Overview
From the time that I was an 8-year-old girl, I felt an attraction to popular rhymes. I memorized and recited at every moment. I learned, with great joy, almost 200 popular sayings until my grandmother approached me with two poetry books. One of the poets was Juan de Dios Peza and the other was Manuel Acuña. These books locked me into the world of writing and thinking about the life of these two poets, the sound of their words, and what they produce in me.
I started writing verses, whistling, and looking at my surroundings. If I saw a couple fighting, I wrote about heartbreak. If I saw an unjust circumstance, I wrote a poem on fairness. I can say that poetry saved me from dying in the solitude that was my heritage following my parents' divorce. My students do not live an easy life. Like I, they can find an escape through poetry, through writing the sound of their soul.
I am working in a middle school that was created in the 1960s for African Americans. Now Hispanic students are the majority. Ninety- nine percent of the students receive free lunch. The school area has been identified by the police as a place where multiple gangs that rob, vandalize, and fight congregate.
Everyone has been exposed to poetry in different ways, sometimes without knowing it. One student may have read a poem to him/herself or heard it read aloud; memorizes a popular stanza or a whole poem for an assignment in school; recognized lyrics of a favorite song; or may have been caught singing a funny commercial jingle over and over. All of these are poetry. My love of poetry came from my grandmother giving me those two books of poetry at an early age. I learned to be alone with a poem, read it aloud to another person, undress the poem during a study time, and get happily insane when I create a poem, or explain a poem in class. I need to be that medium for my students; I am going to become in these daily routines a combination of the teenager I was and the professional I am today. Every lesson is going to be related to Literary Terms to observe how writers make us feel what we feel.
Poetry! The salvation in my life! It was difficult for me to understand that the process of writing poetry was not only to write what I felt, but to feel as I was writing or reading. It is important for the reader to become absorbed what poet wishes to express. If the reader identifies with the poem or with the reflection that calms people from torturous or happy moments, then the poem is successful. I know that ink has a powerful force of expression that corresponds to an outside/inside sound. This force has to be taught to the students and added to their imagination. They have to be taught a poetic way to live life instead of the violent life that they live. It has obscured their visualization of a better world. I am not asking them to be poets but understand the understandable, to read poetry with the love discovering the dreams in our souls:
Time Somebody Told Me
Time somebody told me
that I am lovely, good and real.
That I am beautiful inside
if they only knew
how that would make me feel.
This is a poem found in "Son of Realyty."Age 12. The site is named by Betsy Franco in Young Adult "You Hear Me? Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys. http://www.teenreads.com
My intent is to help my students to have a better comprehension of the language so that they can express themselves better. They need to learn to discern meanings and intent so they are not easily fooled by the way things are said; and most of all to appreciate poetry and its splendor. It is also important for them to distinguish the differences between narrative and poetry. My plans then, are to teach poetic resources to a group of impoverished English as a Second Language middle school students living in South Houston. They have a curfew and restrictions by the police - all this civic effort to keep the multiple gangs from further developing, and to discourage the vandalizing of private and public property. These are my students! "The Unknown Voice of My Students" is intended as an opportunity to help them to succeed as I did in society, perhaps even to do better.
With this curriculum, I will modify the students' behavior by motivating them to like school, life, their family; enhance their enjoyment of English words; help them to comprehend what they read and to discover the meaning behind the poem. This has been my focus for several years at the middle school level. The students already know that I am a teacher with a great love for poetry and humanity. They know I believe in creativity in the fine arts, and that that is found in many cultures all over the world. The classroom can exhibit much of this through the study of their words and through teaching poetry at grade level.
Poetry invented my life when I hear my inner voice. That is me, now, turning my middle school population to writing their expressions and feelings. Writing! Reading! using in-depth expressions are foreign to my students, largely because they have little exposure from home and living experiences but also because of so many gadgets and electronics at their fingertips. In this age of instant messaging, electronic gaming on small handheld devices, IPhones, IPODS, MP3s, instant ‘friendships' on My Space, Facebook, Twitter, etc., middle school student tries to ignore basic, sensitive in-depth feeling and expressions that can be gained from writing, editing and proofing their work. They want to move faster and faster without stopping to think. At least this poetry unit will increase their awareness to their inner self and inner feelings and these students will have concrete examples in words and poetic phrases to show specific techniques in writing.
I am working at Dowling Middle School in Houston, Texas. Dowling was created in the sixties in response to the growing need for schools for African Americans following the Civil Rights Movement. Presently, Hispanic students are the majority by 56%. Ninety-nine percent of the students receive free lunches. The school area has been designated by the police as an area where multiple gangs thrive that rob, vandalize, and fight.
I will share books and knowledge without discrimination or suppositions. The students need to learn about writing, not necessarily to make them writers, but to discover the sound of words and what can be done with those sounds. They may not memorize all of this information but they will know that those literary terms are there and used by writers.
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