Alternative Methods for Teaching Poetry to Students

Transcription

1 Teaching Poetry to Students 1 Alternative Methods for Teaching Poetry to Students Joshua S. Dyer College of Education University of Georgia

2 Teaching Poetry to Students 2 As both a pre-service teacher and a poet, I am interested in exploring effective ways of teaching poetry to high school English students. The theorists I have read since beginning my studies in education have criticized many aspects of traditional language arts pedagogy, and I feel that the teaching of poetry belongs underneath the same critical eye as the rest of language education. Reflecting on my experiences as a high school student, I recall poetry as little more than an exercise in identifying poetic techniques devices such as meter, rhyme scheme, simile, metaphor, and alliteration. The teacher expected us to learn these terms and be able to identify them in the poems we read. The assessment of our understanding consisted of an objective test in which we identified elements of form and technique, and we had to write about the correct meaning of selected poems. We were rarely given the chance to write our own poems, and once the unit was finished, we didn t study poetry the rest of the year. Reflecting on those experiences, I feel that my teachers could have done so much more to foster in us a true appreciation for the art of poetry. I believe that traditional poetry instruction has placed too much emphasis on form and technique, and it has neglected the power of the language in poetry to construct meaning. Looking through English Journal, I have discovered that many experienced English teachers harbor similar feelings, and they have taken new approaches to teaching their students poetry in a personally meaningful way. A brief review of the literature concerning how poetry is taught in the classroom will quickly reveal several misconceptions and unsuccessful approaches to teaching students (Ciardi, 1989; Lockward, 1994; Baart, 2002; Barton, 2002; Jewell, 2004). However, creative English teachers have also discovered innovative ways of teaching, through the use of audiovisual approaches (Jewell, 2004), poetry workshops and groups (Baart, 2002; Moore 2002), and by simply asking poets how best to approach poetry (Lockward, 1994).

3 Teaching Poetry to Students 3 Common Problems and Shortcomings in Teaching Students Poetry According to John Ciardi (1989), a prominent twentieth-century poet, children actually enter school with a favorable attitude toward poetry. Many of them are filled with fond memories of the nursery rhymes and songs that played such a prominent role in their early language acquisition. However, by the time they reach secondary school, many students harbor an intense dislike of poetry, or at least toward the teaching of it. English teachers report a consistent outburst of groans, complaints, and questions when introducing a poetry unit (Baart, 2002). Some teachers suggest that some of the fault lies with the students. Vivian Jewell (2004) has noticed the tendency for students to believe that their job as readers consists of nothing more than comprehending the plot of a literary work, while supposing that the teacher s job is to tease out the subtleties of a text elements such as themes, motifs, diction, and language. Students get frustrated when the teacher asks them to go beyond comprehending the plot, especially when reading poetry, where plot is often either nonexistent or obscure. Nicole Baart also endures complaints from students that poetry is boring, uninteresting, and unrelated to their personal lives. Actually, these are valid grievances, and it would be worthwhile to examine some of the shortcomings in the traditional approach to teaching poetry. Through interviews with her colleagues, Diane Lockward (1994) has discovered that many English teachers are uncomfortable with teaching poetry, and I feel that their discomfort, coupled with the misgivings of traditional pedagogy, contributes to the problem of teaching poetry effectively. From her interviews, we find that some teachers simply dislike poetry, while others enjoy it but don t know how to encourage their students to do the same. Almost everyone she interviewed mentioned that when they were students, they never had an English teacher who taught poetry well, and so they have no model on which to base their instruction. Fred

