124081 VK BEd 08a.3: VK Literature and Language Education (2024S)

In this course, we will consider how we can teach poetry but also how we can teach with poetry and, crucially, what poetry can teach us. How can poems help us develop our critical and creative thinking? What questions do they encourage us to ask, and what can they teach us about finding – or not finding – answers? How can poetry help us connect with the world around us, with others, and with ourselves as linguistic, social, emotional, and embodied beings? What can the practices of close reading and listening teach us about attentiveness and patience? About frustration and failure? About sorrow and joy? Is there a place for poetry in a foreign language, history, or biology classroom?

As is often the case with our students, we, too, may have to begin not with learning but with unlearning, demystifying poetry as the arcane, intentionally obscure, difficult art that many of us just “don’t get.” We will read and listen to poems not with the imperative to “get them” but with curiosity and attention to what they do, how they do it, and what they make us feel and think. We will read for pleasure, surprise, puzzlement, discussion and, sometimes, for analysis and interpretation. We will look closely at language, sound, images, and ideas that come as much from the poems as they come from us. Gradually, we will learn the tools and skills that will help us talk about poems with clarity and precision, understand the uses of form and technique, and develop insightful interpretations. Throughout the semester, we will be trying our hand at literary analysis, creative writing and, finally, at teaching poetry with the aid of existing resources as well as creating our own activities and lesson plans.