A Man and His Mouse

"These kids are getting bored of us," I thought in my head as I tapped my fingers over my laptop keys, patiently waiting for an idea to hit me like a ton of bricks. Alejandra and I were getting the same lines of poetry as the week before from the students, at least that's what it seemed like. Prompts like "write a poem on what you're grateful for" and "write a poem on hope" gave the students a chance to not try very hard with their creative minds. Poems came out of them will the least amount of effort. Most of them went like, "I am grateful for..." and continued with a list. Writing down enough lines so we assumed they were finished. We needed to challenge them; make them really think and be creative and different. I could see it in their eyes that the last thing they wanted to do was write a poem, but having two college students run the class is better than what they usually do in class, right?

Ahhh YouTube, my favorite pastime for when I'm dodging the tasks that need to be done. Pointless videos numbing my brain for a half hour before I close the browser and decide to open my Word doc just to stare at it some more. But wait. Music videos are cool and all, with Nicki Minaj bouncing all over the screen, but what about something that keeps you invested in a story. Something you can expand off of and maybe get inspired by. Short films. I love short films.

I started my brainstorming for this lesson plan wanting to incorporate animals and maybe thinking like animals mostly because I was getting bored reading poems about people. They all sounded the same because we weren't giving them the opportunity to create a story or use their imagination. So I started looking through short films on YouTube... with animals. There was a lot of them but I was specifically looking for one that showed love for someone or something else. I wanted the students to express love as someone else through poetry.

I started watching a French short film about a mouse and it was perfect. An old man watched as a small mouse climbed up his counter for a small piece of cheese he had left. Grabbing the cheese allowed the cardboard box trap to fall over him, making the old man dance in excitement. But after hearing the mouse cry in the dark box surrounding him, the man had a change of heart. He brought the mouse down to his basement where he poked holes in the box for him to breath, and started to offer him a crumb. The mouse was mad however, because he was still not over the man trapping him in a box. But by the end of the story, the mouse climbs up on the man's shoulder while he's asleep and takes a crumb off of his shirt. The man, who was pretending to sleep, smiles to himself because of his new found friend.

This short film gave me a great opportunity for a unique prompt which was to write a poem about realizing you love something, in the perspective of an animal. The 8th grader's first reaction was confusion. For some reason they couldn't grasp onto the concept of talking as if you were an animal. Many of their poems started off by describing an animal, but I quickly tried to explain more. It took giving them examples for them to finally understand, but once they understood they didn't know where to start.

I tried to make them picture in their head a dog, maybe sitting outside on a shaded porch. Maybe you could start the poem by describing how the dog feels in the shade, while pretending it's you. "My tail wagging with the breeze," I tried to explain. I didn't expect the students to have such a hard time with this concept, but it made me realize that these are just the obstacles you'll have to go through sometimes to get to the creative part of their minds. Activities like this seem sparse in schools and it's a shame. I've realized that even giving, let's say, a middle school classroom a fun writing activity to do, they still treat it like a chore that needs to get done by the end of the class time. A goal I had for this class was to make them realize the hour we spend together should be enjoyed. I didn't want the poetry prompts to seem like a chore or a homework assignment, I wanted them to have freedom and explore the unique art that they all can create.

Eighth graders love Fortnite. It didn't occur to me that 13-year-olds have the same interests as 23-year-olds until I realized just like college dudes, middle schooler's lives revolve around getting that dub (AKA "W" or "win"). While brainstorming for our poems, almost every class session leads to one of the boys yelling out, "Can I write about Fortnite?!" And of course I say yes, but for poetry sake kid, make it poetic and meaningful. Talking in the perspective of an animal made one of the boys in the class automatically think of the only animal in the game of Fortnite, a Loot Llama. Me, only observing this multiplayer survival game on a PS4, asked to clarify what this was resulting in the boy laughing in my face because I obviously wasn't past level 40.

