| One sure way to elicit groans from a middle- or high school English/Language Arts class is the announcement, “Today we’re starting a unit on poetry.” In the world of No Child Left Behind and ambiguous (as well as ambivalent) state education standards, poetry has become the stepchild of literature: acknowledged because the law requires it, but little understood, except by the “weird” few. For those analyzing this – yes, that’s a metaphor.
So at the risk of a simile, teaching poetry, especially for the first time, is like telling the Passover Seder’s story to the Four Children (Wise, Cynical, Innocent and Too Young to Ask) who personify four attitudes and require, respectively, resources, flexibility, patience and creativity.
Wise Child
The student with some background and some interest in poetry, like the Seder’s Wise Child, will recognize the form and format and rhyme scheme, even if the meaning of the poem still eludes him or her. Using the tools remembered from past school years and vocabulary quizzes, the teacher can cull poems of similar techniques and themes and coordinating imagery to encourage the student to read further, read deeper, and to think harder.
The Wise Children-type students should be willing to take these tools, these resources and build meaning for themselves. These are the students who will glean from William Blake and Donald Hall, from Andrew Marvell and Allen Ginsberg. They tend, however, to be the students with the heavier, AP-oriented schedules, so one skill to teach them would be breaking assignments up into smaller, manageable pieces they can accomplish each day towards the final completion.
Cynical Child
Middle- and high school students love to play the Cynical Child. Poetry to this point has meant Dr. Seuss, no-brainer greeting cards, a series of rhyming children’s books and any number of regrettable song lyrics that would give the late Steve Allen endless parody opportunities. The more fortunate (even if they won’t admit it) may have had to memorize a poem or two in elementary school.
They know the terminology, can almost tell a simile from a sonnet, but they don’t want to care. It has nothing to do with what is important to them. Even the looming threat of state exams fails to kindle their interest. Poetry, the way it’s been taught to them, just isn’t “cool.”
To quell the doubts that will undoubtedly surface, students should bring in examples of their favored pieces and subject them to the poetic “acid test”: rhyme scheme, meter, and then why and how it works. Note: teachers, never accept the response, “It just does,” particularly from high school students.
For the Cynical Child, love (or simple appreciation) of poetry comes from the challenge. Some will develop the flexibility, break through and become Wise Children. Others will stay Cynical. They will settle for what is handed to them, but will have enough flexibility to get the idea that perhaps they do not know it all.
Innocent ChildFrom the Innocent Child, the Wise or the Cynical Child emerges. How poetry is approached at this stage, for this Child determines what future English/Language Arts teachers have to build upon in later years. Patience and determination are a must for teachers. For the students, games, or “making it fun,” are usually a good place to start.
However, every game, even poetry, has rules, terms and procedures. These have to be learned and they can be learned from poems with alliteration, onomatopoeia and other sound cues that grab onto and hold the students’ interest in what is going on in the poem. Games such as “Jeopardy!”, “Concentration” and “What’s my Rhyme?” (a take-off of “What’s My Line?”) cement the terms and concepts. These games can also adjust their levels upward as the students demonstrate fluency with poetic terminology.
The Innocent students require a little more patience, going over and over the fundamentals. They can, however, create a deeper meaning for themselves through the smaller steps and graduated higher thinking levels. The goal is to keep it fresh and personal for them so that, with experience, they can become Wise Children.
Too Young to Ask
There will come teaching posts where the students have had little or no exposure to poetry beyond Music Class lyrics or nursery rhymes or perhaps Dr. Seuss. In this sense, these are the Too Young to Ask.
Many have heard the words, but make no sense of what they hear (how many students from non-English-speaking homes, for example, can identify Humpty Dumpty as a bipedal egg without no sense of balance?); they feel the rhythm, appreciate the rhymes and assume that is enough. But to get to the starting place of state testing, they must go further.
An initial step can be to read a familiar poem, then have the students write or draw what they picture the poem is about. Add to the drawing/writing if the student likes what s/he hears and why and then share these with the rest ... |
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