4 Teaching Poetry to Students 4 Barton (2002) laments the deadness inherent in the traditional approach to teaching poetry. He feels that teachers focus excessively on form and technique, relegating poetry instruction to decontextualized exercises in identifying literary devices. Reflecting on his experience, he notices that in every class in which he used a traditional approach, the poetry his students wrote changed little qualitatively, and student morale remained fairly low. Having reviewed the literature, I believe that teachers can have a damaging impact on their students attitudes toward poetry. John Ciardi claims that schools teach everything about a poem except its poetry (1989, p. 128), and an excessive fixation on form, coupled with disregard for language and meaning, is indeed un-poetic. I fear that focusing only on the technical aspects of poetry can be disengaging for the students. In order to help them to appreciate poetry, we must find a way to relate it to what they know, think, feel, and experience (Baart, 2002). This goal can best be accomplished by focusing more on the language in a poem, and encouraging students to discover meanings that are personally relevant. I use the term meanings because it is an affront to the richness of poetic experience to assume that only one, true meaning exists in any poem. Only after students become comfortable with discovering meaning in the language should we lead them into learning form. Ciardi does insist that form is crucial to poetry, writing that poetry is not simply an outpouring: it is a pouring-into, and what it is poured into is form (1989, p. 102). I agree, and I suggest that although language is more rhetorically powerful than form, form still performs a valuable, augmentative service to language as a conveyor of meaning. Successful Approaches to Teaching Students Poetry A review of the literature provides one with a wealth of alternatives to traditional methods of teaching poetry. However, it would be best to consider first what poets themselves

5 Teaching Poetry to Students 5 have to say about the subject, as they are the masters of the art that we re attempting to teach. In her inquiry into improving her teaching, Lockward (1994) speaks with poets at a poetry workshop to get their advice on opening students up to poetry. Poets believe that students can be responsive to poetry, especially when it relates to their own experiences. They see it as a way for adolescents to express thoughts and feelings that they would otherwise have had difficulty expressing, and they claim to have read exceptional poetry written by less academic students. The personal seems to be a theme common to the suggestions poets provide to English teachers. They ask that we give students choices in the poetry we study, and they believe students should have ample opportunity to create poetry of their own. We should encourage more classroom discussion of poetry, and we shouldn t be afraid to teach contemporary poetry; not only does it promote a departure from the older poetry typically found in textbooks, it also embodies experiences that more closely resemble those found in students lives. Poets suggest that a connection with one s lived experience is necessary to appreciate poetry and create meaningful language with it. After teaching many unproductive and unfulfilling poetry units, Jewell (2004) discovered a novel approach to poetry that succeeded. She decided to expound on the strong relationship between poetry and music by examining lyrics. These poems often have no plot, which must have prompted considerable distress from her students at first. Her primary goal in this approach is to demonstrate how musical conventions create mood and influence the way the language in a song conveys meaning. Another connection she highlights in her instruction is the link between poetry and the visual. With this approach, she focuses on imagery and how language can capture the essence of the visual in words. Through the juxtaposition of images and poetry, she

6 Teaching Poetry to Students 6 demonstrates to her students a key component to poetry how language constructs meaning from images to express the world in the guise of words. Much of the literature also suggests that students would benefit from the study of poetry in a group setting (Baart, 2002; Moore, 2002). Though the creation of poetry is typically seen as an individual endeavor, the process of making meaning from the poems we read can be enriched by incorporating a diversity of perspectives gathered from discussion. John Moore (2002) has observed that much learning can take place by putting students into pairs or small groups and letting them discuss poetry freely. He reports that their ideas resonate with one another and illuminate the experience of being in the poem (p. 45). Operating under the assumption that no particular meaning is the most correct meaning of a poem, we benefit from sharing our interpretations of poetry, for every contribution to the conversation only serves to enrich our individual understandings of the poems we read. In terms of students creating their own poetry, Baart (2002) has found that poetry workshops serve as an excellent source of inspiration. In her workshops, she teaches students to look through the ordinary, take heed of the world around them, and find inspiration in perfectly ordinary settings. With these suggestions in mind, her students poems became surprisingly more reflective, personal, expressive, and thus poetic. However, she warns against holding workshops too often, as they may result in a sensory overload and decreased interest, and she cautions us to establish clear ground rules, in order to discourage the creation of objectionable material. Ultimately, the purpose of workshops is to explore the imagination, serving as a reminder to students of the things that they already know (Baart, 2002, p. 103). In college, I had the opportunity to attend a poetry class that served mostly as a workshop, and my limited experiences in the workshop environment corroborate the findings in

