Reading in the Middle, Junior and Senior High Schools, Spring, 2010

The lesson I am examining is "A poem of possibilities: thinking about the future" by Susanne Rubenstein. In this activity the instructor first holds a brainstorming session on what the future means to them, working towards a more and more specific viewpoint (in this case, themselves in five years). I like this because it allows for thought development and the change of attitude based on word changes to become apparent. Students then respond to prewrite questions, guiding their mental process on what they will include in their own poem. When I read through these questions, I was happily surprised, they were really thought provoking, in a way that is seldom seen the overtly safe general classroom. Students are really asked to consider themselves and their eventuality. Then students read the poem ex-basketball player and asked to respond/interpret. This gives students an example of their assignment and professional, real audienced, writing. Then students write their own future poem, with the instructor's promise to mail them to them five years later.

This lesson accomplishes the following things: Gives students the opportunity to write to an audience who is not the teacher, avoiding "student speech," gives students an opportunity to examine themselves and their future, and examines poetic conventions and what makes good poetry good, and what can make poetry lacking.

I really like that students are guided through a process to write, revise, and be graded on, the writing of a poem. It makes it a real assignment, introducing poetry as a legitimate, realistic, writing form. Getting students away from believing that the essay is what writing is from a scholarly viewpoint. However, I do have a problem with one aspect of this process. Students are asked to peer-review their poems. That is a process that I am somewhat against, especially in the realm of personal poetry. I don't want students to feel any pressure to "socialize" their poems according to popular views. So I would probably try, despite time, to set up brief one on one meetings so that I can review their poems and help them along, then let them finish their revisions. This privatizes their poems and allows them personal time with their instructor regarding their work.

My experience with the anticipation guide was, well, underwhelming. My preconceived notions were not really challenged or enforced. The article had no results, no conclusions, it was more or less a bunch of conjecture and contradicting finds. There was nothing to take away from the article except knowing that there are a lot of people who are concerned with what the internet is doing to our culture and/or biology (brains). The idea that gender differences in the brain may go away due to the internet was interesting, but I don't see how that will happen as women use the internet like women, and men like men. I think humans will always be human and that the only way gender differences will go away is if they evolve away, which in our society today I can say that we are not moving towards that. I kinda wish all this hullabaloo (yeah, just said that) about the internet would either go away, or be studied conclusively.