(no subject)
Today my 8th grade Language Arts class studied this poem. I liked this one and chose it to study because it reminded me a bit of Iowa where I just was and it also reminded me of Albuquerque where winter doesn't necessarily mean snow.
__________
The rains begin. This is no summer rain,
Dropping the blotches of wet on the dusty road:
This rain is slow, without thunder or hurry:
There is plenty of time--there will be months of rain,
Lost in the hills, the old gray farmhouses
Hump their backs against it, and smoke from their chimneys
Struggles though weighted air. The sky is sodden with water,
It sags against the hills, and the wild geese,
Wedge-flying, brush the heaviest cloud with their wings.
The farmers move unhurried. The wood is in,
They hay piles have long been in, the barn lofts piled
Up to the high windows, dripping yellow straws.
There will be plenty of time now, time that will smell of fires,
And drying leather, and catalogues, and apple cores.
The farmers clean their boots, and whittle, and drowse.
___________
When the 8th graders got a chance to tell me their thoughts I got this:
"This is boring"
"I don't get it"
"Why can't we study something interesting?"
"This doesn't apply to me"
"This doesn't mean anything"
"Talking about the weather is pointless."
Well, I couldn't have disagreed more. Sometimes I feel like me and my students are not all that different. Sometimes it seems like we are alien to each other. Sometimes it is very hard to teach when something I feel personally connected to is not received well in class...
I tried to explain the importance and value of broadening their experiences and perspectives, especially through literature--trying to understand the lives of people they will never meet. They just kept complaining and so I gave up on disecting the poem with them and gave them their routine writing assignment to start on.
For the whole school year, when my 8th graders have been relatively well behaved during the week, we analyze a song/it's lyrics on Friday morning and then they have to do a writing assignment about it. The first song of the year I chose and since then we have analyzed songs that they chose and it had been going pretty well. I was hoping that starting by analyzing literature (song lyrics) that are familiar to them would be a good starting point to jump into poetry from, but apparently not.
Maybe this poem was too much too soon. Maybe they are just too ego-centric as middle schoolers to care about the lives and environments of people they never met in places they've never been and it's poor educational psychology to expect them to. They had to hand in a bit of writing that tells how they personally know winter is on it's way. I hope they surprise me when I read it. I hope only the outspoken students were the ones so against even having to read about such a topic.
Generally, the students have been wild and loud and argumentative all week. I am sort of glad it is Friday evening finally, but now I have to do all the things I put off for the weekend. The to do list is long. Ugh.
__________
The rains begin. This is no summer rain,
Dropping the blotches of wet on the dusty road:
This rain is slow, without thunder or hurry:
There is plenty of time--there will be months of rain,
Lost in the hills, the old gray farmhouses
Hump their backs against it, and smoke from their chimneys
Struggles though weighted air. The sky is sodden with water,
It sags against the hills, and the wild geese,
Wedge-flying, brush the heaviest cloud with their wings.
The farmers move unhurried. The wood is in,
They hay piles have long been in, the barn lofts piled
Up to the high windows, dripping yellow straws.
There will be plenty of time now, time that will smell of fires,
And drying leather, and catalogues, and apple cores.
The farmers clean their boots, and whittle, and drowse.
___________
When the 8th graders got a chance to tell me their thoughts I got this:
"This is boring"
"I don't get it"
"Why can't we study something interesting?"
"This doesn't apply to me"
"This doesn't mean anything"
"Talking about the weather is pointless."
Well, I couldn't have disagreed more. Sometimes I feel like me and my students are not all that different. Sometimes it seems like we are alien to each other. Sometimes it is very hard to teach when something I feel personally connected to is not received well in class...
I tried to explain the importance and value of broadening their experiences and perspectives, especially through literature--trying to understand the lives of people they will never meet. They just kept complaining and so I gave up on disecting the poem with them and gave them their routine writing assignment to start on.
For the whole school year, when my 8th graders have been relatively well behaved during the week, we analyze a song/it's lyrics on Friday morning and then they have to do a writing assignment about it. The first song of the year I chose and since then we have analyzed songs that they chose and it had been going pretty well. I was hoping that starting by analyzing literature (song lyrics) that are familiar to them would be a good starting point to jump into poetry from, but apparently not.
Maybe this poem was too much too soon. Maybe they are just too ego-centric as middle schoolers to care about the lives and environments of people they never met in places they've never been and it's poor educational psychology to expect them to. They had to hand in a bit of writing that tells how they personally know winter is on it's way. I hope they surprise me when I read it. I hope only the outspoken students were the ones so against even having to read about such a topic.
Generally, the students have been wild and loud and argumentative all week. I am sort of glad it is Friday evening finally, but now I have to do all the things I put off for the weekend. The to do list is long. Ugh.