Why is poetry important in the classroom?

Teaching

As a future educator and a current student, I find poetry an amazing outlet for students to express themselves. I, personally, use poetry to release these great big emotions I feel. In my high school, we had a lot of mental health concerns in our student body with little to no action. I was a high schooler losing two to three friends each school year. High school was hard enough but this on top of everything else made it 10x harder. Around this time is when I started writing poetry. My English teacher had a whole unit on poetry where we had to write poetry, research poets, and end with slam poetry where I read a poem by Maya Angelou. I still remember the whole poem. This unit really pushed me to think differently about the power of poetry. This is when I bought myself a new journal and started writing my own.

Writing poetry helped me a lot with processing my emotions and help me through my high school years. Even in class when we had free writing time, I would write poetry. I still do this, not as much, I’ll randomly think of a thought and start writing off that thought. It is a great way for a student to relieve stress and express themselves without talking about it. This is why I found it reliving, I didn’t have to vocalize why I was upset or why I was happy… I could just write.

As educators, it is important for us to use this tool as well. Providing a way for us to express and reflect is vital, considering we ask our students to do the same. By allowing our students to write poetry in the classroom, we are creating a space where students can communicate their emotions or thoughts. This is vital because some of our students may not be allowed this opportunity often. You may be the first person to encourage your students to do this openly. By allowing your students to do this, you are creating a welcoming environment in your classroom. In my classroom, having a welcoming environment for students is very important for me. This means being welcoming to new ideas, understanding, and backgrounds. In my classroom, breaking the stigma around mental health will be a must and I believe poetry is a great way to start.

Mental health is a growing problem in our schools, our student’s academics and extracurricular activities are evidence of this. As educators, we spend more time with these students than most parents or guardians. This grants us the opportunity to talk about mental health in a productively and openly way. Instead of running from this concern of mental health, let’s embrace this time to create a warm and meaningful connection with our students. Poetry opens the doors to this. Even having five minutes set aside in class for your students to write could mean the world to them.

This piece is written and submitted by Caroline Graham.

Caroline Graham (she/her/hers) is currently a College of Charleston student majoring in Secondary Education and English. She is a South Carolina Teaching Fellow at the College serving as the President. You can see more of Caroline on her website: https://cgaggraham.wixsite.com/website

Cover image by kyo azuma on Unsplash

Like painters, writers can stir the mind

Teaching

This piece is written and submitted by Dr. Angela M. Cozart.

I have to admit, I hated poetry when I was in school. I hated having to figure out what an author was saying. Why couldn’t they just come out and say what they wanted us to see and hear? I remember reading ‘The Windhover’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins and being completely confounded. Understanding poetry was like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without having seen what the completed picture was supposed to look like.

In college I studied William Wordsworth and Langston Hughes. For the first time, I read poetry that was easy to understand and yet beautiful. Its simplicity did not detract from the beauty of form and content. Because I didn’t feel defeated from the start, I began to read other kinds of poetry, the kind that had turned me off to poetry while in high school. I wish I had come to a greater appreciation of poetry while in K-12. I had missed out on so much. But what had I missed out on? Why should children read and learn about poetry?

Poetry helps us to see the world through someone else’s eyes. We can do the same with essays, short stories and novels, but poetry is life and experiences in concentrated form; it doesn’t take long to read a poem, yet an author can concentrate emotions and feelings that would take pages to convey in a novel or poem. Teenagers with angst can find relief when they read a poem to find out others have shared their own experiences. Thus, poetry can be personal and powerful, but its impact can also be felt on a national or global level.

Just how powerful and impactful is poetry in the world of politics? It is so impactful that Stalin caused Anna Akhmatova to memorize and then destroy all her personal written poems, all so Stalin could not silence her poetic voice. Like painters, writers can stir the mind, but sometimes more importantly, they can stir the heart and passions, especially when rousing people to a cause. Students can come to appreciate the power of words, how a poem can rally people to a cause; there are poems of resistance, protest, and empowerment. Certainly students should be exposed to such words and ideas.

Poetry writing empowers students and builds their confidence. Writing an essay can be daunting for some students, but when they are introduced to and encouraged to write simple poems such as acrostics, they usually eagerly embrace the challenge.

Poetry helps students to appreciate the beauty of subtlety, how so much can be said indirectly. They can come to appreciate the power and beauty of words. It can build vocabulary and encourage abstract thinking. Poetry encourages students to analyze what they are reading. It exposes them to other cultures and beliefs.

Why study poetry? Poetry empowers, arouses. Poetry helps students to put ideas and feeling on paper.

