Throughout the last term, I
have been employed four days a week as a spoken word educator at a secondary
school in Newham, London. With the intention of bridging the “disconnect
between the lives of youth and their educational activities” (Sparks and
Grochowski 2002: 15), the Spoken Word Education Programme was piloted in London
in 2012 by Chicago poet Peter Kahn, who was “the world’s first full-time poetry
spoken word educator to be embedded in a school” (Bearder 2014: 22). As one of
the second year’s cohort of educators, I have been lucky enough to be afforded
the opportunity to devise and deliver my own schemes of work. I have been
granted almost total autonomy in this respect: unencumbered by formal ‘learning
objectives’ and mark schemes, I have been free to formulate my own poetics and
pedagogy. It is no secret that students are often unenthused by the idea of
poetry. The purpose of this paper, then, is to explore the effects that my work
as a spoken word educator has thus far had on the students I have come into
contact with, with respect to their perceptions of poetry.
It is well documented that spoken word can
have a transformative effect on students’ lives generally, putting paid to W.H.
Auden’s claim that “poetry makes nothing happen”. Pete Bearder, one of the
original cohort of London-based spoken word educators, remarks that becoming
involved with spoken word “has helped people out of prison sentences, gang
violence, drugs and suicide” (2014: 22), whilst Sparks and Grochowski (2002: 2)
note that it “facilitates identity development for many disenfranchised youth”,
highlighting the fact that “spoken word has a long and complex history
influenced by hip hop music and culture”. I come from a different perspective.
Whilst I borrow elements of Peter Kahn’s pedagogy – which focuses primarily on
confessional life-writing – my background is that of a children’s poet and
performer rather than a hip hop artist. I am thus keen to square the more ‘hard
hitting’ elements of spoken word with the kind of language play encouraged by
the likes of Kenneth Koch, as well as the comic poetry of artists such as Paul
Lyalls. My concern in this paper is therefore not with the educative effects of
spoken word per se, but rather with
my unique synthesis of some of poetry’s disparate elements.
Context
The school in which I have
been embedded, whilst relatively highly performing academically – 69% of
students gained at least five GCSEs at grade C or better in 2014 – bears some
of the hallmarks of the ‘disenfranchised youth’ mentioned above. The school is
a multicultural, fully comprehensive girls’ secondary school in Newham, East
London, which is “one of the most deprived areas in the country” (LEA 2010: 7).
45% of pupils at the school are currently in receipt of the Pupil Premium
Grant, whilst 48% of pupils over the past six years have been eligible for free
school meals. Furthermore, the 2011 census revealed Newham as having the
highest percentage of Muslims in Britain, at 35%. This is borne out in the
demographics of the school, the overwhelming majority of whose pupils come from
Muslim Asian backgrounds, specifically from the Pakistani, Indian and
Bangladeshi communities. 92% of students at the school do not speak English as
a first language (although almost all of the pupils with whom I worked had a
highly competent grasp of it).
Shain, in her comprehensive study on the
schooling of Asian girls in Britain, rails against their being stereotyped as
“passive, shy, docile and timid” (2003: 32). Despite this, the school’s
Assistant Head remarks that “our observations suggest that for a large majority
of our students, freedom of expression is not always promoted in the home.” The
vibrant community I experienced upon entering the school is perhaps indicative
of the dichotomous “in school/out of school” relationship discussed by
Dimitriadis (2001), except in this case the poles are reversed, with
school positioned as liberating rather
than restrictive. Once again, Shain (2003: 2) urges caution against such a
stereotype, but in the specific case of the school in question great lengths
are gone to to promote the kind of creativity, wellbeing and freedom of
expression the Assistant Head perceives as missing at home. A well-organised
Pastoral Team and Learning Support Unit are in place, and a variety of extracurricular
clubs and activities are available to students. A 2008 Ofsted report notes that
the school “is a happy and harmonious place”, and the school’s willingness to
employ a spoken word educator is further evidence of their desire to enhance
their pupils’ learning experience.
