Word: poem
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Koch found an interesting approach to the metaphor poems. He taught several different grades ranging from first through sixth. At first he inspired the kids by reading an adult poem--including D.H. Lawrence, Theodore Roethke, John Ashberry, and Dyland Thomas--but as his collection of kids' poems increased he would read in one class poems written in another. He noticed that P.S.61 was establishing its own literary tradition--an institutional salon of sorts. Thus a misspelled word triggered Koch's introduction to a metaphor. A child wrote "A swam of bees," instead of a "swarm." A first grader's poem...
...because it provides welcome relief from required subjects." Because it is a group-activity it "belies self-consciousness or self-doubt." And he believes it to be "competitive in a mild and exhilarating way." Koch thinks that a teacher can overcome a child's fear of writing a bad poem or being criticized or ridiculed by reading poems aloud stressing their intrinsic value, and withholding the writer's name. Never change a line, says Koch, just ask the writer what he meant. He suggest going around the classroom "encouraging good lines and discouraging wayward ideas." In his second book...
...have done so well if, in sitting at the same desk all day, every day, Miss Blunt would ask them to take out their pencils and paper and from 11:45 to 12:00 (right before lunch when they're all dying to go out and play) write a poem...
...school I visited, the kids--mostly blacks--were encouraged to use the library, read to each other, and explore their own interests: they were hardly ever required to sit quietly in their seats and listen. "Group participation" wasn't apparent in the collaborative poems, certainly not so much as the sense of coercion. Encouragement for an individual line, even if I never mentioned the name of its author, still caused discouragement. A kid was bright enough to know that if didn't like them. Some, when asked to write a poem refused out right, and others expressed their rebellion...
Rita was the subject of several abusive wish-poems because, in the true spirit of writing "anything," she expressed her desire for all of the boys in the class to jump in the lake. I didn't let anybody know about Rita, but ripples of rumor turned into waves of discontent: "I wish Rita with/her fat self shut her/garbage mouth and/turn into a fat white rat." Now I attempted to curb this bickering with a wish poem containing a color and a T.V. show. Most of these kids spend a lot of time watching television; some of them are allowed...