you, it can spark a conversation of something personal to you instead. All the poems in this book are from different types of the year so there's a chance that some time in someone's life, they felt the same experience as one of the author's in this text.
As I begin to dig into Valerie Worth and Natalie Babbit's work, I am again seeing a way that students can be introduced to a wide array of styles and topics of poems. Something I love about this book is the table of contents in the beginning of the book. It gives a list of all different types of subjects that could spark a reader's interest. Personally when exploring through the text before diving into reading, I found myself curious about the title "aquarium." As an aquarium lover, I assumed that it would discuss the large tank full of a whole community of sea animals. I was surprised to hear how the author's approach to aquarium was different than mine. This made me want to go and write about what an aquarium means to me. Something as simple as a title can get you thinking about something you want to write. Allowing an opportunity for students to explore through large collections of poems gives them so many opportunities to find a story or poem.
