After a long and stressful day, I sat down at my desk to grade some papers tonight. Not just any papers. The poetry chapbooks that my creative writing students had worked on.
Throughout the poetry writing unit, I exposed my students to a wide variety of poetic forms. (I used several of the ones found on www.shadowpoetry.org) Some days I dragged them kicking and screaming so to speak into a poetic form, but most of them attempted each of the 15 forms.
In the computer lab, they worked to complete the formal printed version of each poem. They had to reread and fix the problems in the forms, come up with a workable title, and make sure the type of poem was identified. They had to also accompany the poem with a picture. Then they had to create a title for the book, a table of contents, and a forward that explained the view of poetry they had and what the poems meant to them.
When the pages were printed out, we returned to the classroom to punch holes and make covers and use the Japanese binding technique I had learned in a workshop this past summer.
After a day where I felt I had no one listening, I read how students had found a way to express themselves through poetry, had learned about their viewpoint of the world, and had come to appreciate poetry and the poets who create it.
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