Allison’s Update: Poets In Our Midst

I’ve been painstakingly going through everyone’s work to choose pieces for the anthology– always such an interesting process. I see things I’d forgotten about, realize how much better many of them have gotten, find some things that were never read in class (like finding small treasures), and in one sitting… have the ability to see what is important to the collective consciousness of a bunch of elementary school kids. Over and over, it’s concern for their safety with the violence and guns and gangs in their neighborhood. It’s a concern over drugs, and a constant written reminder to themselves of what they do not want to do and who they do not want to be. It’s stunning to think of the social issues these kids deal with everyday, and yet they still manage to overcome all of it and learn and laugh and move forward. They are much wiser and much more mature than many adults I know. Reading their thoughts just made me think again how very sad I am at the thought of them all leaving this year, and like them, how sad I am to see their school closed. One student wrote that every single member of her family, starting back with her great grandmother, attended G. School.

That being said, there was some darn good writing.

In the past four weeks, all of my groups (except the 2nd graders and special ed) have continued to work with poetry, and specifically with social commentary.

We have read a variety of social commentary poems. One week I brought in poems written by STL high schoolers, who were writing about the same themes of drugs and violence and street life. I also brought in a “community” poem written by the high schoolers. It was a merged poem, with parts from each student. All of my classes really liked it. We took that idea of using many voices to form one and we tried our own community poems. In each class, everyone started with their own piece of paper and wrote for about two minutes, then we passed the poems clockwise until everyone had written something on each paper. We knew at the beginning that some would work and some would bomb, and that some people would take the ideas in directions we had not imagined. For the most part, they were actually quite good, and the kids really liked how they worked.

In smaller classes (less than 8 people), we split into groups, I wrote topics on the tops of papers, and then we passed them around several times. The best poems were all about their neighborhoods, crime and violence, and their school– all local and on their mind. A poem I suggested about the environment seemed to be lost on them, or certainly not as immediate.

We have also spent a lot of our time reading more social commentary poems. Each time, I bring in two poems that are very different– usually one which is older and by an established well-known poet, and one which is more contemporary and unknown. Both have gone over well. We have read many by Langston Hughes, as well as several poems by other teenagers and homeless men. We have discussed the themes and tones of the poems and learned these terms.

Last week, wanting them to better understand tone, I started by handing each of them a piece of construction paper that had an emotion listed on it. They were asked not to show anyone, but to figure out how to act out or convey that emotion without words. The emotions were mostly straight-forward, but they did a good job, and most guessed immediately as we talked about how they knew.

We then moved on. I had written random lines from poems they were not familiar with onto notecards. Each chose a notecard and then had to figure out how to read it with an emotion– any emotion they wanted. They could go for funny/silly, sad, happy, confused, commanding, frustrated, etc. Almost everyone got this and really did a great job. I saw for the first time, my students really connected with words they were reading. Even when they read their own stuff, no matter how much we practice or say the same thing, there is little feeling. We practiced doing the same line in several ways.

Then, each student got a poem and had to figure out the tone they saw in it, and then they had to read it, expressing that tone. They did a fantastic job. We talked about cues we give as we speak– head up, voice high or low, speed, pauses, eye contact. I told them to read their own work with that kind of emotion so that their audience didn’t just hear the words, but they understood them. Many of them were able to carry those new reading skills into their work this week, which impressed me greatly.

Today we worked on more poems, first brainstorming true things about ourselves, questions about the world, and our beliefs… then writing. My sixth grade group from Ms. P’s class is a group of fantastic poets. Funny too, because many of them have learning and literacy issues, but man, can they write poetry. All are great at rhyming. R., the only girl, is an excellent poet who seems to really understand the value of poetry as expression and release. J.F., a great thinker who knows many Hughes poems by heart, always has great brainstorming lists and makes answering my questions look easy. N. and T., whom I had never worked with before, have proven themselves to be exceedingly expressive and very given to performance… in a good way. Both would be great at poetry slams. I think people will love to hear them at the end of the year.

My 2nd grade and special ed group has also been doing quite well. We took our parts of speech learning and translated it into poetry. I wanted them to also realize the fun of words by being able to write poems, even though I wasn’t quite sure they were ready for poetry. Taking, and ammending an idea I got from another program I am involved with, I created fill-in-the-blank poetry, like Mad Libs, which they were familiar with. I wrote two original poems, and then Mad Lib style, they filled in the blanks with certain parts of speech. Some got this very quickly, like D. and RF, but all got there eventually and seemed to enjoy it. We brainstormed first about spring things and butterflies, and then we worked on the poems for two weeks, with the ones who finished early illustrating their poem. Now, they are all working on writing and illustrating books. It’s interesting to see who starts with words (the girls), who starts with pictures (the 2nd grade boys), and who is illustrating their poems (the other boys)… though it’s both funny and a bit disconcerting to see them illustrating butterfly poems with cars.

All the same, I feel like there has been a lot of progress. This year has been much more about concepts, especially about building upon the basics. That has meant less writing, or not necessarily less writing, but definitely less polished, finished product. Last year and previous years, almost every session yielded a product, and then every few weeks we went back and chose one and edited it. This year, we have written less and worked more on thinking and the process, editing quickly as we go, and not re-typing or re-writing our final products as much (though we still do). It’s interesting, because I almost feel like it’s yielded much better work.

Two more weeks, and I can’t wait to see what else they think.