teaching

Today was the eighth of twelve sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls.

It was a good day. I expected it would be. It happens in all the residencies I teach in detention facilities – a really bad day gets a few kids in trouble and then the next time I come in they do pretty well. I have four sessions left and the last three, I just found out, will be with a substitute in the class. That makes things really tough. Substitutes usually bring out the worst in them.

One girl got out yesterday so we had a new girl today. Pretty low key though she participated right off the bat. That doesn’t usually happen. It’s so hard to look at these kids and not know their stories, what brought them to such a place.

The word for the day was TRUST. Here’s their group poem:

TRUST
Trust Feels like an unbreakable bond, like someone catching you when you fall.
Trust looks like two lovers holding hands and it sounds like best friends gossiping on the phone.
It smells like incense in church.
Trust tastes like leftovers your mom made and tears.

They wrote individual poems about trust and a few of them shared their writing. We did another group poem, a sort of mad lib.

This is the poem
that goes in the place where you have to stay on your toes
that flows because it runs through our veins
because we said so
and when thugs cry at night
happy, alone, solid,
this is the poem
that runs from the ground up to our soul.

Another warm-up we did was envelope poems. I have a stack of envelopes, some have cards in them, some have paper folded up. Some just have a postcard. The envelopes are sealed and they are all different. Different colors, shapes, sizes. Some have stamps. Some don’t. Some look like they’ve been folded in someone’s pocket for a long time and some have words written on the outside. The idea was for them to have written a poem that is inside the envelope. Some of them did pretty well with this. Those that didn’t, well, I think I need to do a better set-up to invite them to write.

I handed out copies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s How Do I Love Thee? I tried to get a discussion going about what they thought meant but that fell flat. I ended up just reading them the analysis. Then we brainstormed various ways you could let someone know you loved them without actually saying the words, “I love you.” They were slow to get started but eventually filled the board. From there I had them write their love poems that never used the words love. Again, only a few girls shared.

I handed out a copy of the poem You Learn (which I have attributed to Jorge Luis Borges) and this poem they felt more able and willing to discuss. They liked it a lot, especially the last line, “with every goodbye you learn.” Then they wrote their own versions of what they had learned and they wrote some marvelous poems. Really good stuff.

I read them the last pages of Hugging the Rock which then lead to a discussion about how come writers don’t make very much money. As I gathered up the folders one I asked one girl if she was doing okay because she didn’t share anything today and she usually does. She said, “I’m okay. But I don’t know what wrong me lately. All of the sudden my poems getting personal and stuck under my skin.”

I told her good. That means you’re a writer now.

Today was the sixth of twelve sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls.

I confess, it was hard to gear up the energy to go back there today. Two bad sessions in a row knocked the gumption right out of me. It’s not that my other sessions have always gone perfectly. There’s always a time you hit the wall but you can still see over it to where you know you’re heading. But that last week left me feeling like I was floundering, unable to give them that undefinable something that is a gift from a teacher to a student, a power that I know comes with being able to voice your feelings.

I prepped hard all day Sunday. I had tons of writing prompts and ideas and lyrics to some of their favorite songs and a bag full of full-sized candy bars.

And oh how they surprised me. It’s not that they suddenly became devoted fans of poetry. It’s that they took chances and engaged with the process of writing. On Friday several of them had asked for one of my prompt cards so they could write some extra poems on their own time. They shared those before we got started today. Then it was time to do a group warm-up on the board. I loved how they all begged for a chance to pick the word for the day. The word they chose was NORMAL and here’s what they came up with.

NORMAL
Normal tastes like oatmeal and water and sometimes like Kool Aid.
It feels dull, boring, like tears or a paper cut ’cause life hurts sometimes.
Normal smells fruity like Mango-Tango and flowers and the air around you. It’s like when you walk into your grandmother’s house and it smells like food.
Normal sounds like your family talking, your favorite song on the radio, my mom.
Normal looks like a boy and a girl in love, a girl and a girl in love, a boy and a boy in love, a drag queen. Normal looks like the girls in here.

From there they went on to write their own poems on the topic of normal. One wrote about how normal for her means getting up early to take care of children that aren’t hers and making sure her mom has something to eat when she comes down from her high. Another wrote about how normal was being molested by her father. I was so proud of the writing they did even though I had to shove my hands in my pockets to keep from handing out hugs.