Initially, a Loot Llama is an animal you can come across in the game that can give you a bunch of "loot" (AKA weapons and survival tools), and are apparently pretty rare. This definitely wasn't what I was expecting when I asked the students to write a poem in the perspective of an animal, but they were finally enjoying themselves and creating their own story. The Loot Llama boy for the first time was actually excited for me to pick up his paper to see what he came up with. And to make things more fun I advised everyone to draw their animal in their poem when they were finished, so I could imagine it with them.

"Hey I am a loot llama, I give heals, mats, explosives, and transportation. I am rare to find, only 4 in the game. They break for materials but it's fine, 'cause I'm hurt anyway, that's life. I am a loot llama."

Of course most of the poems weren't about Fortnite; earlier in my lesson I gave them several examples of what they could potentially use as an animal or scenario. Alejandra and I realized we may have dropped too many things on the students at once. First with writing a poem about realizing you love something, like what was shown in the short film, and then switching it up by doing it in the perspective of an animal. This got confusing so many of the students only focused on talking like an animal instead of sticking to the theme of the prompt. In the end it didn't matter, because they had so much fun trying to imagine being inside an animal's mind while making it sort of funny along the way.

While reflecting on the problem of the prompt getting lost in translation, I realized it would've been helpful to lead the students in a poem that could be related to what they should've been thinking about. Alejandra and I got so caught up in finding some sort of media to keep the students engaged like music or a short movie, that we overlooked the fact that we should've been showing the students what true beautiful poetry looks like. If I were to go back to this prompt with this same classroom, I would recite Shirley Geok-lin Lim's poem, "Learning to love America."

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Learning to love America

By: Shirley Geok-lin Lim

because it has no pure products

because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline

because the water of the ocean is cold

and because land is better than ocean

because I say we rather than they

because I live in California

I have eaten fresh artichokes

and jacaranda bloom in April and May

because my sense have caught up with my body

my breath with the air it swallows

my hunger with my mouth

because I walk barefoot in my house

because I have nursed my son at my breast

because he is a strong American boy

because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is

because he answers I don't know

because to have a son is to have a country

because my son will bury me here

because countries are in our blood and we bleed them

because it is late and too late to change my mind

because it is time.

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To sum up, the students really enjoyed this prompt but with much thinking I have a lot I would've done differently. Maybe I would've done this prompt in two parts, with an introduction poem to get the feel for writing in the perspective of something or someone else, and then for the second part, diving into a more in depth idea like creating a story or a certain feeling for this character. The main mistake was not providing the students with a more concrete example, whether it be a poem somewhat related to our prompt or a poem that I put together. Either way, the students wrote some great poems and I enjoyed reading every single one of them. Now here's a poem to take us home; one that stood out to me and made me feel proud of what I'm bringing out of these students.

"I am a spoon billed sandpiper. I migrate every summer from Southeast Asia to the Arctic. On my way, I take resting stops at mudflats where thousands of other shorebirds also stop. When I have ate enough, I continue my migration North to the Arctic."

Nicki Minaj...and Poetry?

I know what you're thinking. Nicki Minaj, a poet? Ha! But to put things in comparison, rapping is sort of like poetry. In some cases, it is! They're both structured the same way, with stanzas and line breaks and spacing; what determines if a piece is poetry or rap is the way a person reads it aloud. For my second poetry workshop for the specific 8th-grade classroom I was teaching, Alejandra and I really wanted to grab their attention from the very start. So taking the advice the 8th-grade teacher gave us for our first workshop, which was to find a song and treat it as poetry, we decided to use Nicki Minaj as an example.

What I didn't remember from being in middle school, is that the school's atmosphere is rigorous on what is exposed to them. It makes total sense, but sometimes when you've been surrounded by college students 24/7, certain things might be overlooked. In the music video, "Moment 4 Life" by Nicki Minaj ft. Drake, there's a scene towards the end where Nicki and Drake are at a party with cocktails in hand. I got an email back from the teacher, not about the video, but about the lyrics. She was concerned that the line, "Put ya drinks up," was referring to drinking alcohol. Technically it was, but the real message the song is trying to say is that they're toasting in celebration. This explanation put the teacher at ease, but I still felt like I was pushing the limits.