Within the school, the work under discussion
took place with a Year 7 English class and a Year 8 English class, over the
course of several weeks. All classes at the school are mixed ability, with a
broad range represented in each of the classes I worked with, including two SEN
students in the Year 8 class. Years 7 and 8 are in many respects ripe for the
kind of ‘hybrid’ approach I mentioned at the outset: at 11-13 years of age,
they have accrued enough life experience and opinions to make Peter Kahn’s
confessional approach worthwhile, whilst (hopefully) still retaining an
openness to Koch’s approach, which is famous for having been used with primary
school children. Thus, whilst the nature of the school in which I have been
embedded inevitably limits the scope of my data, my research takes place within
a setting where, by dint of their ages, students are primed to benefit from my
approach. I will now elucidate such an approach by providing some background to
the issues at hand.
Literature
Review
Perceptions of Poetry
A recent report into the
future of English in the curriculum remarks that “secondary students’ views
about poetry are somewhat negative” (QCA 2005: 21). The perception among many
students of poetry’s elitism is somewhat enduring, as has been noted by Baldwin
(1959), Benton (1986), Leonard (1975) and Marsh (1988). Tunnicliffe (1984: 5)
notes that, for many, poetry is seen as “esoteric, solitary, bookish stuff.”
Peck (1988: 1) explains this with the acknowledgment that “a great deal of
poetry is hard to understand”, claiming furthermore that “this fact, that a
poem does not directly state its meaning, is the fundamental thing that makes
poetry, and the analysis of poetry, difficult” (78). Fleming (1996: 37),
drawing on his experience working with poetry in the classroom, observes: “I
was struck by the number of pupils who claimed that they found poetry
difficult, and that this in part was the source of their antipathy to it.” This
is corroborated by Dymoke (2009: 78), who argues that “its language and imagery
can contribute to the idea that poetry is a difficult, problematic and
challenging medium.” She makes the further observation that “the notion of
poetry as a puzzle is, sadly in my experience, a common perception among
students (and their teachers) who engage in a hunt for the missing clue which
will help them solve the poem” (Dymoke 2003: 3).
It is inevitable that a teacher’s attitude
will influence those of her students. Cliff Yates, himself both a poet and
former teacher, admits: ““when I started teaching I was uneasy about showing
pupils how to write poems” (Yates 1999: x). Tunnicliffe (1984: 3) likewise
expresses the view that “it is commonplace for English teachers to feel uneasy,
bewildered or even embarrassed by the idea of teaching poetry to kids”,
locating a potential source of this unease in society’s tendency to reduce
language to “the drudge status of a means to an end – usually in our world the
acquisition of possessions or cash” (5). Dymoke (2009: 83) concurs, observing
that “for many [teachers], the utilitarian functions of poetry as a servant of
language and assessment are uppermost in their minds”, whilst Benton (2010:
81), in a recent survey, likewise notes teachers’ concerns regarding “the effects
of the National Curriculum and of SATs on their teaching [of poetry].” This may
well lead in many cases to “didactic teaching methods” (QCA 2005: 21) and “a premature
emphasis on analysis” at the expense of “experiencing poems fully” (Fleming
1996: 42). In other words, the “perceived demands of assessment” leads to a
situation where “English in the classroom is rather remote from the world
outside” (QCA 2005: 6); pupils are not given enough opportunity to express
themselves and their perceptions of the world as they experience it. In the
light of this, it can be argued that “our teaching of poetry should be directed
towards lifting it out of its academic featherbed into a world of our pupils
and our own experience” (Tunnicliffe 1984: 6).
Spoken Word in the Classroom
The 2005 QCA report notes
furthermore that “the vast majority of English teachers… want greater autonomy
to exercise their own judgment about how to engage students’ interest in
literature” (QCA 2005: 20). The role of a spoken word educator is different
from that of a teacher in part because of this greater degree of autonomy.
Indeed, many such educators see their role as dialogic, in the sense that they
are using their autonomy to facilitate a similar autonomy among their students
– as Weiss and Herndon (2001: xvii) note, “[w]hatever teenagers are saying, we
want to hear it.” And of course they mean literally saying and hearing, in
the face of the “massive bias in our education system towards written
communication at the expense of verbal communication” (QCA 2005: 8).
