I became interested in my topic years ago when I figured out middle school kids somehow got into poetry when I gave them some. I think I also got really interested when the kids I gave it to years ago moaned and groaned, etc. and said, "Poetry is stupid. It's only for the smart kids. I hate it. I don't get it. It's crazy writing no one understands. Don't even get me started on Shakespeare!" I was so sad to hear this, considering my totally harmless but nonetheless unhealthy obsession with some specific poets (Poe, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Hughes, Dickinson, Whitman).
I thought maybe if I showed them what I liked about the poets, they could develop the same if not even more unsettling obsession with them, too! I thought, like many others, that music and poetry were the same, one with, one without music behind it. That alone seemed like my easy way in---hook them with stuff they already do and slip in the stuff I do, which they would totally enjoy if they'd just relax about it for a second. (This could easily be said of the entire USA though.)
In regards to the "skills" population of kids, I became super interested in what they had to say because though I may have already taught the same poem 2, 3, or 4 times in the same day, when those guys read it, I had to reread and pause during our discussions several more times than in my other classes. This is SO not to say that my other classes didn't think critically or in an outstanding way with the poetry---they often did. But, more times than not, the class that sent me for a complete loop was the team-taught, "skills" class.
When a kid asked me to rotate a piece of Picasso's art on the overhead 90 degrees, "just to see what happens", I became over-interested in researching what all these ocurrances had to do with one another: what's up with the lower-level reading kids making crazy brilliant statements, observations, and guesses (or..."inferences"...or whatever the professional term may be) at poetry I thought I really had a handle on. One year, I had a kid explicate a poem for me that I had to do for a grad school assignment (He knew way more about the black death and the song "ring around the rosie" was in the poem a few times---he had to teach me what they had to do with one another and I took notes!). I totally got an A on the assignment (yes, I told the teacher and handed in my OWN work...don't freak out!). But I did get an A and I think the kid's help is the reason.
So...I love poetry. I love to teach. I love to teach the "skills" kids who think so far out of the box, they wouldn't know what to do with the box if it knocked them over (ahem...CSAP---hello!?) with a hammer....and I love to learn from my kids (selfishly, but, hey)....so I am finally wondering how that happens, I guess....how's that for short and to the point!? Ha! (I think of the blog as a place to draft....Now...how the heck do I put this in some sort of professional, concise manner??? Ha!)
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4 comments:
I think you're using your blog exactly the way you should be. This is a great summary of where you are and how you got here.
I think you really hit on something I hadn't heard before, too. You said that these kids "think so far outside the box they wouldn't know what to do with the box if it knocked them over with a hammer." Not only is this is a clever way to put it, it also helps me to understand why skills kids have such a good time with this kind of poetry.
They don't have preconceptions or set modes of thinking about these things--they "haven't already learned the game" to quote Ice Cube. They see things in new and refreshing ways because they don't know the cliched and worn out responses that honors kids tend to drag out whenever you ask them to read anything.
Maybe it's also because they have nothing to lose in a sense. Partially because of the way you set up the class, I think, but also because they're already in "skills" and are convinced that they're not intelligent, which leaves them free to say what they think rather than what they think you want them to say (as my honors kids so often seem to do).
Gosh, you know I hate to agree with Jason - but in this case I just have to :). Sometimes the most frustrating students I have to work with in art are those honors students as well. And for just the reason Jason has pegged - they're all about finding the answer the teacher is looking for, instead of finding an answer that satisfies their personal inquiry. More than not having learned the game, perhaps the skills kids happened upon the mindset that there is no game.
They simply accept what they see at face value because they don't know how to interpret an idea through someone else's lens. What they share with you is not a regurgitatio of your own perception but a fresh unaltered look.
That blasted "box" hasn't even been built for them yet!
Wow! What great insights you guys have to your kids! Do you mind if I use some of it in what I finally write?
:)
thanks so much
Gosh Steph - I encourage people to respond to my blog so I have more data! I think anything that is written here is fodder for your project. :)
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