Naked Verse

“Poetry [like death?] is the great equalizer.” –Camille A. Allen

There is little more I can see to add to Allen’s chapter except to add my personal experience with poetry and think about how I can use both in my classroom.

I have to admit that I made a start at writing my response in the form of a poem. However, as I share many of the same feelings shared in the opening of our poetry chapter, I couldn’t bring myself to finish it, much less present it. This was due in part to my recently developed cold and in part to the fact that poetry and I have as strained a relationship as any.

I do remember experiencing many of the lessons mentioned in Allen’s chapter, from acrostics, to “I Am” poems and the like. They were for me an entrance into a form with which I would have a long and fractured romance.

As soon as I was introduced, I loved poetry. It was freeing for me. For most of my gradeschool years, I had great difficulties writing. The chore that I could never seem to overcome was the incessant need to neatly organize (word-for-word) all that I was about to write before I set pencil to paper. This was true no matter whether it was a grades essay or a free-writing session. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I do know it took some time and the help of two amazing women to get past my hesitancy in writing.

Poetry, though, seemed easier somehow. I will be honest and say that I don’t know how the timeline works out exactly, I just know that around the time I was receiving help was around the time that I began to write poetry.

What poetry was able to do for me was to give me an outlet to play with words without remorse and, most fantastically, without a wild amount of punctuation (I still haven’t fully grasped all the nuances of punctuation). To condense the story, I eventually began writing poetry constantly, even up through my early college years, sometimes penning as many as one every other day (though, I would have only dared to share perhaps three from the lot).

Then, one long summer day, I was duped. My grandmother and mother, with the greatest intentions, took a short piece of my prose, modified it into a more poetic look and entered it into some national contest. I didn’t know about it until I had won. And, I’ll admit it – I was thrilled. I had put down my pen for some time leading up to that point, for various reasons, but this afforded me new steam. I began writing again with a fervor and confidence I hadn’t felt in years.

But then, as you might have guessed, the contest turned out to be a sham. A hoax. There was no committee that read my work. No real appreciation of what I had done. No, I was being used and, had they tugged me one step further, they might have had me swindled.

So, I stopped. I no longer write poetry. I’ll admit an occasional rhyme in jest, but, for the most part, the serious stuff is over. I don’t know if I will ever start again.

Now, from the autobiographical mess above I do think there is an application to be drawn out. Allen mentioned that poetry is an emotional experience, and I couldn’t agree more. Poetry is a mode of expression that begs for the soul’s dances and dirges. It is intimate. That is why it is freeing and beautiful. That is why it is terrifying.

When I found that my work was being exploited, I felt exploited. I still do, in many ways. How profoundly connected can a writer be to his or her writing?! I think it will be important for us to remember that when we begin to use poetry in our classrooms, we are asking our students to do something that can be frightening, uncomfortable and at the same time be beautiful and liberating. We will need to find a way to honor whatever they write and be ready for some of the big, “hard-to-deal-with” stuff that comes out on their pages. I know that not everyone will enjoy poetry (I’ll be the first to admit that reading it can be a bore). But, there will be a happy few who will see this new writing landscape and pour streams of themselves out into its fields and valleys. That’s when we need to be ready to honor and affirm not only their writing but the person they choose to share.

MGRPs in Action

Perhaps I’m easy to catch, but I couldn’t help but notice the emphasis of teaching students “skills in context” (Allen, 2001). Perhaps that was by design, or it could simply be because my research for my own Multigenre Research Paper (MGRP) (which has unfortunately pushed this post to the periphery) has a focus on this point as well. Either way, it caught my attention.

MGRPs, from both the book’s description and even in our short experience so far in doing one on our own. Hopefully I will be able to return to this in more detail later on in the week, but I found Powell and Davidson’s article to be a great example of the process and benefits explained by Allen. Removing the “meaningless” and “degrading” effects of treating students as passive recipients of information and knowledge (Powell & Davidson, 2005) by allowing them to engage in interesting and, in the case of the MGRP model, self-chosen topics which still reach out to meet the standards of their respective school systems.

An interesting point is the difference between Allen’s interaction with parents and Powell and Davidson’s note about their less than ideal communication. This does highlight in a testimonial how important, and perhaps difficult, it is to allow parents to also play an active role through informing and involving them throughout. Powell and Davidson’s description of the low, three-parent turnout is discouraging to hear, especially given the high level of investment and excitement on the part of the students (Powell & Davidson, 2005).

Works Cited

Allen, C. A. (2001). The Multigenre Research Paper: Voice, Passion, and Discovery in Grades 4-6. (B. Varner, Ed.) Portsmouth, NH: Hinneman.

Powell, R., & Davidson, N. (2005). The Donut House: Real World Literacy in an Urban Kindergarten Classroom. Language Arts , 82 (5), 248-256.

Proceduring Process

Whew.

Let me begin with this: I'm finally ready to start. Having moved in from Jersey the week before school began, it has taken me until now to finally get situated, organized and to get rid of that terrible fog of not knowing where everything was or what I needed to do next. It is truly a relief.

I was, interestingly, startled with a simple idea as I was finally putting giving everything a place and putting everything in them. Something many of you know and have known for years (as I have, to a degree) and perhaps some of you have even implemented with success. As I was trying to motivate myself in the usual way to "keep myself organized" with the same bored self-talk and rhetoric, admonishing, threatening and encouraging myself to "just keep it clean," I began to feel that same dread that always comes in a clean room. I remember life will happen, tired and apathetic days will come, and two or three weeks from now I'll have to start all over again.

