Poetry in and out of the Classroom: Essays from the ACLS Elementary and Secondary Schools Teacher Curriculum Development Project

DOCUMENT RESUME ED 387 450 SP 036 206 TITLE Poetry in and out of the Classroom: Essays from the ACLS Elementary and Secondary Schools Teacher Curriculum Development Project. ACLS Occasional Paper, No. 29. INSTITUTION American Council of Learned Societies, New York, N.Y. SPONS AGENCY DeWitt Wallace / Reader's Digest Fund, Pleasantville, N.Y.; Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia, PA. REPORT NO ISSN-1041-536X PUB DATE 95 NOTE 61p. PUB TYPE Collected Works - General (020) EDRS PRICE MFO1/PC03 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Adolescents; Class Activities; *Curriculum Development; Elementary School Teachers; Elementary Secondary Education; English Instruction; Females; Instructional Innovation; Oral History; `Poetry; *Poets; Scholarship; Secondary School Teachers; *Teacher Developed Materials; Teaching Methods IDENTIFIERS *American Council of Learned Societies; Foxfire; Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock (The); `Teacher Researchers ABSTRACT This volume contains five essays on the uses of poetry and one poem by elementary and secondary teachers involved in a project to encourage teachers to develop the habit of scholarship as the basis for their teaching. In the first essay, "Female Poets of the First World War: A Study in Diversity for the Fifth Grade Social Studies Curriculum," Randy Cummings explains this little known body of poetry and demonstrates how to use it in the classroom. In "Ghosts Among Us/Ancestral Voices: 'What's Past is Prologue'" Terry Moreland Henderson draws on Foxfire oral history techniques to elicit a spectrum of oral histories from the diverse backgrounds of her Los Angeles (California) students. In "Poetry from the Far Side" Phyllis B. Schwartz uses a cartoon about adolescence in different species--a parallel to the differing ethnic and cultural backgrounds in many schools--to evoke poetry from students who denied interest in poetry and in sharing emotions in the classroom. "Sestina for a Grande Dame" by Fredric Lown is a poem, a memoir of Lown's grandmother. In "The Overwhelming Question: Integrating the ACLS Curriculum Project, 'Teaching for Understanding,' and 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,'" Joan Soble describes show teaching and relationships enrich her understanding of the traditional curriculum. In "A Matter of Trust" Richard Young analyzes "truth" in the writings of Robert Lowell, Alex Haley, and Malcolm X. (Most essays contain references.) (JB) POETRY IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM: Essays from the ACLS Elementary and Seconclaiy Schools Teacher Curriculum Development Project American Council of Learned Societies ACLSOCCASIONAL PAPER. No. 29 ISSN 104í-5i6X Coln•right I995 American Council of Learned Societies POETRY IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM: Essays from the ACLS Elementary and Secondary Schools Teacher Curriculum Development Project American Council of Learned Societies ACLS OCCASIONAL PAPER. Nu. 29 Me /ICU lilc'menl ►gaud Secouclct ►1' Schools Teacher Cur►ic' ►tltn►t Lk'c elupmeut l'r jec l supports the teaching of the humanities in the public schools through a multi-dimensional effort centered on a national network of school district university c()Ilabortives. A workshop at each collaborative site involves teacher-representa- tives of approximately a dozen schools and one or more university facilitators. Each workshop. as a unit, explores current methods and knowledge in the humanities and social sciences. In addition. each teacher-scholar works with their school-based team to produce curricular materials particularly appropriate for her own school. The university workshop facilitator provides access to the university's intellectual resources and develops mutually support- ive relationships w ith the teacher-scholars and their school-based teams. The summer of I995 marks the end of the project's third year. There were four first-cycle (1992-93 ) sites: the Cambridge and Brookline public school districts with Harvard University; the Los Angeles Educational Partnership with the University of California. Los Angeles; the Minneapolis Public Schools with the University of Minnesota; and the San Diego City Schools with the University of California. San Diego. A fifth site was added for the second-cycle 1 1993-91). the Colorado Educational Partnership with the t'niversity of Colorado at Boulder, while the collaboration between the Brookline and Cambridge public schools and Harvard University continued. In the third