As was alluded to in the Introduction, Weiss
and Herndon (2001: xix) go on to claim that teenagers’ “natural alacrity for
spoken word is no doubt linked to the prevalent influence of hip hop culture”,
a culture that, in a classroom context, Mahiri (1998: 55) sees as emancipatory
in the light of “the systematic absence of representation of youth”. Bearder
(2014: 22) thus sees himself as challenging the prevalent view that “poetry
belongs to someone else”, noting furthermore that “[f]or the maligned kids, the
pen can really become a pipeline to flammable substance” (24). This echoes
Kelley’s (2002: 9) talk of “the poetics of struggle and lived experience”, as
well as Stovall’s (2006: 63) observation that teaching spoken word is a “libratory,
conscious-raising, politicized process”. Some ‘hard hitting’ poetry can often
result: Fisher (2007: 3) observes that, in her classes, “[s]tudents sometimes
wrote of the pervasive poverty and violence on their ‘blocks’”, whilst Bearder
(2014: 23) speaks of his spoken word classes as “emotional events, full of
revelation, tears and supportive applause”. This can be extremely therapeutic
for students. Ofsted (2007: 7) acknowledges that “in a poem you can express
emotions… You can confide in a poem, it relieves the stress.” Bearder (2014:
22) himself goes even further, referring to the following remarkable claim of
one of Peter Kahn’s ex-students: “Mr. Kahn has not only taught me how to write,
but he has taught me how to value myself and my future.”
Playfulness
It is hard to quibble with
such obviously transformative work. Many, however, have commented on the playful aspect of poetry, as well as its
social and emotional elements. In a recent study, Myhill (2013: 49) states that
“[o]f all the writing genres, poetry is perhaps the most amenable to creative
and playful exploitation of the potentialities of language”. She goes on to
explain this in terms of “experimenting with the possibilities” (53) of words.
More comprehensively, Mattenklott (1996: 15) cashes out the notion of ‘play’ as
follows:
“it is, on the one hand, something predefined
and complete, a complex set of rules, usually including game materials such as
cards, a board game, figures, dice, and so on; on the other hand, play is also
something with an infinite number of possibilities, a self-renewing process
following predefined rules, during the course of which the rules themselves can
be modified, elaborated or eliminated.”
Take, for example, Koch’s
(1970) famous exercise in which primary school pupils were tasked with writing
poems using ‘I wish’ at the beginning of each line. This exercise is playful in
Mattenklott’s sense: Koch provides the ‘rules’, which serve as scaffolding
within which ‘an infinite number of possibilities’ are present. Lyalls’ (2014:
33) poem ‘What If’, a repetition-based piece containing lines such as “What if
my mum was an invisible sausage?” can similarly be used as a model, which is
playful in the additional sense of actively encouraging ‘wacky’ ideas. Crucial
to both exercises is that there are no right or wrong answers; students’
imaginations are let loose “without teacher judgments or interventions” (Spiro
2013: 98). This can be seen as another
route to the outcome Bearder acknowledged above: for the students, it is no
longer the case that poetry belongs to someone else – “now it belongs to them”
(Koch 1970: 53).
Methodology
We have, then, looked into
the backgrounds of two distinct approaches to poetry, both of which have a
documented effect on how students perceive the genre. My own approach combines
these two elements. In order to explore the impact that my work as a spoken
word educator has had, I conducted semi-structured interviews with seven Year 7
pupils, drawn from among the class that I worked with. I also interviewed their
English teacher, who sat in on all of the sessions, as well as a PGCE student
who was likewise present throughout the process. The Year 7 students whom I
chose to interview were selected on the basis that they had all performed one
of the poems created in my sessions in front of their entire year group. They
were selected for this latter task via an informal ‘competition’, conducted
during their final session with me, in which I served as the judge. Thus, in a
sense these students were preselected on the basis of their poetic competence,
although I was and remain unaware of the grades that they usually get in
English lessons. It remains to be seen whether their aptitude for poetry was an
inclination present before my work with them, or whether it was fostered as a
result of such work. The questions we explored in the interviews were as
follows:
·
How
did you feel performing your poem?
