The Death of a Poetic Era

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As an English major, I am struggling to find the perfect link to sustain the nourishing feeling English provides in the teaching of it to students with an abbreviated speech lifestyle. I feel that everything is too fast nowadays due to this verbal and textual abbreviation - life, our emotions and our very experiences are too abbreviated. And it is becoming all too common, all too fast.

As part of my placement experience at a high school, I have been assigned by my university to bring forth a project which I see as beneficial to the school and its students, particularly one that harnesses my majors. So I decided to focus on English and its very art, in particular, poetry. I decided this because I wanted to give a voice to the outsiders, to those who feel that they cannot express themselves - you will be surprised at how many students have no personal opinion about things!

So I ran a poetry workshop. I made it appealing for all sorts of learners - the visual, the kinaesthetic, the musical, the linguistic, the logical, the intrapersonal, the interpersonal, the musical, all of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence theories. And I thought it extraordinary the lengths I went through. I made attractive posters, and made a plan to collate all of the varied poetic techniques I would have taught students into a final slam poem that they would perform at the end of my two-week block, boosting their oral and performance skills as well, all vital in order to thrive academically. 

The number of students that attended went from six to two in four sessions. Then one. I could not believe it - what was I missing? I made it engaging. I placed bulletin notices that rhymed. I incorporated varied interests, even catering for those interesting in writing rap music. I touched on all elements. I asked several students to attend - their responses varied from "I can't write poetry" to "no thanks" to "maybe". 

Poetry is so beautiful. It is everything a soul could ask for. It is everything students could ask for in the middle of a bust day. But it was something rejected. Even those two who attended towards the end were bored halfway and began to doodle all over things instead of sticking to the poetic task. So I did the thing I feared the most about this project: I gave up.

I revised it entirely. I now run origami workshops. Students come in, fold pieces of paper to their amusement, trash the area in which they are folding paper, and leave. I cannot believe that language, the most beautiful communicative tool since the uttering of cavemen and cavewomen, is being trashed like this.

Confide

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I am three years into my teaching degree at the moment. This means that after October next year, I will allegedly be fully equipped to be able to teach students ranging from Preps to Year 12s.

This means that in much less than a mere year and a half, assuming that I can land a teaching position, I will be standing in front of the classroom with approximately twenty-five pairs of eyes looking at me, yearning for a role-model, yearning for assistance, for a chance to be heard, for a chance to show their worth. Twenty-five pairs of eyes will look unto me and await my assertion in varied subjects. They will wait for the reinstating of classroom rules, for their chances to introduce themselves to one another, to learn what they do not yet know, to be inspired, to evolve.

But nobody has yet mentioned to me that students need, more than anything else, to confide. It frightens me that in my cohort of fellow pre-service teachers, there are some who cannot even spare ten extra minutes to assist in group assignments. There are some who would not reserve a seat for you if your wheelchair broke, there are some who care not for the quality of learning, let alone the quality of teaching. It frightens me because how then are their students to confide in them? How are students to accept the quality and need for education when some teachers are not willing to offer it?

The worst thing is when I am seated in a lecture or a tutorial and some of my peers behave in the same manner as any bored student would, considering not our lecturer and their attempts to tell us all that they can before we are fully qualified. These same peers would go on to be teachers who enforce the need for the respecting of themselves - how can one acquire respect, though, when they do not themselves give it?

I gained a huge amount of clarity two weeks ago when I was introduced to a new lecturer. She had been teaching in high school for over thirty years, and lecturing for the past six years. "Now it is time for me to have my respect," she said at the beginning of the lesson. I thought nothing of that, until some students began to walk in late. She bucketed down on them like acid rain, demanding a medical slip the next time anyone was late. Those students trembled silently for the remainder of the class. It was a discomforting feeling, being taught by her, but I learnt something from it all - she is right. How then would we be like as educators? Running late because we slept in? What principal would allow us to retain our jobs if we had this attitude flowing from us when we expect it never to come from our students?

Pre-service teachers need to realise the impact they will have on students. Thus far, I have not learnt about any of it in my university setting, rather in school settings. Children notice everything. Sometimes I forget to notice that.