Poetry - who knew?

First of all, let me make it clear, I am a Geography teacher - well that is not strictly true. I am a Deputy Head Teacher who occasionally teaches (4 hrs a week), but when I do, it is Geography that I am trained to teach. Despite this I have, like many other teachers, turned my hand to other subjects - mainly History, RE, PHSE etc. Due the fact that I believe we are teachers of children rather than subjects, then I have been happy to do this.

But I digress. My point was that Geography has always been what has rocked my boat, as it were. Well maybe no longer. Since the start of term I have a lesson of English on my timetable – a first in my career. It is with a Year 9 class and the topic I was tasked with delivering – Poetry!!

Now, bearing in mind I was not permitted to do even GCSE English Literature at school (a strange system indeed!), the idea of teaching poetry was daunting to say the least. That combined with the fact that I have never had any interest in poetry myself, could have made it tough going for me and the students. In fact I have always been of the opinion that if someone felt they needed to write a poem - forget it and write either a song or story instead.

At this point in the tale – I have to say I was wrong! Poetry is interesting and has a power in its performance that I had not understood. In researching for my lesson I discovered ‘Def Poetry’ a US network programme showcasing the performance of the spoken word – wow! It blew me away. Unknown ‘stars’ like Gemineye; Taylor Mali; Suheir Hammad; and Oscar Brown Jr delivered their message with such power, emotion and ferocity, that I started telling everyone I knew about it.

All of which leads me to the reason for writing this post – the impact this challenge has had on the way I feel about teaching this once a week lesson. My students had no interest in poetry (not unusual for most 14 yr olds). This meant I had to deliver a similar experience to my ‘conversion’, in order to open them up to the learning. Using some, but not all of the stars I named above (too much swearing for school!), I emphasized the performance aspect and the apparent aggression demonstrated. They got it! They came up to me at break and lunchtime asking whether we would be watching another ‘performance’ next lesson and when would they get their turn to perform their own.

I combined this approach with learning about the links between poetry and rap, reading ‘The Gruffalo’ and writing some auto-biographical prose, and the students stayed interested! These excellent students who have an average reading age of 10 years and had never written a meaningful poem in their life, have now all written at least two original pieces.

In our final lesson of the half term, we set up the room to split into two halves and have a ‘corridor of poetry’ in the middle. The students challenged each other to perform their poems in a stand-off against each other, all to a rousing reception.

It was one of my most proud moments in teaching and made me hungry for more. All this in a lesson I didn’t really want to teach; all this through poetry; all this from a Geography teacher!

Poetry – who knew?