We felt that our presentation went well with the time that we had. Participants seemed engaged and willing to write with us. It was difficult to not rush through some parts of our presentation due to the time constraint, but we feel that we addressed our main points and answered all of our essential questions. Ideally, we would have had more time for participants to dive further into the writing practices so that they could fully experience their own success writing poetry.
The group’s response was better than we anticipated. Most if not all, commented about at least attempted to write poetry without too much anxiety. We discussed it further throughout the afternoon with individuals and small groups and many expressed that poetry seemed more accessible to both teach and write.
We weren’t surprised that some of the participants asked questions on how we handle students’ writing about sensitive subjects or viewing/reading poetry with sensitive subjects. As writing teachers, we know that the best writing comes from the heart and if we expect students to do their best writing, we need to expose them to a variety of ideas they can connect to as well as give them the freedom to write about those subjects that have touched their lives.
If we were to have the opportunity to do this demonstration again, we would tighten up our time frames or try to schedule additional time so that participants could more fully immerse themselves in the practice activities and view student examples. If there were time, we would have loved to have the Diatribe come to share. There are also a number of resources available online that we didn’t have time to highlight.
Miss D - lmwp2016 