We talked about various poetic devices in general and then more specifically as it related to the song lyrics they asked me to bring in. And then they wrote their own poems modeled on the songs. They all participated and before I left, most of them had asked for new prompt cards so they could do even more writing on their own time.

What was different this time from the last two times? I don’t know. I was just thrilled for them to have such a good session.

One more thing was different from last week. This time, when I handed out chocolate, they said thank you.

Today was the second of twelve sessions teaching poetry to a group of incarcerated teenage girls. We were missing two girls today so we were a small group of just seven.

When I got there they were just finishing PE and complaining about working out. Two of the girls chose to not get credit rather than do the actual work and I was afraid I would be dealing with the same thing in the class. There was no happy, Hey Miss Susan! or What are we going to do today?

WhenI work with the boys, even from the first day, they are talking to me, asking questions. The boys are usually much less interested in poetry than they are in talking to me. The girls, while all of them may not be interested in poetry, they’d rather do that right now than connect to me. I understand. I’m new. One more person with power over them (they think) or the power to hurt them. It all takes time.

After doing these types of workshops for a while I’ve learned it usually takes 3-4 visits before I feel I’ve made a real connection. And I’m not naive enough to think I connect with each kid. There are always some I don’t reach. I know I can’t save the world. Not even this little corner of it. I can only plant seeds in what I hope is fertile ground.

We did another group poem to start the day. I let someone pick one of my word cards. (Someone always loves to pick a card, any card.) And the word they picked was joy. Here’s the group poem they did.

JOY
Joy smells like chocolate, apple pie, cookies, and pizza. It smells like baby lotion and fresh air after the rain.
Joy feels like butterflies in your stomach, that feeling you get on the roller coaster just before your stomach jumps. It makes you feel like smiling and your heart is racing. You feel like crying and giving hugs.
Joy tastes like Starbursts, Skittles, Jolly Ranchers, fresh-baked cookies for Santa. It tastes Thanksgiving dinner with all your loved ones.
Joy sounds like jingle-bells, oldies in a car downtown and applause from the audience after you just won your Grammy award. When you are climbing a mountain and you finally get to the top and you scream, that’s joy.
Yellow is the color of joy.
Joy looks like Santa and the Easter bunny. It looks monkeys jumping on the bed, no, it looks like someone dancing. Yeah, someone dancing for joy.

All but one of the girls offered up ideas for the poem which was pretty good. I shared a few poems that I liked and tried to get some discussion going but other than a couple of comments, the discussion fell flat. Part of that is they just don’t feel comfortable with me yet and part of that (probably most of it) is that I’m not asking the right questions.

I’ll have to brainstorm more questions for the next set of poems I share. I think my insecurities really ramp up when I ask a question and there is silence. The four other adults in the room heard me but don’t speak up. (In other classes the teacher, probation officer or aides have all spoken up. Not here.) We moved on to what I was thinking of as another warm-up, the I remember poems. I had them brainstorm some things they remembered (recent past and more distant past) with no stipulations on happy or sad memories. I read them a few examples and then let them write.

After ten minutes, everyone was done except for one girl. She was one of the ones not interested in poetry. A bit of a smart aleck. Last visit she was willing to miss getting her fine art credits if it meant she had to write poetry and share what she had written.

I went over to check on her. She said she was writing about a friend she made in elementary school. She paused and then said, “He died last year.”

I asked her if writing it out was helping and she said yes.

We went around the room and everyone else shared their I remember poems. They were good. Better than I think they thought they could be. A few of them surprised the teacher. (I love it when that happens.) I looked over at the girl in the back of the room and asked her if she was done yet. She said no but promised she would finish it if I would just let her write. I nodded. At least she was writing. And she wasn’t mouthing off to stir things up. She bent back over her paper.

I shared Maya Angelou’s poem Life Doesn’t Frighten Me. We talked about fears a little bit and I read some examples of variations of Life Doesn’t Frighten Me that some other students had written. Then I turned them loose to write their own versions. When I checked in on the girl in the back of the room she was hunched even closer to her paper, her nose almost touching her desk. I leaned close and asked her if she was done and she shook her head no. The rest of the class shared their new poems to much snapping and clapping. (Snapping is what they use instead of applause here and in many of the units but try as I might, I can’t seem to get in the habit of snapping instead of clapping.) I finished up by reading a few more pages of Hugging the Rock. I got a few responses to my questions but again, not much. I was getting ready to thank them for their participation in the day when a hand popped up in the back of the room.

