Poetry is everywhere: Strategies for teaching poetry through music, murals and more

Mattern really helpful Melissa Alter Smith’s #TeachingLivingPoets movement and pointed to Clint Smith, Jose Olivarez, Fatimah Asghar, Danez Smith, Nate Marshall and Idris Goodwin as among the up to date poets who her college students learn at school. Mattern’s college students additionally take part in a challenge interacting with murals in the Flint community.

Mattern stated that connecting together with your local poet laureate is one other glorious technique to have interaction with poetry inside your group. Here’s what a few of Mattern’s high faculty seniors stated when asked what conjures up them to be poets: 

• “I really enjoy writing stories and weaving tales; poetry is another way for me to do that.” – Dream
• “Poetry allows me to be more expressive. It is my creative outlet.” – Ashley
• “I like to express my ideas anywhere I can; whether it be poetry, art, or anything really.” – Jailen

Pocket poems and short-term tattoos

Christina Linsin, a poet, trainer and librarian in Virginia, has used music as an introduction to poetry for youthful college students. “It’s something that [students] are so familiar with and it does connect so well with the origins of poetry,” she stated. When she labored at a center faculty, Linsin would choose songs that have been related to her college students. After listening, college students analyzed every music and recognized literary parts.

Two years in the past, as a high faculty trainer, Linsin had a brand new thought whereas considering a poetry tattoo of her personal. Why not create short-term poetry tattoos for her college students? Linsin custom-made and ordered the short-term tattoos on-line and introduced them to class for her college students to put on throughout National Poetry Month.

She additionally participates in National Poem in Your Pocket day, printing and handing out poems for college students to hold of their pockets and ask each other to learn aloud. Through the Academy of American Poets’ Dear Poet challenge, college students write a letter to a poet in response to one in all their works. “There’s no better way to make poetry alive for these kids,” Linsin stated.

As somebody whose love of studying was modeled by her mom, Linsin was drawn to the emotion and concision of poetry at a younger age. One day at school, a trainer noticed that she was studying Sylvia Plath and really helpful that she choose up “Renascence” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. “I was hooked forever,” she stated.

Countless prospects

For Anthony Fangary, poetry is about vulnerability and honesty. Fangary has taught poetry to college students of all ages in faculties and group settings. (Editor’s word: Fangary works in a non-editorial position at KQED. He is not a part of the MindShift workforce.) To keep away from teaching inaccessible poetry, akin to works which can be lots of of years previous and use unrecognizable language, he introduces up to date poets in addition to non-traditional poetry, like an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. He goals to facilitate dialogue by asking college students questions like, “Where is the art?” 

Emphasizing that there are “countless possibilities” in poetry, Fangary has utilized totally different kinds of poetry to get college students excited in regards to the topic. From epistolary poetry, writing a letter to somebody, to ekphrastic poetry, a poetic response to a portray, to erasure poems, figuring out and erasing probably the most important components of a poem, Fangary says that “the absence of language can be more powerful than the presence of language.”

Student check-ins are additionally an necessary a part of poetry schooling for Fangary. Taking the time to ask questions like, “Based on how you feel today, what kind of animal are you?” permits college students to consider themselves and their lives through a artistic lens.

The widespread thread? These educators all discover methods to assist college students join with poetry of their on a regular basis lives and communities. “The pedagogy has to reflect what the kids are dealing with today,” stated Fangary. As Smith stated on Forum, “poetry is everywhere,” and college students “have an opportunity to be participants in that.”