Poetry In Classrooms

During our class discussion about the Bronx Masquerade we talked about poetry within the classroom. We related our book to the movie (and also book) Freedom Writers, which implemented the same idea of a powerful teacher’s idea which ultimately led to the transformation of the students. Later in the week I attended my TE 491 class, all about poetry. As a class we had watched a television interview with prominent Hispanic poet, Martin Espanda. Throughout the interview Espada talked about the impact of poetry on the lives of children, particularly minority groups. During the interview clips were shown of a class of minority children, mainly Hispanic, whose teacher applied the same idea as Open Mike Fridays to her classroom. The children were shown reading poems and discussed how poetry has become an outlet from their daily struggles. If you want to check out the interview here is the website http://www.pbs.org/moyers.