But, this time there was something new. In observing classrooms this semester, both the good and the works in progress (hopefully), one theme continues to resurface again and again: Procedures are important. Teachers who have them seem to be able to move effortlessly from lesson to lesson, student to student, and task to task. Those who don't (or haven't found a way to implement the ones they have) are struggling and sometimes begging for the students attention and cooperation.

Procedures are important. That was the thought. If they are so important in the classroom for classroom management, teacher success and (thus, in theory) student success, why not start trying a few on now? Why not start making some procedures for my life so I can learn what it's like to live and work with them?

I'm still at the start and I haven't written any down yet (that's on my to-do list), but I have noticed that my initial reaction is to pull away from them. Procedures and protocols are tiresome and oppressive, at first. They sometimes tell me that I can't do what I want to do right now and ask me to look further down the line. For instance, I sometimes want to walk into my room, kick off my shoes, toss my bag down and go straight to Hulu (online television), but my procedure is to empty my bag, hang up my keys, put away my shoes and check my to-do list. That's not what I want or what is natural at first. But, I have hope that given time and practice, they eventually will become easier and more second-nature (plus, when I break a protocol, I have to give myself 10 pushups -- which is kind of a win - win, when you think about it).

Learning how to implement procedures that I have to follow is fun not only because I'm learning how to look for situations that require them and then creating them, but I'm also learning how it feels to follow them. It takes time. It's hard. It's uncomfortable. If this is what we are going to be asking our students to do, I am thankful to be figuring out the kinks now. I am seeing how important it is to have procedures, how hard it is to adopt them and understanding why it is so important for students to own them -- if I didn't have the intrinsic motivation to keep them, I wouldn't. It would be easy to let them go. For now, I'm learning how to see the need and fill it with procedures. Hopefully I will learn how to encourage student ownership and the development of intrinsic motivation as I go along.

Dilemmas and Discourses

I appreciated the attention which Karen Wohlwend’s article “Dilemmas and Discourses of Learning to Write: Assessment as a Contested Site” drew to the realities of teaching in an actual, student-filled setting. Her discussion of the “surface dilemmas,” or, “clashes between overlapping discourses,” experienced by actual, practicing teachers is a comfort to me (perhaps strangely) as an aspiring educator. Much of the coursework thus far (in all our classes) has been chalk-full with practical, intellectually verifiable ideas printed on white pages, discussed in orderly rooms with highly educated adults, and therefore out of context. Thankfully so, on the one front, for where else can one prepare for the task of teaching students than outside of the context of students – this would have to mean, as I intend it, that when we are “learning” to teach with students, we are actually teaching. On the other hand, though, it is refreshing to read about the reality of putting ideologies and discourses into practice in the classroom where tests loom.

There are two points from this article which I hope to discuss and elaborate upon, namely the issue of navigating the tension between the desire to “provide developmentally appropriate literacy activities” (349) especially as it relates to a situation developing in the state of New Jersey (which I realize I likely out of the scope of interest for many in our cohort), and how does one address discriminatory ideologies and practices in relation to literacy education?

To address the issue of tension between state requirements and appropriate instruction, my question is simply: How does one make choices in this environment and how does this benefit students? In the particular case of New Jersey, where the current Governor has gone on record explaining his plans for tenure changes and where discussion on teacher’s job retention on students’ test scores is buzzing at high pitch.

Basing job retention on student test scores, in one line of thinking, might help to ensure that ineffective and uninterested teachers are no longer allowed to dawdle around in the system. It could help to “cut dead weight.” This, however, is true only in the case where the tests and standards are consistent, developmentally appropriate and student interested. I am confident that I am not the only one to suggest this may not be our current situation. What seems more likely to me is that more teachers will find themselves in Diane’s situation where they feel they must teach in developmentally inappropriate ways in an attempt to retain their jobs.

If it is our goal, as Americans interested in education (as many more seem to be today), to be effective teachers in student-focused learning environments, then this idea of test-based-job-retention is ridiculous. A teacher faced with the choice between giving her students what is best for them as individual learners and keeping her job, I have to imagine, will almost always choose to protect herself first. I would expect every individual, whether an educator or entrepreneur, politician or clergyman, to value their family’s welfare highly, which is why magnifying tests and standards to such a degree seems to be without much sense. I am not against tests or standards, provided they are responsibly crafted and are used as a one barometer or many for determining teacher effectiveness. Otherwise, the tension between what is developmentally appropriate (or just simply “right”) for individual learners and “the test” will only be amplified.

Perhaps less off course than the thought strand above, I found the discussion about the marginalized students in Diane’s classroom intriguing. On the one hand, there are students who are fully engaged and involved in self-led and group learning. However, a student like Jamal is not able to be included at the table because he is not like those students in either ability nor appearance. As a teacher, how does one accommodate for this? Are we to take away the table (or whatever activity or situation would be appropriately analogous) so Jamal is not forgotten, while leaving the other students without this valuable resource? So students are left out socially due to their absence with a specialist, how do we as teachers reintigrate them into the classroom? Is this simply a matter of vigilance on our part (that is, noticing these moments and situations and addressing them immediately—though, this would require more attention than we are likely able to spare), or are the tools and processes which can guide this process?