Puny Poetry Meets Its Match

By Gerri Ruckle & Jim Horrell

Excerpt

Root canal is a simple, painless process compared to cajoling these students to rewrite or revise these pieces. To them, the poem is done and no amount of educated teacher prodding is going to make a difference. We began wondering why we were pushing students to revise. Whatever it was they were trying to say, they said. There is no meaning, no message, nothing expressed here beyond simple wordplay.

But what about those times students had real feelings to express and no other poetry voice to use?

Topics/tags:

Teaching Writing

Place-Based Poetry, Modeling One Revision at a Time

By Ann Gardner

The Write Time with Author Rob Cameron and Educator Max Limric

By National Writing Project

This episode features Rob Cameron, a teacher, linguist, and writer who organizes the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and founded the Constellations Mentorship program for the Octavia Project. Rob is interviewed by Max Limric, a pre-service elementary teacher who became interested in the power of children's and young adult literature, having grown up with speculative stories like Harry Potter and The NeverEnding Story.

The Write Time with Author Ellen Oh and Educator Melissa Thom