So far, poetry has been going well in my class. I've shown them videos of Sarah Kay and Taylor Mali, my two personal favorites and we've been working on metaphors, similes, and personification. For working on metaphors, I gave the students a list of random objects and they had to compare the objects to something else. Somethings I noticed:
When I gave them the phrase "school is..." many said it was "prison" or "boring" or, the best, "the poop to fertilize growing minds"
At first, this made me sad, but then I realized when I was their age, I thought the same thing. Hopefully I'm doing enough to make things interesting and fun.
Another thing I noticed was the phrase, "shoulders are..." the kids got deep here. "Shoulders are rags to cry into" "Shoulders are the rocks on which families stand." Honestly kids, you're killing me. Then, I realized something. This phrase made me nervous. I'm nervous because I know I'm going to run into their hurt, pain, trouble, ache, and disappointment through their poetry. I'm not ready for them to be anything but innocent yet.
This is why I love this age. They still love dancing, singing, acting goofy. I'm right on that brink with them though, when they're growing up and I can see glimpses of it. It's not physical changes so much. It's the cynical, "I'm too cool for this" type attitude that I ran into when teaching high school, and I don't like it. I wish they could just stay goofy forever. I'm not ready to know they're not kids anymore. I'm not ready to know that they have pain, and hurt, and heartache and they're probably too far gone from being little ever again.
This is the wheel though, and I have to let it turn. I'm letting it turn a little more lately, but it's still hard to watch and experience.
When I gave them the phrase "school is..." many said it was "prison" or "boring" or, the best, "the poop to fertilize growing minds"
At first, this made me sad, but then I realized when I was their age, I thought the same thing. Hopefully I'm doing enough to make things interesting and fun.
Another thing I noticed was the phrase, "shoulders are..." the kids got deep here. "Shoulders are rags to cry into" "Shoulders are the rocks on which families stand." Honestly kids, you're killing me. Then, I realized something. This phrase made me nervous. I'm nervous because I know I'm going to run into their hurt, pain, trouble, ache, and disappointment through their poetry. I'm not ready for them to be anything but innocent yet.
This is why I love this age. They still love dancing, singing, acting goofy. I'm right on that brink with them though, when they're growing up and I can see glimpses of it. It's not physical changes so much. It's the cynical, "I'm too cool for this" type attitude that I ran into when teaching high school, and I don't like it. I wish they could just stay goofy forever. I'm not ready to know they're not kids anymore. I'm not ready to know that they have pain, and hurt, and heartache and they're probably too far gone from being little ever again.
This is the wheel though, and I have to let it turn. I'm letting it turn a little more lately, but it's still hard to watch and experience.
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