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.