·
How
do you think the audience responded to your poem?
·
What
did you want to communicate?
·
Is
there a particular line or image in your poem that stands out for you, and why?
·
Why
did you choose that poem to perform?
·
What
did you think about poetry before the sessions with Josh?
·
How
(if at all) have the sessions changed your view of poetry?
·
Do
you think you will write more poems in the future? If so, what might they be
about?
My research with Year 8 was conducted using
questionnaires that were distributed, at the end of the final session, to every
pupil in the class, rather than merely to a select group among them. I felt
that this would enable me to gain a wider perspective, and thus to bear out
Merriam’s (2002: 12) observation, with respect to qualitative research, that
“multiple methods enhance the validity of the findings.” The Year 8 students
were asked the following questions:
·
What
did you think about poetry before the lessons with Josh?
·
Did
the lessons change your view of poetry? If so, how?
·
What
was your favourite part of the lessons, and why?
·
Were
there any parts of the lessons you didn’t like?
·
What
did you think about performing your poems for the class?
·
Do
you think you will write more poems in the future? What might they be about?
Throughout the process, all
BERA guidelines were adhered to. Students were given the option of stating
their name on the questionnaire, but it was emphasised that this was not
compulsory (only four students in the class did so). Furthermore, students were
informed of the purpose of the research, and, following guidelines discussed by
Heath et al (2007: 412-414), were
given the opportunity to abstain from it should they so choose (none did). As
well as ensuring confidentiality, the anonymity afforded to students was
important in minimising the temptation to give answers that they thought I
would want, and it is notable that those students who did provide their names
were fairly effusive in their praise.
My research falls within the bracket of what
Merriam calls a ‘basic interpretive qualitative study’. As well as interviews
and questionnaires, I also draw on researcher-generated documents in the form
of the poems themselves, all of which coalesces to help us “understand and make
sense of phenomena from the participant’s perspective” (Merriam
2002: 6). However, there are limitations to the research. For example, Cohen et al (2007: 375) note that “group
interviewing with children enables them to challenge each other and participate
in a way that may not happen in a one-to-one, adult-child interview.” In the
light of this, were I to conduct the study again I would look into doing group
interviews.
Practicalities within the classes also
determined that the majority of the data were collected at the culmination of
the series of sessions, rather than throughout the process as recommended by
Merriam (2002: 14). This also means that there are no baseline data to go on,
other than what students retrospectively say about their prior perception of
poetry. Whilst it may be that my poetry lessons were so transformative as to
cause students to confabulate with respect to their past perceptions, it may
also be that their engagement with poetry in my sessions was helpful in
enabling them to articulate what they would previously have had trouble
expressing. Either way, establishing a set of baseline data would be useful in
any future study of the areas explored herein.
The
Data
Perceptions of Poetry
It is clear from the data
that, whilst by no means universally derided, students’ perceptions of poetry
before my sessions were less than enthusiastic. ‘Boring’ was by far the most
common epithet applied to poetry, reflecting a general lack of interest in the
notion. A number of students located the source of this disinterest in a
perceived lack of exposure to poetry, with one student proclaiming that “we
didn’t do any poetry before Josh”, and another stating that “I didn’t really
know about poetry that much.” Given the specifications of the curriculum it is
highly unlikely that these students, both of whom are in Year 8, have had no exposure to poetry in school. Whilst
it may be that, after my poetry sessions, nothing else was deemed worthy of the
term, it is far more likely that any previous experiences with poetry were
simply highly unengaging and forgettable for the students in question. Another
student seems to corroborate this with the claim that she didn’t like poetry
“because the teacher didn’t know what to talk about.” Indeed, Alex, a PGCE
student who was present throughout the sessions, refers to the poetry training
on his own course as a fairly cursory “whistle-stop ride”. For many of the students,
it seems, poetry had similarly whistled by unnoticed.
