I was feeling a little rebellious last week and decided to change the way I am teaching literature. Instead of waiting to teach poetry until later on in the semester (for block classes) and year (for traditional classes), I chose to introduce them to it now. It fit perfectly with what I wanted to do, and I was inspired by Davidson and Ellison's comments that poetry is easier to work with because it is smaller. I should mention I am only doing this experiment with my small group classes. My co-teacher has things pretty much planned and I don't want to rock the boat too much.
My first period, I have a class of five boys. Getting them to like poetry was going to be a struggle. I knew this as soon as I said the word "poetry." I might as well have said "candy and flowers and love, oh my!" I began the lesson with what they thought poetry was supposed to be about. This is the list they came up with:
falling in love
nature stuff (butterflies, flowers, trees, etc)
breaking up
being sad
After this interesting inventory, I presented them with "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home." We read it through twice before I offered any explanation. One of the guys looked at me and said, "Ms. Lindsay, this isn't a poem." When I asked why it wasn't, he said it was because it had nothing to do with what we'd listed on the board, and it didn't rhyme. From the back, another kid argued with him. He said it did rhyme in parts. So our discussion went from there. We talked about what they recognized (rhyme, alliteration, etc.) and then moved into a sign inventory. I got them actively involved by using the SmartBoard and had them mark the language they thought was the most interesting. The entire class period went really well, and my boys came up with something our class did not.
"In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger."
These lines sparked some debate. Right off the bat, all five boys thought the lines referred to a baby. They did not guess any mechanical object found in a home, even when I explained what an "apparatus" was. When I prodded for reasons why they thought the lines referred to a baby, they listed the following:
1. Babies might seem like an apparatus to a Martian. Especially if it has never seen one before because "babies are weird, man!"
2. Adults pick babies up and hold them when they cry. They kiss them a lot too.
3. In the last part of the poem, the Martian is talking about kids and adults. It is seeing how humans grow up, and we are babies first.
It was such a fantastic discussion. And for a group of 10th grade boys to come up with something like that was amazing. It is not that I didn't think my students could understand the poem, I just was not expecting the answers they gave me. It was probably one of the best classes I have had this year. I offer to every teacher: Never underestimate your students. Especially those who have disabilities.
Good job, Laura. I'm thrilled that it worked out well for you.
ReplyDeleteNext time, you might even think about arguing this point: it's not so much that we have to choose between a baby and a phone. It seems clear to me that both the "actual" phone and a "metaphorical" baby are at play, here. So perhaps the higher order identification would seek to allow for both of those portrayals. Why is it, you might ask, that the poem displays these types of "cyber organisms"--apparatuses that are metaphorical babies, books that are mechanical birds, etc.? That hybridizing feature of the martian's presentation is quite curious, and it allows you as the teacher to push for higher levels of sign identification and, in this case, even sign engineering.
I'm glad to hear that this little experiment of yours went well. I've always wondered why boys shy away from poetry. I understand the obvious reasons, but I've always been biased. I'm curious as to what your students might come up with if you give them something a little more "expected"? Something like Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and all of the stereotypical nature baggage? The class might veer a little heavier on the lecture aspect of things, given the need to place Frost in a Modernist context, but I think that trying to break up some of these preconceived notions might prove useful. I hope this helps.
ReplyDelete