Poetry in FYC

So I had my students write poems in my first-year comp class.

I'd never done such a thing in 12-plus years of teaching comp. Mainly because I'm no poet myself. But also because there's already so much (other really cool stuff) to do in FYC.

This summer, I took a class affiliated with the National Writing Project, and we read the incredible book Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching about Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word by Linda Christensen. She's a former high-school English teacher who writes about creating and implementing a curriculum that works toward social change while also honoring and drawing on students' stories and backgrounds. In a chapter called "Where I'm From: Inviting Students' Lives into the Classroom," Christensen gives an entire lesson plan for helping students write "I am From" poems, modeled after a George Ella Lyon poem. My classmates and I (and apparently other Writing Project participants across the country this summer) wrote our own "I am From" poems. And loved the experience.

So, my current FYC students are working on a narrative-collage assignment, and I thought the "I am From" thing would work well as a kind of prewriting activity. I introduced the activity on Friday, and they brought their poems today. In Christensen fashion, we did a read-around. It was lovely. Delightful. Students were making all kinds of connections with each other, talking about their childhood memories of Big Wheels and Mario Brothers and Rainbow Brite. One student wrote about growing up in Ghana. One wrote about being a drain on his family's finances because he was born with a heart defect and required numerous surgeries.

Aside from helping us build a sense of community (we're only in the second full week of the quarter), the poems offered a chance to talk about specific detail, imagery, description--things they'll need for their narratives. One student prefaced the reading of his poem with an apology for using words and names--like "McCheever Street"--that wouldn't be familiar to the rest of us; of course, that opened a space for us to talk about how specific details do make the unfamiliar familiar.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from one of today's poems--one that the class especially responded to. It's by Jose. (Used with his permission):

I come from bike rides and soccer games,
From a park with hills of red ants
Where a dead horse was picked up by the police
As we sat and watched.

I come from behind that park
Where falling from a bike and scraping my knee
Invited a man to steal a nine-year-old's bike
And my father recovered it for the sake of a young child's peace of mind.

I come from swimming with frogs in a green water pool,
And getting stuck in the mud at the bottom of a lake with no water.
I come from drinking champagne with 12 grapes that turn to wishes,
And enjoying the company of the family I see once a year.

I come from half a dozen apartments where you can never be alone
If you have the image of the mother of the son of God.
I come from lighting candles for her on the street
And praying and fasting for her son.

I come from several walks on the snow and feeling my ears freeze.
I come from several midnight escapes
That would always lead to my bedroom
Where I catch myself become someone else.

(After a quick google search, I discovered there's tons of stuff out there about using George Ella Lyon's poem as a starter poem. Here's one interesting take on having students write "I am From" poems in middle-school literature classes.)