The teacher also addressed the line, "It's a celebration every time we link up," which she thought was referring to "hooking up." I can see why someone might misinterpret that, but I assured her that "linking up" is a new slang people made up to mean planning a time to meet someone or hang out with them. The reason why I'm explaining this confusion is because you can never be too careful when choosing content for a classroom. Middle school especially. The students are growing, learning new things, and tend to enjoy making things sound sexual. The teacher was doing a great job at breaking down every word and phrase, just in case.

So, the first thing we did was play the music video. Surprisingly being a Nicki Minaj video, everything was very modest and appropriate. If it were a music video from 2018, that would be a little different. The students got a kick out of the video since everyone knew the song but might not have seen the video that came with it (including me).

Our class isn't very outspoken unless it's towards peers at their table. It got pretty difficult when we wanted volunteers to read their poems aloud, or the poem that we brought for the workshop. It took the teacher to announce that we were going to go around the whole room and have everyone read their favorite line that they had written. Everyone would moan and be very quiet when reading as if they were embarrassed by their work. I think this was our main problem. I have yet to find a way to encourage the students that their work is amazing, even if they only were able to write one line.

We chose just one stanza from the rapping part of the song and printed it out for everyone in the class. In respect to saving paper, we had them write their own poem on the back for every workshop. It was also more efficient that they had it in front of them rather than just on a powerpoint because we led them in discussions of what they thought the poem meant. We asked them to underline words or phrases that they liked the best and even the ones that they didn't understand so we could make sure everyone had a clear understanding of "Maybe the Author is Trying to Say..." (MATS).

Our prompt was to write a poem on gratitude, based on Nicki Minaj's message, "I wish I could have this moment for life." The students didn't have a hard time with this one, except a lot of the poems they wrote sounded the same. We tried to boost their confidence in creativity by giving not only the question, "What are you grateful for?," but "Did you thank your bed for letting you sleep last night?" We got giggles throughout the classroom, but that's what I was hoping for. We wanted to read poems that were original, something out of the box because we could already tell that most of the poems were going to say how grateful they were for their friends and family. And we were right.

During this workshop, the students were very quiet and focused on writing. It could have been because they enjoyed the simplicity of the prompt and knew exactly what to write, but then I realized what it really was. I had worked in this classroom before for poetry, with a different group of kids. But on certain days there's a teaching assistant that sits in for the whole period, working with the students that are behind in their work. And let me tell ya', she's pretty intimidating. I assume the students are scared too because I notice a big difference in their behavior when she's there and when she's not. I wouldn't say the students are completely out of control of regular days, but I do notice more talking going on amongst the table groups. But not today. Everyone's head was pressed down into their paper, scared of that deadly glance the teaching assistant gives if she sees anything going on.

Even though the concentration towards writing their poems was high, the workshop had the least amount of questions being asked or the want for advice. But that was only because the students kept their poems very simple and short, straight to the point. That's not exactly a successful workshop in my eyes. But it was too late. Once we went around the classroom to share their favorite line they had written, they sounded almost all the same. "I'm grateful for my family," "I'm grateful for my mom," "I'm grateful for my friends." I felt like I had failed. I knew the students didn't see the difference, but I had given them a prompt that didn't allow them to create a story or describe something in detail. I vowed to myself that the next week when I brainstormed a poetry prompt, it was going to be creative and a little challenging, so the students needed to think and plan out their poem. From then on I had to remind myself not to allow them to take the easy way out, because in middle school that sadly seems to be the norm.

How I Got Here...

A lot of young students think poetry is boring, or it all sounds the same. At least I did. I always thought poetry never made sense, I never knew what the poet was trying to say. Yeah, trees are all beautiful with branches and twigs and leaves. So what? It wasn't until taking a poetry workshop during my first year of college that I finally got it.