7 Teaching Poetry to Students 7 the literature. In this class, we forgot about the conventions of poetry and looked instead towards the meanings we discovered through our individual readings. It was especially helpful to discuss poetry in groups, as no one s meaning coincided perfectly with anyone else s. The primary focus of the class was on the poetry we wrote, and we spent considerable time discussing each other s poems. The lengthy, in-depth coverage we devoted to each other s work resulted in a much deeper understanding of our own, as we were able to take into account the meanings other people made from our writing. I believe this kind of feedback inspired many of us to improve our poetry. Personally, I was astounded at the diverse meanings that others made from my poetry. I scribbled notes furiously on my poems as we discussed them in class, and I was often much more satisfied with my revised work. Concluding Remarks: Guiding Principles Concerning Poetry in the Classroom Baart (2002) identifies a false dichotomy teachers impose upon themselves when considering whether they should teach the poetry they need to teach or the poetry they want to teach. Rather than assuming an either / or mentality, I suggest that teachers adopt a both / and frame of mind. That is, we can teach both the poetry we need to teach and the poetry we want to teach, and these may very well be the same poems. More importantly than deciding on what poems to teach, we should also concern ourselves with finding out how to teach students to write better poetry of their own. Teaching students how poetry creates meaning includes teaching them to create meaning of their own by writing their own poetry. Such autonomy makes it more likely for them to develop greater interest in poetry. Only after discovering language s power of making meaning is it suggested that teachers begin to emphasize form (Barton, 2002). Once students get a handle on creating language and begin to enjoy writing, they will be more likely to seek out forms into which to mold their language. If anything, form functions to augment the

8 Teaching Poetry to Students 8 meaning and enhance the effect the reader draws from the language. The essence of my argument is that language is more powerful than form, which is only intended to modify language. After all, a series of lines that adhere to a strict form but inspire no meaning in the reader can hardly be called a poem. Earlier, I mentioned a poetry class I attended in college that was structured as a workshop environment. This class wasn t taught by a professor, but by a poet. One of the few lessons he taught us was that English teachers are incapable of teaching poetry. His belief was proven to me the very next semester, as I took an American literature class in which our professor decided to devote random days throughout the semester to study poetry. I suppose I might be able to give her credit for not teaching poetry in a single, discrete unit. However, the merit of her decision was nullified by the way in which she taught. We were assigned some poems to read at home the night before each lesson. When class met, she would read a poem aloud once, then she would proceed to pick it apart one line at a time, explaining the one, true meaning of each line. When she finished butchering the poem, she would ask if everyone understood its meaning, and when she received no response (she never did), we d move on to the next execution. I recall either sleeping during these classes, or reading other poems in our textbook. The most surprising aspect of her pedagogy was that she told us that her students had always preferred this method of learning about poetry! I think there must have been some serious communication errors in the past for her to have arrived at such a belief. Miscommunication between students and the teacher seems to be a significant factor in the problem with teaching poetry. If poets believe that students actually take an interest in poetry, then why is it that we don t see this interest manifested in the classroom? I don t think we ll ever be able to coax every student into enjoying poetry, but my personal experience has

9 Teaching Poetry to Students 9 shown me that a different approach can affect our students conceptions of poetry. Perhaps my poet of a poetry instructor was right teachers cannot teach poetry. Our only option, then, is to cease being teachers, and to become poets instead. Let us set aside the forms, techniques, and literary devices that are only a minor element of poetry. Instead, let us examine more closely the language of the poems we read, for this is where meaning lies. As we explore alternative teaching methods, we would do well to think of our classroom as a forum in which poets are teaching other poets. In such an environment is poetry more likely to be created.

10 Teaching Poetry to Students 10 Reference List Baart, Nicole (2002). Saying it more intensely: Using sensory experience to teach poetry writing. English Journal, 91(3), Barton, Fred (2002). The fire this time: Renewing the poetry unit. English Journal, 91(3), Ciardi, John (1989). Ciardi himself: Fifteen essays in the reading, writing, and teaching of poetry. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press. Jewell, Vivian M (2004). Poetry made easy: Of swag and sense. English Journal, 93(5), Lockward, Diane (1994). Poets on teaching poetry. English Journal, 83(5), Moore, John Noell (2002). Practicing poetry: Teaching to learn and learning to teach. English Journal, 91(3),