A second strand among the responses relates
to poetry’s being difficult, complicated or otherwise inaccessible. Sue, an
experienced Year 7 English teacher, observed that many students come to poetry
with the preconceptions that poetry is “very, very difficult”, that it is
“something of a code”, and that it is for “people other than them.” This was
borne out in the responses of several students, and, interestingly, was the
prevalent view even among those who went on to have their poems selected for
performance in front of their year group, one of whom referred to poetry’s
being “complicated to write”. Other students respectively claimed that poetry
was “really confusing” and that “I hated poetry because I thought I was not
good at it.”
Meaning, Depth and
Confidence
As we saw above, spoken word
is notable for giving students the opportunity to open up about their lives. In
exploring the effects that my sessions had on the students’ perceptions of
poetry, it became clear that several students were impacted in particular by
those sessions that dealt with themes such as emotions and identity. One
student claimed that my sessions changed her view of poetry by making her
realise that poems can “help express how you feel”, as opposed to simply being
“boring” as she had previously thought. Notably, a similar effect was present
even for one student who professed previously to like poetry: whereas before the sessions she thought poetry was
merely “fun”, she now thought there was “meaning and depth” to it. Another
student said that, whilst she previously viewed poetry as “so boring”, she now
viewed it as an important tool in “thinking about my life”. Similarly, when asked about possible topics
for future writing, many responded with things such as “memories”,
“experiences”, “my family”, “my life” and “things I actually care about”. Here
we see Kahn’s approach bearing fruit: student’s own lived experiences are
validated as having genuine poetic potential, a potential that can lead in turn
to a reassessment of those very experiences. This kind of reassessment led one
student to state that “I saw a side of me that I had never seen before.” It is
not merely the case that her perspective on poetry
had shifted; her views on her own identity
had changed as well. In the words of Sparks and Grochowski, her ‘identity
development’ had been ‘facilitated’.
Interestingly, the student in question went
on to say that she wouldn’t write poems in the future “because I am going to
have no one to read them to.” This, whilst somewhat heartbreaking, highlights
the important performative and communal aspect of the work I undertook with the
students. As we saw above, spoken word is by definition about saying and
hearing, and several students highlighted the sharing of their poems as their
favourite part of the sessions. One student went on to say that, as a result of
this process, “I am more confident now”, with another claiming that “I thought
I would be shy, but I was OK with it”. Almost all of the Year 7 students I
interviewed went from varying degrees of shyness and reluctance to confidence
and pride after having performed their poems in front of an audience, in one
case by dint of “seeing my friends give me thumbs up.” And being in the audience was important for
students as well: “I didn’t perform anything in front of the class”, one
student states, “but it was nice to hear other poems. It gave me ideas.”
Sadly, the communal element implied by this
latter claim was not borne out in all the responses. Three students in the Year
8 class picked up on what they perceived as ‘favouritism’ on my part. It is
notable that one student wrote that she liked “sharing poems, because I always got to read my poems” (emphasis added), with another student noting that
“listening to other poets’ poems” was her least favourite part of the sessions.
There were some dominant personalities within the class, and it seems that in
their eagerness they may have crowded out the voices of others. Whilst it pains
me that the inclusive nature of spoken word was not extended to all the
students, I seek solace in the fact that those students who felt left out at
least had something to say, and wanted
to perform their work. Such students evidently came to believe that ‘poetry
belongs to them’, and it is up to me as a practitioner to find ways of
including their voices.
Fun and Imagination
The playful element of my
sessions had an impact both on those students who previously thought poetry was
boring, and on those who believed it to be difficult. Just as “boring” was the
most common adjective previously, so “fun” became the most common subsequently.
Furthermore, one student wrote that, whilst she had previously viewed poetry as
“complicated”, she now views it as “simple to write”. She went on to claim that
“the activities to get us started to write the poems” was her favourite part of
the lessons. In these warm ups I tried to find ways to unleash students’
imaginations, and several students said they were the best part of the
sessions, with one stating that “I like poetry now after the warm ups we did.
