The One About Poetry...(and Presidents?)

Hi, friend! I don’t know about you, but I feel like SO much has happened since we last hung out. Appalachian’s spring break was last week, so I headed to Nashville, Tennessee with four of best girls to rejuvenate before finishing the final weeks of graduate school. We had so much fun, but best of all, each of the adventures we went on left me with so much writing material to use in my writer’s notebook! Being in a new place, surrounded by so many of my favorite things and people, left me with countless ideas that I simply cannot wait to dive into. So here we go…

This week on the blog, I want to dive into a topic that many writing teachers steer away from: poetry. Honestly, I can already hear your groans, sighs, and complaints on my side of the computer screen because I am not the biggest fan of poetry myself but stick with me because I promise what’s coming is worth it. You see, while learning about poetry over the last few weeks I’ve come to discover something really important- using poetry in our classrooms gives our students permission to acknowledge the beauty that is within our language. And if we’re being honest, what writing teacher doesn’t want their student to fall in the love with the written language?

So, where do your feelings about poetry come from? How do you feel about reading poetry? How do you feel about writing poetry?

Dorfman and Cappelli began this week’s chapter reading by addressing that many teachers shy away from teaching poetry due to their own negative experiences, and for me, that is definitely the truth (2017, p.178). I still have flashbacks to my junior year AP English class when my teacher handed us a poem and asked us to analyze it only to tell us that we were wrong. I remember the appalled look on her face as we each offered incorrect insights before she abruptly concluded the lesson by simply telling us what the poem meant. It was at that moment that I realized poetry was not for me because I simply did not have the capacity to understand the use of poets’ literary devices to convey a hidden meaning that only my teacher was meant to understand. “That’s fine, “my friends and I countered in the hallway, “Who really needs poetry anyway?” That world, Jessica. That’s who needs poetry.

With age and experience, I have come to find poetry more approachable. I enjoy reading poetry now that I have a better understanding of how to approach it ad create meaning. I love children’s novels that are written in verse such as Kwame Alexander’s Booked. I also really like writing poetry thanks to some of the education classes that I took during my time at Appalachian. I have found a lot of success in using scaffolds to write first drafts of my poems before making more severe adjustments in later drafts that leave my poem standing as a more “independent” work. I have also come to appreciate found poetry as a method for representing my own, unique ideas with the challenge of using someone else’s words.

What do you aspire to (related to reading/writing poetry) in your own future classroom?

I have two overarching goals for teaching poetry in my own future classroom. The first of these goals is that students would leave my classroom with an appreciation for poetry. I plan to accomplish this by making reading poetry a regular part of our classroom routine. Whether that means that I share a poem during our morning meeting with the whole class or a student brings in a poem to share that they found particularly interesting- I want to immerse my students in a world of poetry. An easy way that I did this during my student teaching experience was using the book Rutherford B., Who Was He?: Poems About Our Presidents by Marilyn Singer. Each day, during the month of February, I would read my students one of the poems about a former American president. Following my reading, I would display the poem under the document camera, and we would analyze the poem for poetic devices that we could use in our own poetry anthologies. It was quick, easy, and so much fun because my students had the opportunity to learn more about our nation’s presidents and poetry simultaneously. I’ve provided the link to the book above if you think this might be the ideal addition to your own classroom bookshelf!

The second of my goals is that students would leave my classroom and view poetry as an effective method for conveying ideas (both their own or of others) to the world. It is my hope that I am able to surround my students with models of exemplary poetry through books beyond just the work of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. While the work of these poets entices students with their humor and rhythm, Dorfman and Cappelli call for educators to teach students to be on the lookout for expression, voice, diction, repetition, and so much more throughout a variety of works by an array of writers (2017, p. 179). By equipping students with a plethora of examples of good poetry, children will come to use these mentors as a scaffold for their own ideas. Eventually, after some practice, students will grow more confident in moving away from the mold and into a more independent practice of writing poetry for their own purpose and with their own style.

So, those are a few of my initial thoughts about poetry in the classroom and a few of my favorite titles that you might be interested in using as well. I hope that you found some of it useful as you set out to encourage the poets that are in your classroom either today or in the future!

Dorfman, L.R. & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children’s literature, K-6. (2nd ed). United States: Stenhouse Publishers.