Poetry as a Tool for Teaching
Scott J. Baxter, University Writing Program
In this article I want to suggest that asking students to write a poem about some aspect of the course content can be tool to help the students learn. I would certainly not suggest that quizzes, exams, papers, and other traditional techniques be replaced with poetry, but I do believe that asking students to write an occasional poem can help students become more engaged with the material and increase the quantity and quality of student-teacher interactions.
Why do I think that it is a good idea to ask students to write an occasional poem? After all, many faculty are busy enough; isn't it a better idea to ask students to write academic prose? Maybe. But let me suggest three reasons why poetry could have a place outside the creative writing course.
First, most poems are short. They don't take a lot of time to read. Here's a haiku a student of mine wrote for a bonus question on an exam about the works of Plato:
Symposium
Join me in my house
For a talk like cat and mouse,
The cheese is on me.
Another student wrote this next one.
taking an exam
on a hot day violates
basic human rights.
Second, because most poems are short, they encourage careful observation of physical, textual, or other ideas. This sort of close observation is a skill valued in many academic disciplines.
Third, poetry has value for students because it can promote both an imaginative and emotional connection with the subject matter. Students can see possibilities and ramifications of a subject that make it more real for them.
If those three ideas aren’t enough, let me give an example of how it worked for one faculty member in psychology. In my previous position at the American University of Beirut, I facilitated a seminar for faculty on the topic of informal writing assignments to increase learning and engagement. One of the types of writing I suggested was poetry. About two weeks later, I got an email from one participant. She said "I liked the idea of asking students to write poems (even if the course is not in creative writing) so much that I couldn’t help but put it to the test in my history of psychology course. I didn’t want to overwhelm the students on the final exam, so I made it optional to write a poem about one of the key scholars or systems of psychology that we had covered in the course. Most students opted to write a poem, and I am blown away by some of them." We later had a conversation about this experience, and she said she was very pleased to see that many of the students went into far more detail in their answers than she had expected. How often does that happen on an exam?
For those seriously considering asking their students to write poetry as part of their course, let me offer a few suggestions (borrowed from Richardson, Shetlar, and Shetlar's 2003 article on writing poems about biology).
Emphasize the disciplinary content, but let the students write any kind of poem that appeals to them. The benefits of the assignment come as students plug their own creativity into the material.
Avoid complicated assignments. If possible, make the poems pass/fail, worth just a few points, or even ungraded. (But if they are ungraded, the students do need to understand why you are asking them to write them.) Judge the poems on their ability to demonstrate understanding of the course material; you probably don't want to try to figure out how to judge the literary value of the work.
Emphasize the elements of poetry that have some connection to your discipline such as close observation, or the ability to see connections between objects or phenomena (metaphor). Try to downplay the idea of poetry as offering philosophical perspectives on life.
Ask students to exchange poems, read them, and critique the disciplinary content of each other's work. Then ask for a volunteer or two to share with the class. I have seen this happen in classes with fifteen and I have also seen it happen in classes of 150. It takes just as much time in either case.