“Done! I’m done.” The teacher was surprised but complimented the girl on finishing the assignment when she had a habit of blowing things off. I asked her if she wanted to read it. She shook her head. I asked if she wanted me to read it for her and she said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “Please.”

That girl, that sullen, I don’t want to do anything and I’d rather have an F girl, she wrote THREE PAGES. Both sides. As I read, she curled up into a ball on her chair, pulling her shirt up to cover her face, all but her eyes which stared at the desk. I read about how she remembered her friend that she met when she was in the fourth grade. I read about how she remembered him sticking up for her when things were tough, and how she remembered all the fun they had together. I read about how she remembered when he was changing into a difficult teen and how she consoled him when he broke up with his girlfriend. I read about how she remembered her own life turning upside down, about how her father kicked her in the stomach and how CPS took her away. I read about how she remembered lashing out, running away, spiraling downward. I read about how she remembered this friend, this special best friend, shaking her, telling her to get her crap together because she was better than this.I read about how she remembered being sent from home to home to home until she landed where she is today.

And then I read. . . I read about how she remembered getting a phone call from her cousin last year and how she remembered finding out that this friend, this special best friend that she always knew she could count on, was dead.

When I finished reading there was silence in the room. The author of this powerful piece was still hunched over her desk, tears streaming down her cheeks. Iput my hand on her shoulder and she was shaking. I wanted to pull this young woman into my arms and hold her and let her cry as much as she wanted but of course, I couldn’t do that. I thanked her for the beautiful writing, thanked her for sharing her precious memory with us.

The room exploded in applause.

This is why I write poetry. This is why I teach poetry.

When we let it, poetry heals.

Today was second session of trying to teach poetry to a group of at-risk teens. I use the word trying on purpose. If you read yesterday’s post about the first session you know that I was scheduled for one group and then moved to a second class. That class actually did some good work yesterday but today they put another bunch of students in, 7 new ones I think, and most of them were of the same attitude as those in the first day’s class.

In other words, it was not a good day.

I decided to repeat things from the first day, teaching them a basic drill of learning to describe something with the five senses and hoping to encourage them to think outside of the box. I’ve used this drill before as a warm-up and eventually the kids get the hang of it knowing that they are going to have to start the session with taking a word like PROUD or KIND or HOPE and then stretching their imagination to describe it.

We did a group poem on the board and then I asked them to try it on their own. I passed out a sheet of what I call power words, positive words that I hope they can learn how to use to describe themselves. Most couldn’t grasp the idea of picking a word. I was flexible. Pick any word I said. A good word. Not a negative one. For a few that was enough to at least try to get started. I walked around the room trying to help but for the most part they ignored me, turning their back on me to talk to someone else. But a few wrote. A few lines. That was all.

I took in candy to reward the good behavior but they turned their nose up at it.

There was one student who was stirring things up with everyone around him, poking at his neighbors and refusing to write. I tried to talk to him. I told him how the guys in jail had written some great things and how I was looking forward to reading the great things he would write too. And he told me being in jail was easier because they had no choice. He did no work at all, just tried to incite everyone around him to act up.

I didn’t say it out loud but I had to agree with him. There are consequences for their actions or inactions in jail. Here, there were none.

What took us more than half an hour to do today would have been done in less than 10 minutes in any of my other classes. I spent more time asking kids not to talk or not to hit each other than I did teaching. When the session was through I felt like it had all been a waste of my time. I asked the teacher for any tips on how to work with these kids and she said she had none. All she could offer was that she would be there to step in if needed.

On the way home I thought about the other classes I’ve taught and how there is always a spark, somewhere. That one child you can see waiting for you to open the door for them. I don’t feel it here. I don’t see hope here and that is the saddest thing I can possibly type.

We will give it one more try on Thursday. I’ve asked them to consider hand-picking kids for the class, kids that want to be there, kids who have earned the right to participate in something special. I’m told that’s what they have done in the past they just didn’t, for some reason, do it for me.

I’ve never turned away from a class like this but depending on how things go at the next session, I might just have to accept that this time isn’t the right time, for this group of kids.