I had a professor who had the spitting image of a hippie sitting in the grass along UCSB's lagoon, no shoes, writing on a small pad of paper about the bird that just landed next to him. He took us there, places I hadn't been along the lagoon, places that used to be paths but are barely in use now. As a class, we walked in silence. We just followed, listening to the chirping of every different bird hiding in the trees and stopping at every flower or plant that caught our eye. He called it a field trip, so it was acceptable to ditch the classroom we were supposed to be found in and go on an adventure. We finally made our way to the very end of the lagoon, next to UCSB's Marine Operations Facility, where they apparently have sea wildlife in tanks that you can touch. I have yet to go. Instead, we sat in a small grass field across from it, shaded with magnolia trees in bloom, and took out our notepads.

As a student here at UC Santa Barbara's beautiful campus right along the beach, I don't think I would have gone out of my way to find an isolated spot in the deep of nature to write poetry. But then I started to, all the time. I walk to the water's edge just around our campuses lagoon, in between classes just to sit and write something. Sometimes it wasn't a whole poem, but I wouldn't have gotten that small spark of inspiration otherwise, from sitting inside a building somewhere on campus surrounded by laptops and phones. Lying in the grass or sand became my new motivation to write.

You know something special has happened when being in a class or having a certain professor can change your lifestyle and even the way you look at life. Not soon after I decided to join the Writing and Literature major, I realized that poetry should be something everyone should write, or at least read. And not soon after that, I promised myself that I would share the art form to the ones I knew turned up their nose to it the most. Kids. Elementary school, junior highers, high schoolers. For me, it was probably the last thing I wanted to read when I was 13, and there was no confidence in my mind that I would be able to write one on my own. But I've learned that everyone is capable, you just have to open your mind a little.

Another poetry professor I took about a year later, introduced me to the exact thing I wanted to accomplish. Sharing the beauty of poetry to kids. This professor ended up being my advisor and mentor, which I was allowed to pick for myself. It was an easy choice. His classes not only pushed his students to write their own poetry, but we were obligated to lead poetry workshops in middle school classrooms. I have taken four courses (going on five) with him; four of them having the component of volunteering at the schools.

It got easier over time but let me tell ya', I used to be deathly afraid of speaking in front of a class. Especially in front of middle schoolers. At first, I thought the students being younger than me would make it easy; I have authority, and I'm in charge. Wrong. When I read our first poem we brought aloud, my voice wouldn't stop shaking, and I felt so silly. I had a partner by my side, as I always did, so I guess it could've been worse. I prayed almost every time we stepped into the classroom that my partner would lead most of it because my heart was beating too fast. Now by the third classroom I've been in, I've never felt so comfortable in my life.

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My most recent partner, Alejandra, was great to work with. Based on just the first day in the 8th-grade classroom, I knew we worked together really well to make things happen with those kids. Sometimes it's tough to get the age group I've been working with to participate to their fullest, and even harder to get them to share their work. It's the age of changes-- puberty, emotions, fitting in, and overall searching for who they really are as people. It's a complicated time, I remember. But I see it as a little obstacle you can get past no problem with a bit of creativity and human interest. I've learned this age group only likes to participate if you're very personal with them, making certain that they know we understand. We understand their interests, we know what they want to talk about and what they don't want to talk about, and we sort of push those boundaries to make it interesting. If they don't want to share, we'll find a way to make them share. If they have little motivation to even write a line of a poem, you best believe we'll find a way to make them interested in creating at least something we can read. Many times I've gotten a word at the top of the page and a small doodle of what they were thinking about while brainstorming, but never got to the point of writing a poem. And I think that's great. They gave me something to look at and translate into what they might've wanted to say in a poem, and it gives me a goal for next time to guide them in that direction.

