LLED 449 Blog

I enjoyed the interview Xerri had with Candy Royalle and in particular, one line stuck out to me: “Unless spoken word poetry is more firmly present in education, young people will continue to be deprived of the benefits that it poses”.

In my practicum, I was able to teach essentially 3 spoken word poetry units. Poetry is not my strong suit but I thoroughly enjoy listening and even writing poetry as well. In my classes, I was able to see students transform and come out of their comfort zones and write spoken word pieces that revolved around the theme of pain and affliction. I had one student who gave a poem about a heartbreak, then excused herself from the class to go the washroom (to of course wipe tears). She enjoyed writing the poem and I’m proud she took the risk to share with her classmates her personal pain. I also had an ELL student write about suicide and although he did not really speak up in class, all the students loved his poem and were cheering him on!

In entering a full time teaching role, I know that I won’t have much flexibility in crafting my own curriculum per se but I want to continue to implement spoken word to empower students to share their voices that may be unknowingly stifled. Although leaving myself vulnerable too, here’s a rap that I wrote as an example for the students called, “604-PLEASEPICKUPTHEPHONE”. Although it’s quite a “generic rap”, I know it helped students feel more comfortable in writing about the theme of pain (to which my SA also encouraged them to do so as well)!

I’ve really appreciated all of our discussions in class regarding inclusion, as well as how to handle potential push back. I think it is so important to make sure that all of our students feel welcomed and supported in our classroom, and as English teachers we have the great privilege of being able to ensure that our students feel included and represented in the literature that they read. I loved Amber’s comment that when she’s teaching, she’s there for the child and not for the parent. That’s something I’ll try to keep in mind when designing curricula if I ever have the fear that I’ll encounter pushback from a parent. I think that by bringing texts into the classroom that are written by authors with diverse backgrounds and identities, we can show solidarity with and build confidence in our more marginalized students, while helping everyone in the classroom practice empathy.

I really enjoyed our lesson last week on text sets. I think they can be a great way to bring in multiple perspectives, as well as to tweak curricula to suit the needs of a particular class. I also think that through using text sets, we can teach our students to make connections between texts, which will then hopefully lead to them making connections between texts and their own lives and/or the world around them. It’s also a great way to personalize a unit a little bit, and add in content that really interests us as teachers, especially when we might not always have full choice or control over the main novels or anthologies that we teach. I’m looking forward to putting together text sets for my future classes!

I find thinking about teaching writing poetry to students daunting task to do. This is partially because I find poetry writing myself, daunting. The activity we did today however was a brilliant way to push myself out of that comfort zone and just put some words on the page! The speed and low stakes really helped with this. I also think I could go back and work some of the stuff I wrote and end up with something I was really proud of/is very silly and fun. This kind of “play” with words is something I really want to find ways to foster in my classroom and is something I definitely would do in my classroom.

During my practicum, I came to realize that many of my students abhorred the writing process and writing in general, particularly formal types of writing. They found it labour-intensive, especially when they were made to write on paper as opposed to their phone or laptop, which they took up any time the option was made available. In fact, there seemed to be a sort of “fear” in regards to it—it was always a daunting concept, even more so when marks were involved. The students who found it difficult, who were afraid of sharing “bad” writing, who said that they weren’t skilled at it, were the ones who always groaned whenever a writing task was introduced.

I had the opportunity to teach Creative Writing 11/12 alongside my ELA classes, an elective course filled with wonderful writers, including students who had won prizes and had been published in a few local zines. The difference between a self-selected course and a mandated course in terms of the enthusiasm towards writing was astounding. The students in my class were self-motivated, reflective, and extremely strong writers. They loved working with all forms of written work, and they enjoyed the process of critiquing and analyzing pieces to improve upon their own writing styles. I wondered what the difference was. Perhaps the idea of creative writing itself is less-imposing than the regular essay-structured pieces we teach our students in ELA classes. Or perhaps these students have been enriched in environments where their writing has flourished, and where they sincerely wanted to write and improve their writing. This is not to say that there aren’t students who absolutely love writing in our mainstream English classes, but my goal is to facilitate a space where students can develop an appreciation for writing in a variety of contexts (not just formal, but informal types, writing for media, advertisement, film, poetry, conversation, dialogue, etc.). In an ELA course, I hope to incorporate low-risk activities where students can ease into the writing process and speak to things that interest them to make it less of a daunting experience.

Below is one of the writing exercises resources I used in my lesson on writing memoirs created by Taylor Mali. Students loved the Slam Poem Mad Lib and really enjoyed thinking and sharing about it with each other:

Writing Exercises

I found this activity really fun because I think using different modes to teach my students to be really important. I find that students seem to invest themselves more into the material when I can present it in a way that is not straight lecture. I found videos to be a quick way to hook my students in, and references to video games or music would often help my students make connections to the material.

I present to you……. our sketch quote:

“Katie questioned, “Is that courage or bravery? Are they the same thing?””

As you might be able to notice, our group didn’t have the most expert of artists. And to be quite frank, we were really nervous to jump into this activity! In a program where criteria is everything (but not enough is provided), this was a fun reminder to snap out of perfectionist mode and just have fun with learning. It was our little act of courage (and/or bravery) to write and draw the image that popped out of the words. I’m hoping my students can tackle creativity with less stress than we did!

A possible resources that I was reminded of from last week’s discussion … 

Ivan Coyote’s Ted Tx: We All Need a Safe Place to Pee – 2015 (12 min) – Upper Int/Sec

Description: In a poetically rhythmic TEDx talk, award winning Vancouver author Ivan Coyote highlights the need for gender neutral washrooms in all public places.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUKAVcj9NVA&feature=youtu.be

https://vimeo.com/172375271 (Condensed Whiteboard Animation Version, 2:18)

The Slow Fix (2008) is another great collection worth exploring that features deeply personal stories about gender, identity, and community.

I’ve never been fully immersed into the world of graphic novels but for this course’s assignment, my group decided to read American Born Chinese. To put it simply (so as to not give too much away), it’s about a Chinese immigrant’s quest to ‘fit in.’ He seemed like a character students could easily relate to. I can imagine more than a few ways to structure lessons or units around this book. I highly recommend the read!

So now that I’ve gotten a taste of this genre, I’m looking to read more! Does anyone have any recommendations?

When analyzing the connection between the Romantic period in human history and the modern era in which popular culture prevails, one may arrive at a conclusion that it is quite an absurd and pointless enterprise. It is, however, Bowmer and Curwood (2016) who prove that such incorporating popular culture into the Romantic context and that of modern way of life can be a very exciting practice for students in the course of which they are highly likely to learn a lot about the intellectual movement and the lives of its contemporaries and how they are related to their own experiences. There are many ways in which one can absorb knowledge about the unknown periods, but Bowmer and Curwood (2016) manage to increase one’s understanding of the benefits of the collaborative remixing processes as parts of learning activities by demonstrating that such practices also encourage one to make use of freedom of expression.