Poetry and Public Life

Strategies

TPCASTT

(Title, Paraphrase, Connotation, Attitude, Shift, Title, Theme) offers the students the ability to know what to analyze in a poem--which is oftentimes a challenge for students. Aside from the dense language we come across the best path to take can offer considerable challenges. The joy of this strategy is that it offers students that road map. It organizes important information and allows that knowledge to help the reader understand more complex sections of a poem. The expectations for each piece of the acronym are as follows: Title- the students will work to understand the meaning of each word in the title and the way they work together to offer meaning; this is commonly their first step in understanding a poem. Paraphrase- it is here that the students will work through the text in small sections to find meaning. They will look up words they do not know and put the poem into words they understand. This is most useful for poems of substantial length. Connotation- This section allows time for the student to find multiple meanings of words and motifs running through the text. It is a place for them to think past the surface level and dig for possible symbolic meaning the author may have intended the reader to notice. Attitude- This section of the strategy is about the speaker and the poet. It asks the students to consider the mood and tone as the poem. Shift- This section is typically the most challenging for the students. It asks the students to notice any changes in speaker or any rhetorical moves the poet makes. An example of this is the use of the dash mark by Emily Dickinson. Title- After all of this work the students are brought again back to the title of the poem. It is here that they can apply their analysis to look for new meaning in the title of the work. Theme- This is where the students have a chance to wrap up their study of the poem by outlining the point the author means to address. What was the point of the poem? (In the activities section of this curriculum unit you will find an example of the type of answers I would like to see from students using this strategy along with an explanation of the strategy’s implementation).

Space and time 

This is the most important strategy that I have come across in my decade of teaching. My classroom dynamic is built around these two words, and they appear in nearly all aspects of my teaching. This strategy necessitates a strong understanding of the appropriateness of a given activity correlated with the skill level of each individual student. The space aspect references the need to allow for free thought. A student needs room to maneuver and think without an adult rescuing them with the “right” answer. Carnegie Mellon’s Eberly Center for Teacher Excellence explores this concept at great length.⁹At various points they speak to the importance of student input and student created thought. Whether it is student’s ability to approach the teacher with feedback or with questions about content, the importance of student generated feedback cannot be understated. When a student has the space to consider a text they will find value and importance on a personal level and that is the jumping off point for the deeper dissection of a thought.

The ability to properly dissect a text is also aided by the students’ ability to have time to work. This is most accurately discussed by The Teaching Center at Washington University in St. Louis.¹⁰ They point to the importance of learning happening outside of the prescribed classroom time. While this point may be challenging to adhere to, and of course needs to be qualified with the type of assignment, the point is firm in my classroom. My classes are given the opportunity to not have the right answer in one minute. The work we do needs to build on each other and the students need to feel the ability to think deeply about content of great importance to both the class and to them as individuals.  In addition to time for thought, it is also crucially important to not interrupt them as they articulate a response. While this concept may seem basic in its premise, I have found it to be a major issue in the structure of classes that I have observed. Again, students need time to produce quality work.

Socratic Seminar

My classroom, filled with seventeen and eighteen-year-old students, is a forum. Debate and free thought are actively encouraged and students have the ability to move the conversation down paths that they seem to find valuable. The product of this environment leads to incredibly fruitful debate and dialogue during a Summative Assessment that I use called the Socratic Seminar. As Lewis Campbell, an Oxford classicist, points out in his translation of The Theaetetus of Plato, the alliteratively named process of encouraging students to ask questions requires the mentor/teacher to have the necessary answers.¹¹ This is where there is deviation in my class. While I do take on the role of Socrates during class discussion, when the seminar begins my students are prompted to deliver their conceptual understanding of a text to the class. The other students then add to or rebut the argument with evidence. Thus, during a seminar in my class, there is no mentor to guide the conversation unless the teacher feels it necessary for any one of many reasons such as off-topic conversations, a severe misreading, or additional historical facts that may provide fodder for deeper analysis.  This further enhances the meaning of poetry as a dialectic in the public sphere as the poem is the driving force behind the discussion. It is the medium of information delivery, thus further cementing the text as a mode of intellectual exploration.