Alejandra and I's first day in the 8th-grade classroom we chose, mostly based on how our schedules looked for the academic quarter and which time slot worked best, went all as planned. We were asked to send the teacher our lesson plan a day in advance so she could look it over and make sure it was appropriate, and most the time they were perfect. Our first lesson plan though was more than perfect. We were given the advice to use a rap song, from the teacher, for the students to see poetry as a form of a rap, rather than their normal perspective of what a poem is. Alejandra threw out the idea of using the song "Glory" by John Legend ft. Common, a song featured in the movie "Selma." We decided it was a great idea because it had a rapping component and the message through the song was very uplifting and pressed on a crucial issue, being discrimination and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Martin Luther King Jr. Day had passed about a week before, and without knowing it, the classes lesson plan for that past week was touching on all of these issues and the history behind the holiday. The teacher was thrilled that our lesson plans were very closely matching up.

On our first day, we spent about 15 minutes introducing ourselves and explaining what our goal was with these poetry workshops. We told our majors and what types of classes we take and more specifically how poetry changed our lives for the better and how it opened new gateways into our own creativity. Like any other middle school classroom, you're never sure if they're actually paying attention or if they're having secret conversations with their friends at their table, but you hope they got at least something from your speech.

Most of the students said they hadn't seen the movie "Selma," so we gave them a brief summary of what it was about and proceeded to play the music video. I think it actually made them more interested in watching since they hadn't seen it, versus them getting bored and paying little attention to it. Alejandra and I chose a few stanzas from the rap part of the song and had it printed for every student. After the video was over, we read the stanzas as more of a poem, showing the students that even music has a poetic quality that they might not have seen. We asked for volunteers to read it themselves, but that never seems to have any brave souls.

We then used the teacher's strategy that she uses for every other thing they read together in the classroom. She calls it "MATS" (Maybe the Author is Trying to Say...), and they finish the phrase with their own representation of what they think the piece is saying. After giving them a few minutes to think, we asked around the room and mostly got the response, "Discrimination is bad" or "Treat everyone the same."

Our prompt for that day was "Hope." Our goal was to keep it easy for the first workshop; very open-ended so they weren't overwhelmed that they didn't know how to write a real poem. So we didn't push them to write a poem about hope in the same way the song did, because not everyone can completely relate to the overall issue it was presenting. We gave them examples of what type of hope they could write about. What do you hope to do after school? What do you hope for yourself or your friends or family? What do you hope for tomorrow? Keeping the prompt personal, I think, was more productive rather than them writing something very general or bland. We wanted to hear stories and opinions and feelings. And that's what we got!

But before they started putting pencil to paper, we still got some confused stares after giving the prompt. And we prepared for that. We assumed that most of the kids wouldn't know where to even start when writing their own poem. Students tend to wander to the example, "Roses are red, violets are blue..." and that included even me when I was younger. I mean, what much more was there? So we started off with our first tip: IT DOESN'T NEED TO RHYME. Or better yet, don't make it rhyme. It creates too many boundaries, especially for students who don't even know what to write in the first place. Our second tip was that they don't need fancy, sophisticated words to make the poem sound good. I know from experience that using words you wouldn't regularly use doesn't make it sound better, it might even just make it sound silly.

Thirdly, we suggested they write their poem about them. It makes it a lot easier to tell a story when you were the one to experience it, and who doesn't want to talk about themselves? Everyone has a unique story they can call their own, and we let them know that we want to hear them all! We started small, asking for only five lines of a poem, but many still couldn't think of even that many. But we made sure they knew writing a good poem takes time; all we wanted was a carefree, no boundary poem that they didn't need to spend too much time thinking about. I think the student's main problem was that they were thinking too hard, they didn't allow their pencil to write down whatever came to their head. But we continuously worked on this throughout our workshops.

Overall our first poetry workshop went great. The teacher urged us to call on every student afterward and have them read their favorite line they had written. They all hated the pressure, but we thought it was so fun. At the end, we collected all the poems so we could provide them with feedback on their work by the next week. Nothing critical, just motivating words and encouragement that their first attempt at writing a poem was beyond our expectations.