Now I know that poetry is about your imagination, and you can write about
anything.” Notably, several students echoed Dymoke (2009: 88) in likening these
exercises to games, with one student claiming that “playing the word games” was
her favourite part of the sessions. This was in contrast to her previous
experiences of poetry, which were rendered boring by the constant “planning and
redrafts.”
One student apparently struggled to see the
meaning behind the activities in question, claiming that “these lessons showed
me that poetry is just a bunch of random ideas put together.” However, for the
majority of students the ideas generated did not seem to be merely ‘random’.
One student valued the playful element of my sessions because it enabled her to
experiment with simile and metaphor, which she acknowledged to be important
tools in writing generally. Many students perceived freedom rather than
randomness, with one stating “you can write poetry about anything you want”.
The Year 7 students, when asked “is there a particular line or image in your
poem that stands out for you?” almost all picked a line that had been generated
during one of the Koch-inspired exercises. Among these lines were gems such as
·
“I
can see the streetlights blinking at me, signalling me to join”
·
“Being
left out feels like a sour orange giving me a shock”
·
“My
emotion tastes like a bomb in my mouth, burning into a fire”
·
“Poetry
is a strong love like the swans”
One student said that she
valued the opportunity to write lines such as these because “there is no right
or wrong answer”, whilst another claimed that she liked them because they
enabled her to write about “exotic” things. At any rate, for many students the
playful element of my sessions was clearly efficacious in enabling them freely
to use their imaginations, and thus to overcome the view that poetry is boring
and difficult.
Limitations
Whilst we can see that my
sessions had a demonstrable impact on many of the students, it is important not
to overstate the findings. Five students in the Year 8 class claimed that my
sessions only changed their views of poetry “a bit”, whilst two students in the
class, along with one in the Year 7 class, claimed to have liked poetry all
along. Two students in the Year 8 class said that, even after the sessions,
they still disliked poetry. Interestingly, these were the two SEN students.
Both of these students were assisted by Learning Mentors in class, and neither was
given differentiated tasks. I intended the activities to be accessible to all
abilities, but clearly this was not the case, at least below a certain
threshold. Whilst it is likely that their antipathy extends beyond poetry to
school generally, adapting the sessions for SEN students would surely be a
worthwhile area for future research.
Conclusion
Spoken word educators are
not miracle workers. Not every student will experience a seismic shift, or
indeed any kind of shift, in their perceptions of poetry. Nonetheless, such
educators are in a somewhat unique position. Unlike visiting freelance poets
they get to work with a group of students over an extended period of time, and
unlike teachers they have autonomy over their curriculum. Throughout this project
I have thus been able to work across several lessons, and to combine and
experiment with different approaches. It is clear from the data that these
approaches, to varying degrees, helped effect changes in students’ perceptions
of poetry. Whereas previously poetry was viewed largely as boring and
difficult, students came to realise that it could be fun, simple and meaningful
to their lives.
The study has important implications both
for my own practice, and for poetry education more generally. One student wrote
that she now likes poetry because “Josh made it fun”, but there is a flipside
to this: the aforementioned perceptions of favouritism, and the continued
resistance of the SEN students, are obvious areas for me to address on a
personal level. These observations reveal something crucial about the whole
project. Poetry (and teaching, for that matter) does not happen in a vacuum:
the attitude of the person facilitating the tasks may be as important in
shaping students’ views as the tasks themselves. We saw above that students’
resistance to poetry may stem from a kind of resistance on the part of their
teachers. Surely, then, a worthwhile endeavour would be to put teachers through
their paces with the activities that this study showed were efficacious with
respect to the students. Recall Tunnicliffe’s quote from above: “our teaching
of poetry should be directed towards lifting it out of its academic featherbed
into a world of our pupils and our own
experience”. Notice now the added emphasis. The point here is that spoken
word education can speak to teachers as much as pupils. As Sue, the Year 7
English teacher, said in interview: “you have educated me.”
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