Classics In The Classrom Chapter 4

Page 75 "STUDENTS NEED POETRY." That's all I had to read and I knew I was going to enjoy this chapter. Along with my Mother, we both feel like poetry has diminished slowly from schools. We don't see it in the curriculum except for maybe one lesson or a possibly reading a classical poem or two. When students hear that they are going to be writing poetry they cringe at the thought. Many of them think "God we have to rhyme, everyone is going to think it's dumb," the list goes on and on. However, I bet none of the teachers put it like this book has, which by the way I have been telling any student I have tutored for YEARS. When they go home and put on their headphones and listen to music to block out their parents, guess what, that's poetry. Eminem is probably one of my favorite examples. He is a lyrical genius and has been for years. When we were at Akron North, one of my students said that "Poetry is gay man" and put his earphones in and started listening to Lil Wayne. I tapped my pencil on the table and asked him to tell me the lyrics he was listening to, and to write them down. He actually wrote the lyrics in a poem form, broken up line by line. I told him that he had just written poetry. Kids just need to be taugh of all the advantages that writing like this can bring. Many poetry assignments are going to be left open for the students to pick about what they are writing about. What could be easier? I think students are scared of poetry when they have to try and learn about sonnets, couplets, stanzas etc. If given the tools and knowledge of how to approach/think about writing poetry I think we would see a change in this pattern of behavior. Personally poetry is my favorite thing to write. I love escaping and putting all my thoughts that are trapped inside my mind onto paper and relieving the stress they cause.