Poetry can stimulate the mind, and it can help students to get in touch with their own feelings. One year, I had a student say the following to me in a letter. “I always thought poetry was for sissies. All my life I’ve suppressed my feelings, but this class has made me change my mind. I’ve come to understand that as a male I can embrace and express my feelings.” Those words were music to my ears.

Dr. Angela M. Cozart is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Teacher Education at the College of Charleston.

Photo by nikita velikanin on Unsplash

Use digital spaces and poetry to share a walk in your world

Research

The #WalkMyWorld project started as a community focus on poetry and multimodal exploration; it then developed into a community of inquiry. Participants explored the experiences of others by responding to and authoring multimodal poetry. In #WalkMyWorld, educators and students created a social space of engagement to explore civic uses of social media. This exploration served as an opportunity to consider the media literacies at play as the group participated as a community of writers.

Guided by carefully-crafted learning events, participants took photos, authored short pieces, and filmed small glimpses of their lives. At weekly intervals, they documented their “walks” using photo and video capture tools that easily allow users to share content with others. By collecting snippets of their worlds that seemed trivial one at a time, participants experienced the magic that, when strung together, these digital “gatherings” presented narratives of very human things: pain, beauty, joy, friendship, and wonder.

During the project, instructors were able to target specific educational objectives revolving around (but not limited to) explorations with poetry. With the understanding that creating and sharing digital content in online spaces might be a novel and even scary experience, instructors also charged participants to grapple with what to share and how. This raises questions between educators and learners as they contemplate how and how much to share. Accordingly, thoughtful experimentation online, connection with digital texts and tools, and play ultimately serve as valid, if not crucial, educational outcomes.

This project encouraged educators and students in elementary school through higher education to engage in social scholarship practices. Social scholarship utilizes the Internet and other communication technologies to evolve the ways in which scholarship is conducted. Like many other social scholarship projects #WalkMyWorld connected formal scholarship with informal Internet-based social practices while embodying specific values (e.g., openness, collaboration, transparency, access, sharing). #WalkMyWorld evolved into a space that allowed participants to explore the characteristics of online information and educational opportunities by allowing them to share and develop (a) writing lifeworlds, (b) communities of inquiry, (c) media literacies and (d) expanded perspectives of narrative writing. These skills have proven to be integral to the way teachers view themselves as professionals in online and hybrid educational spaces.

The trailer shared above was created for a session on the project released at the K12 Online website. The full video for the session is available below.

Work with the 2014 version of the #WalkMyWorld Project was printed in the MIT Civic Media Reader.

Results from the 2015 iteration of the #WalkMyWorld Project were also presented at the annual conference of the Literacy Research Association. Work from this session by Wise and O’Byrne was later published in the Literacy Research: Theory, Methods, and Practice journal.

The #WalkMyWorld Project was also highlighted in a publication by Rish and Pytash in NCTE’s Voices from the Middle and the accompanying podcast.

Lastly, in 2017 this project served as a motivating factor in this chapter on mentored open online communities (MooCs) as a third space for teaching and learning in higher education.

Webinar: Developing a community of inquiry focused on poetry and multimodal exploration

Uncategorized

Literacy in the Disciplines, 6-12 (LiD) is pleased to announce our third after-school Webinar Series session. The slide deck and video of the session is available below.

Talk, Text, Content & Context: Using Poetry & Multimodal Exploration to Develop a Community of Inquiry

This webinar will share guidance from a research-tested way to embed literacy and technology instruction in and across disciplines by focusing in poetry response and writing using digital, multimodal texts. The #WalkMyWorld project started with a community focus on poetry and multimodal exploration; it then developed into a community of inquiry. The focus of this session is to identify opportunities to have students explore various lifeworlds by responding to and authoring multimodal poetry. In #WalkMyWorld, educators and students create a social space of engagement to explore civic uses of social media. This exploration served as an opportunity to consider the media literacies at play as the group participated as a community of writers.

When: Thursday, April 28, 2022, 6:00 – 7:00 pm ET.

Cost: Free. LiD6-12 is funded by the South Carolina Middle Grades Initiative.

This session will feature Dr. W. Ian O’Byrne and Caroline Graham.

Dr. W. Ian O’Byrne (@wiobyrne) is an associate professor of literacy education at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. His research focuses on the dispositions and literacy practices of individuals as they read, write, and communicate in online and/or hybrid spaces. Ian is the author of many journal articles and book chapters focusing on initiatives ranging from online and hybrid coursework, integrating technology in the classroom, computational thinking, and supporting marginalized students in literacy practices. His work can be found on his website or in his weekly newsletter.

Caroline Graham (she/her/hers) is currently a College of Charleston student majoring in Secondary Education and English. She is a South Carolina Teaching Fellow at the College serving as the President. You can see more of Caroline on her website: https://cgaggraham.wixsite.com/website

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