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High School English Class Brings Out Budding Talent
By Julie Reinhardt
Christophe Murdock |
I was born
From an egg
Blue and green-speckled
--Opening to "Dragon Life," by Christophe Murdock, Third Place winner of Washington Poet's Association Award.
The assignment was to write forty-four poems in forty-four days. Most 9th grade English classes include a short section on poetry, but Jennifer Gold's Language Arts class at Ingraham High School challenges students not only to study poetry, but to become poets in their own right.
Some of the daunting assignments had to encompass specific topics such as alliteration, metaphor or iambic pentameter. However, to encourage the rewrite process necessary for any writer, "rewrites count!" said Gold.
"For me, writing poetry comes really hard," said Emma Wingfield, Washington Poets Association Honorable Mention winner. A segment of her poem, "Tree House" below was inspired "from a memory."
We were perfect
And nothing could go wrong
When the sun began to set
We would gather up our things
And climb down the bridge and leave the castle of our dreams
As soon as we set foot on the ground below
Our perfect world and our castle disappeared into
An Old Tree House
While the 9th graders studied classic like Frost, Dickenson and Shakespearean sonnets, they also read from anthologies of high school student poetry and regularly read their own work. "I like to make it personal as well as study the classics," said Gold. Preparation like this created the foundation for a most unusual series of events for a public school.
Emma Wingfield |
The opportunity originated from a chance meeting. The mother of one of Gold's students began chatting at a bus stop with Jeffrey Cantrell, director of Counterbalance Poetry, a non-profit organization that brings poets to the Northwest. Their short conversation grew into a literary event that brought Dr. Rafael Campo to the class in November.
Campo, a poet, essayist and physician at Harvard Medical School, read his poetry, answered the students' questions and even heard some of their own poems. Gold said afterward, "He said encouraging things to each student who read, and the reading really became a literary event ... they got to feel like poets themselves." While most adults would find reading their own compositions to a well-known poet frightening, these students had rigorous training behind them. "They had been reading to each other in groups and were getting comfortable and very supportive of their classmates," said Gold.
To prepare her class for Campo's reading Gold bought two books of his poetry. They spent a week reading and discussing Campo's poetry. "They would ask questions about his poems and I told them, this is your chance to ask the poet first-hand. We were studying iambic pentameter, that it is the closest rhythm to our heartbeat. It is a rhythm that comes up commonly in English, so they wondered if the rhythm is different in Spanish and whether Dr. Campo thinks in English or Spanish when he writes his poetry." In response to this question at the event, he read "Remembering Why," a poem that "talks about language going back to pre-words and how you make that happen."
"I liked the way he didn't waste any words, and there is always meaning beneath them," said Christophe.
Margot Hyland |
The event didn't stop there. After Campo's visit, the students taught poetry lessons to Broadview-Thomson Elementary 1st -5th graders. "Teaching the little kids," was by far their favorite part of the poetry class. Students again prepared vigorously. They brought in past writing of their own, studied books geared toward elementary students, and read aloud poems they liked.
Each student presented their lesson plan in Gold's class before taking it into the elementary school. The one-hour lessons were a success and their comments about the elementary students mirrored what was said about them. "They were amazed how quickly the kids caught on - how much they knew and how responsive they were," said Gold, "The elementary students would say 'I know what a haiku is!'" The 9th graders left time for the elementary students to write and read aloud their poems, passing the torch. Stated Emma, "They wrote some good poetry, poems you would hear in a high school class--and these were 5th graders." Margot Hyland, who won a school-wide poetry competition titled "One Earth, One People," said when they asked the elementary students challenging grammatical questions, "they would answer perfectly!"
These three students, Christophe, Emma, and Margot, all won competitive poetry awards. They and their fellow students were supported by teachers like Gold, excited about their work and their students, organizations like Counterbalance Poetry with a goal to "outreach to students," and finally, the parents who made the connections, carpooled the students and actually read the syllabus at the parent-teacher meeting. In other words, like Margot Hyland's poem echoes, a safe place for learning:
"Imagine what it would be like,
To have people be seen for themselves.
No wars, or hurt feelings.
No militia, or hunger.
A place where everyone is safe,
In our one Earth.
Will there be more poets visiting Ingraham High School? Both Gold and Cantrell say yes. This semester, however, Gold says her students will "spend extra time on Hamlet, naturally, because Peter Brook's Hamlet is in town!"
Reader Comments
Discuss this article in the forums!
| Ashley | Apr 26, 2003 | Ohio | student |
| 4 REAL WHY DONT YOU JUST GO AND PRINT LOSER ON YOUR FORHEAD | |||
| Anonymous | May 28, 2003 | Agawam, Massachusetts | CEO of JX2 Productions (www.jx |
| Dancing The days have gone by I do not understand, How time flyís. It seems like just yesterday we were holding hands. Her voice was so sweet You could listen to it all day And it had the loveliest beet. And you would never turn gray. We would laugh and sing She would make your day And would even be seen dancing. Even if you were gray. This girl I tell Ya has this thing And to this day I still donít understand why we arenít still dancing. | |||
| SARBESHCHANDRA | Mar 23, 2004 | DELHI,DELHI, INDIA | student |
| I JUST WANT TO PUBLISH SOME OF MY POEMS AND SHORT ARTICLES RELATED WITH DIFFERENT TOPICS HERE IN YOUR SITE. IS IT POSSIBLE? IF SO PLEASE LETME KNOW. THANKING YOU. | |||
| bianca | Nov 17, 2004 | Australia | |
| Horrible poems I could do better! | |||
