Response Paper #5 Prompt #2
Many students are apprehensive about
poetry and feel as though it lacks relevance; therefore, they ignore it and
shove it aside. Getting students to engage in and enjoy poetry is an extremely
difficult task that English teachers must overcome. With this particular text (Brown Girl Dreaming) there are quite a
few ways to broach this difficult topic in an original and dare I say
interesting fashion. Since this book is a story many teachers may be inclined
to start with that; in turn skimming
over the fact that the book is created as a sort of collection of
poetry. I believe that this is a bad course of action; by not starting with “this
is a book of poems” you are essentially loosing students trust. The reason
being that they will feel as though you have lied about what the book really
is. You should start by saying that it is a book of poems; then explain the
importance of poems. Also, discuss why it is interesting that the author
decided to take her writing in this direction.
One of the most important things to
remember about people is that we like to talk about ourselves, and relate
things to ourselves. I officially learned about this theory called “egocentrism”
from a communications class. According to The
Art of Public Speaking “What do people want to hear? Very simply, they
usually want to hear about things that are meaningful to them. People are
egocentric (Lucas 100).” Therefore, we have to make the students relate to the
poems in order to gain their interest.
Due to egocentrism I believe that
the first course of action to take is having the students go out and find a
poem that they relate to. We can discuss why they relate to it and what
interests them about their poems of choice. After this introduction to poetry
and explanation of how it can relate to them, start the book. As you read the
book together discuss why the author relates to these poems, what is she trying
to convey?
As you read through the book have
students look for a particular poem in the text that they relate to or enjoy.
My personal poem would be “The Reader” on page 61; I chose this poem because it
stuck out to me. My reasoning would be that I understand the sister in this
situation, since I too am a lover of books and have a tendency to get lost in
them. When you finish the book have the students write an essay explaining why
they chose this poem. If you don’t want to an essay you could have them draw a
picture explaining this, or have a discussion.
Another thing to think about
bringing up is how poetry and rap are similar. You can compare and contrast the
two, this might shock some students. The problem with this idea would be
finding rap that doesn’t have curse words, since this wouldn’t be appropriate.
Even though as Alex brought up in class that isn’t really fair, especially
since rap is really such a good thing to compare poetry with and most rap songs
have a lot of curse words. Unfortunately, I don’t think many parents would take
kindly to this, and even if a lot of them did like the idea someone would cause
a problem (it only takes one).
Another good idea that we discussed in class
was having students write their own poems. There are a few ways to go about
this idea. One would be giving the students free range, just write a poem in
any style. Another way would be to have them make a poem similar to the author’s
style. The last way was brought up in class; have them write their own “What I
believe” poems. This idea originated from page 317 in the book when the author
wrote about her different beliefs. You could have your students do the same
thing, just in their own words.
References
1.
Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown
Girl Dreaming. New York: Penguin Group, 2014. Print.
2.
Lucas, Stephen E. The Art of
Public Speaking. 12th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-
Hill, 2015. Print.
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