Teaching Poetry
What is poetry? I run a creative writing class at my school, and it is fairly easy to explain different genres to students. We have covered horror, fantasy, sci-fi, western, sci-fi western, satire, and many others. However it is difficult to explain to students what poetry is. It should be easy right? At least, this teacher has found it difficult. This small TED Ed explains "what makes a poem... a poem." It does so eloquently and with great pith. I hope you enjoy the video and perhaps gain some inspiration about it.
Music in Class
Many of my students use music to help them read, write, and study in class. However, their choice of music is overly aggressive hip-hop with quite a bit of rapping (I would call it yelling, but that's my opinion). Is music better for studying? I would say it all depends, and this article by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel would agree with me. It debunks the Mozart Effect, claiming that studying with classical music increases intelligence.
Personally, I find that using instrumental, non-aggressive, soothing forms of hip-hop helps to establish a calming class environment. I personally turn toward subgenres like chillhop, lo-fi hip-hop, trip hop, and jazz hop. When students are just getting up in the morning and reading in class, it helps establish that this is a calm classroom. When students work together, it serves well as background noise, and still seems to establish the same. Classical music is fantastic, but I'm not running a prestigious boys prep school, and if that were the case, I would go full Dead Poets Society on everyone.
Manifesto for the Arts (**Explicit Content**)
Mr. Saul Williams is a spoken word poet on a whole different level than us humans. Indeed I believe the wisdom he expouts in his performance poetry is handed down from something on high. This poem, "Coded Language," is more of a manifesto, where Williams claims that we will no longer settle for anything less than amazing when creating art. I let my students listen to this with great intention, that as artists, they should not settle for anything that is less than beautiful and done with purpose. More interesting still are the annotated lyrics found here on Genius.com It gives me chills every time.
What is poetry? I run a creative writing class at my school, and it is fairly easy to explain different genres to students. We have covered horror, fantasy, sci-fi, western, sci-fi western, satire, and many others. However it is difficult to explain to students what poetry is. It should be easy right? At least, this teacher has found it difficult. This small TED Ed explains "what makes a poem... a poem." It does so eloquently and with great pith. I hope you enjoy the video and perhaps gain some inspiration about it.
Music in Class
Many of my students use music to help them read, write, and study in class. However, their choice of music is overly aggressive hip-hop with quite a bit of rapping (I would call it yelling, but that's my opinion). Is music better for studying? I would say it all depends, and this article by Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel would agree with me. It debunks the Mozart Effect, claiming that studying with classical music increases intelligence.
Personally, I find that using instrumental, non-aggressive, soothing forms of hip-hop helps to establish a calming class environment. I personally turn toward subgenres like chillhop, lo-fi hip-hop, trip hop, and jazz hop. When students are just getting up in the morning and reading in class, it helps establish that this is a calm classroom. When students work together, it serves well as background noise, and still seems to establish the same. Classical music is fantastic, but I'm not running a prestigious boys prep school, and if that were the case, I would go full Dead Poets Society on everyone.
Manifesto for the Arts (**Explicit Content**)
Mr. Saul Williams is a spoken word poet on a whole different level than us humans. Indeed I believe the wisdom he expouts in his performance poetry is handed down from something on high. This poem, "Coded Language," is more of a manifesto, where Williams claims that we will no longer settle for anything less than amazing when creating art. I let my students listen to this with great intention, that as artists, they should not settle for anything that is less than beautiful and done with purpose. More interesting still are the annotated lyrics found here on Genius.com It gives me chills every time.