Overview
I was much farther out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Stevie Smith 1
These lines from a modern poem by Stevie Smith speak to the difficulties students face that teachers are often unaware of and do not understand. A key theme in this poem is the importance of recognition—the speaker is reaching out and trying to be seen because help is needed while the other individual in the poem fails to recognize the need. Students reach out because they want adults in their lives to understand and recognize the challenges they face. Students want to be recognized as dynamic, memorable, unique individuals.
As teachers, our challenge is to create opportunities to recognize what is going on in each student's life. Teachers should strive to know what has an impact on students, what interests them, and what makes each unique. Many teachers are simply too far removed from their own experience as teenagers to fully appreciate how difficult that time period can be for adolescents. Students in middle school face a multitude of changes as they progress through adolescence such as growing up physical growth/revolutions, dealing with death, moving from one neighborhood or region to another, evolving friendships and relationships with family. These changes can impact students emotionally and academically. Even though these changes often consume students' attention and focus, they are often not addressed in class. Students need an appropriate time and space to explore some of the difficult changes that they will come to face as they mature. This unit will address some of the key changes 8 th grade students face through reading poetry that addresses issues of identity and producing expressive, well-constructed poetry.
Poetry is a key genre of Language Arts classrooms; it is short, dense, complex text that can be used to engage students in rigorous thinking processes. This unit will promote reading and writing several poetic forms and patterns with two intentions: producing poetry that is authentic and personally meaningful and using knowledge that is gained through closely reading poetry to decode meaning and develop an appreciation of poetry produced by others. Students will be introduced to a variety of poems in order to find a couple that fit their experiences, thoughts, and ideas. The mentor texts that have been selected for this unit will help students to see that poetry is a vehicle for self-expression and an opportunity to grapple with issues that deeply affect them.
Comments: