BEFORE Awakening the Heart...My Reflection on PoetryBefore reading the textbook Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School by Georgia Heard, I've always enjoyed reading poetry. To me, it was soothing and made me feel like I could express myself and make connection to it. It was different from reading a story book. Sometimes reading books were confusing because of the language and cultural differences that I couldn't grasp, which made it really hard for me to understand the story, characters, and setting. With this, it made it hard for me to make connections to it, which is how I understand things. However, reading poems were different. I could skip over and not worry about the hard parts or wordings of the poem and read the parts that I understood. And the best part of it was that I could interpret it in any way possible. There's no right or wrong way to understand or make connections to poems, which made me fell in love with them. It made me feel smart and proud when I could understand a poem or relate to it. After reading a good poem, I would sit there and think about each line and how I felt about it and linger on with those thoughts. I was a loud thinker, and still am, which is why I read poems very slowly because I want to make sure I understand every last word and feeling it gives me. It's like savoring every last bite of a really good food. I like to savor poems a lot. As for writing poetry, I also enjoyed that a lot. Because I liked reading poems, it made me want to write my own poems. I started out with writing how other poems made me felt and then branched off from that feeling and went on and on and on. I wrote about love too because I had a lot of crushes at that time, which for a shy girl, expressing was not an option for me. Therefore, I expressed my thoughts and feelings through writing. I later got inspiration from music and would write those lyrics down, and then try to write my own poem using those lyrics. I enjoyed free writing a lot, and that goes the same for writing poems. I started to dislike writing poems when I was taught poetry in school. At first I enjoyed it because it was fun and I wanted to learn more about it, but they drilled it so much with rhyming that I began to dislike it, and whenever I think of poetry now, I think about "rhyming" and it makes me dread it. However, I do admire poems that rhyme because it does sound good to read it a loud, but I always struggled with it (still do). Which is why I slowly started to stop writing poems because it became harder and harder to write. Now looking back at it, I realized that I wasn't really writing to express myself, but writing to satisfied what my teachers wanted or expected from me. Ever since then, my mind stopped thinking about poetry, and I never really returned back to writing them again. Now many years went by and I am now a graduate student learning to become a better teacher. Thinking about teaching poetry is actually quite scary. I have NEVER taught a poetry lesson before and don't remember seeing a poetry lesson being done. NEVER. Which is why I am saying I don't know how to teach poetry because now, poems are HARD for me to understand, and HARD for me to help students to understand it. I may understand a poem, but how do I get STUDENTS to grasp the poem like I do? So, as for teaching poetry to students, I am not so confident; however, I also feel like starting now is a good experience because poetry is beautiful and it's different from any other literature. When I am reminded of how it made me feel growing up in school, it makes me think that as a teacher, I've got to learn how to teach poetry the right way or the best way possible so that my students can have that opportunity to "savor" poems like I did. Now, I know I mentioned about a "good" poem, and maybe some of you are wondering what makes a good poem "good" to me. In my opinion and experience, I know it's a good poem when I can make connections to it. I think that's one of the most important criteria when determining if a poem is good or not. You have to relate or make connections to it. That is how I draw in to a poem. The next criteria for me is that the poem makes me wonder. By wonder I mean it makes me ask myself questions, and it makes me THINK about new thoughts/perspectives, or ideas that I've never thought about before. In other words, the poem makes me feel curious either about the topic, the wording/imagery, or the feeling that it gives me. I think those are also important aspects to a really good poem. It makes you curious. These are my top criteria on what makes a good poem "good". Now going back to teaching poetry, I think the environment is really important for students. I believe that a warm, inviting environment is needed when learning about poetry. I also believe that it's important to talk about the different kinds of poetry and talk about what makes a poem, a "poem". I believe that's important because you're setting the stage for ALL kinds of possibility of poetry in your classroom. If you don't let students know that it's OK for a poem to not rhyme, they're going to go on thinking that that's poetry. Therefore, I feel like if you open that possibility for students, then they will more likely feel more adventurous in exploring and finding their kind of poetry. Also, the warm, inviting environment is important because we want them to feel safe and feel like they can express themselves because I feel like that's what poetry is about: setting their inner-self free. Most students are also afraid of writing a poem and sharing it because it might not be "good" enough, which is why making sure that their thoughts, opinions, and feelings matter. We have to acknowledge and validate their feelings to make them feel wanted and appreciated when sharing their poems and thoughts/ feelings. That is why setting up the stage for poetry is crucial, in my opinion. You have to let them know that it's OK to write poems that don't rhyme, and to write poems that they may not feel so confident about when sharing. Talking about those feelings are important for students because you are validating and acknowledging their fears and telling them that "Hey, it's OK. It happens to me too." You are letting them know that no judgments is going to be made about their writing, their poem, their style, their wording, or their feelings. That's the beauty of poetry: it's unique and different because of those things. That is how I would set up my poetry environment. After reading Awakening the Heart...After reading the first few chapters from this book, my thoughts and views from before changed. I still feel the same way about reading poetry. It does make me feel soothing and like I can freely express myself. However, I also acknowledge that reading poetry, for the most part, is difficult and does make me feel like I am not intelligent enough to understand it. However, Georgia Heard points out in chapter two that the key to successfully open the door of a difficult poem is to have patience, and reread the poem multiple times (Heard, 1999). It made me realize that poetry is like a sport. In order to be good at it, you have to practice over and over again. Practice makes perfect. I realize now that I didn't practice hard enough or just enough to understand poems. The language and wording were always too difficult for me to decipher, so I gave up. I think that's important to realize as a teacher and as a student learning more about poetry. Students need to know that as well. Reading this chapter has also taught me that poems have layers that we have to pill slowly in order to understand them. The three layers of reading poetry that Georgia Heard discussed about were 1) Choose poems to read that are immediately accessible, nonthreatening, and relevant to students' lives, and encourage reading projects that will invite all students into the world of poetry, 2) Help students connect personally to a poem by guiding them toward finding themselves and their lives inside a poem, and 3) Guide students toward analyzing the craft of poem, figuring out how a poem is built, interpreting what a poem means, or unlocking the puzzle of a difficult poem. As for writing poems, Georgia has taught me through this book that writing poems is not difficult. We just have to find them, and finding them is part of the process of being a poet (Heard, 1999). Georgia stated that "discovering where poems come from is an essential part of a poet's process" (Heard, 1999); therefore, it's important for us as teachers to help our students realize that and find stories and little seeds tucked away and bring them to life through their poems. Therefore, I think that's a a good way to get students to realize and find their poems. One last thing that I would like to include in my revision process of how I feel about poetry are the ways Georgia Heard included when creating a poetry environment. She listed a few things to keep in mind which are: 1) learning to listen deeply to our own images, thoughts, and feelings and to our students, 2) respecting students and ensuring students that the classroom is a safe place where every voice is respected, 3) presenting poetry into the classroom before formally introducing it,
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AuthorI enjoy to write a lot during my free time. Writing is a stress reliever for me. Archives
May 2021
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