Tunnell & Jacobs - Poetry

I, as a teacher, am a little tired of being blamed for people's unwillingness to read and children's learning to dislike poetry. By third grade, it seems to me that many children dislike lots of things. They dislike having to get up and go to school at a certain time. They dislike having to be serious about learning when, as a preschooler, everything was in play format. Some jump into to the challenge of school because they either want to learn, or because they want to please their parents or some other adult or even themselves. But many, unfortunately, would prefer it to be a non-thinking easy thing. As the volume of knowledge in the world increases expotentially, we are faced with more and more expectations as well as learning to be done and yet, the same amount of time in a lifetime (well, maybe a few years more). So, what do we do? We've seen and read stories of Thomas Alva Edison kicked out of school and learning on his own while he worked on the train (oops, can't do that, can't work, children's laws), Albert Einstein who was so smart they thought he couldn't learn at all, Theodore Roosevelt, who because of asthma stayed home and followed his own desires to learn which were enormous because apparently he had many things available to him. Maybe, we should all be at home just doing whatever and watching some people come to the top of the pile.

The trouble is, most of us would not come to the top. School may be hard. Life may be hard. Teachers may ask us to do things we don't like to do in ways we feel is stupid. I remember the aha I had when I finally figured out how that sentence diagraming helped me understand meaning and construct meaning for myself. I assure you, that didn't happen in seventh grade.

So then, what is my point about poetry? Tunnel & Jacobs talk about the "natural affinity" children have for poetry before they come to school because of their love for Mother Goose and nursery rhymes. Is that a "natural affinity" for poetry or for the pleasure that comes when they are played with and laughed with? I suspect that teachers do, as people do, like some forms of poetry...the kind that makes them laugh (Shel Silverstein...Jack Prelutsky) or cry, but find it hard to explain to kids why when they are writing paragraphs, they must indent and then continue the thought on the next line rather than write the sentences short enough to fit on one line with another sentence on the next line, etc...with maybe numbers in front like a list.
Then, the teacher has them write poetry and tries to explain that only certain words go on certain lines for a specific reason. The kid is going..."huh?" It's supposed to follow each other. They don't hear it that way...they hear it flow as though it were a paragraph.

On page 83 a better approach is defined. "The key is consistent, unfettered exposure to poetry by an enthusiastic teacher who begins mixing light verse and more artistic poetry." May I add that it is heard and seen as heard and repeated and enjoyed (or not). I know for sure that some children jump the tracks and take off because their natural inclination is toward music and sound and they already have a wide and diverse vocabulary. Perhaps, if the expectation is that we will all do it, hard or not, and come to a pleasureable understanding of it, then kids will willingly undertake whatever the teacher has to offer. I have a whole section in my classroom of poetry. We create poetry books every year that are not as closed as Tunnel & Jacobs would see, but the issue is finding interesting, odd, delightful words, putting them to the rhythmic sounds of music and having fun doing it. In the process, there is much work going on. Work is not bad. Doing something you can't do well is not always bad. Just look at me...I'm actually blogging on a computer. Unreal.

Teacher's delight
Not to fight
Encourage.

Teacher's strength
Not to demean
But encourage.

Authors...
We need to
hear
Encouragement.

Otherwise...
why would
we
stay?