year, two new sites were added: the Milwaukee Public Schools with the University of,Wisconsin- Milwaukee and the British Columbia Consortium t'or~Humanities and Social Sciences, a coalition of schools in the vicinity of Vancouver. with the University of British Columbia. Activities in Massachusetts and Colorado continued in 1995. The project is supported by major funding from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, and an anonymous (under, and matching and additional funding :u sites from participating districts and universities, the Gates and JFM foundations in Colorado, and the Joyce Foundation in Milwaukee The British Columbia Ministry of Education and the British Columbia Teachers Federation have contributed to the British Columbia site. Contenus Acknowledgments iv Introduction v Female Poets of the First World War: A Study in Diversity for the Fifth Grade St vial Studies Curriculum Randy Cummings l - 14 Ghosts Among Us Ancestral Voices: "What's Past is Prologue" Terry Moreland Henderson 15 - 25 Sestina for a Grande Dame Freebie' Loran 27- 28 Poetry from the Far Side Phyllis B. Schwartz 29 - 39 The Overwhelming Question. Integrating the ACLS Curriculum Project. "Teaching for Understanding," and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufn►c•k" Joan S. Sohle 41 - 45 A Mauer of Trust Richard }Oulu; 47- 52 Acknowledgments In January 1994, the ACI.S and The New Press, a non-profit publisher in the public interest, reached an agreement to coc)rdinate editorial projects in education. This Occasional Paper is the first publication from this joint venture. Many thanks to the ACAS and The New Press for their support. Special thanks to Candace Frede, Managing Editor of ACLS Publications, I'm her superb and dedicated work on the design and production of this volume. Ellen Reeves. Editor The New Press ACI ti IntrOduction The schcx,ls initiatives of the American Council of Learned Sex•ieties are intended to assist teachers in developing the habit of scholarship as the basis for their teaching. The three-year ACTS Elementary and Secondary Sche x,Is Teacher Curriculum t )e% elopntent Project has provided fellow- ships fi,r nearly one hundred teachers with that aim, and has involved perhaps another three or four hundred teachers across North America in school-based teams in work with the teacher fellows. We are very pleased with the results of the project. one manifestation of which is the essays included in this volume. These essays illustrate the full range of what might be'expected From an effort to encourage teachers in elementary schools and secondary schools to approach their work from the point of view of scholarship. Randy Cummings tells us about a little-known Ixxiy of poetry, that of British vv omen at the time of the First world War, and demonstrates how this work can he used in the Fifth Grade Social Studies curriculum. Mr. Cummings' scholarship is in the mainstream( of current literary history. recovering for us a neglected aspect of our literary heritage. Terry Moreland I I: nderson brings her own heritage to bear on the development of student interest in their family stories. Working in the oral history tradition of the Foxfire project (itself strongly rooted in her ancestral Appalachia). Ms. Henderson is able to evoke a highly differentiated spectrum of oral histories from the extraordinarily diverse backgrounds of her Los Angeles students. Her concept of "panculturalism" is a provocativetive c( iunter-weight to the more usual multicultural reference of new curriculum. perhaps a certain reversion to "melting pot" theory in a time when difference is increasingly emphasised over commonality in civil society. Similarly, using a "Far Side" cannon about adolescence in different species—a parallel to the differing ethnic and cultural backgrounds in many of our schcx,ls—Phyllis Schwanz evokes moving and effertin e poetry from students who had characteristically denied interest in poetry and in sharing highly personal emotions in the classroom setting. !Tech—it. Lown's contribution to this collection is itself a poem. a nens,ir of his grandmother, whose life foreshadowed those of many of the students in the Pacific Rim classes of 1 lenderson and Schwartz. Joan Se )ble gives us a vivid account of how her teaching. and her relationships with colleagues and students, enrich her understanding of one of the chief canonical texts of the traditional curriculum, as she works to prepare it for presentation in the framework of her district's (and I Iar and l'niversity's) "teaching for understanding" pedagogy. Finally. Richard Young gives us an amount of his oat n reactions. as an informed reader. to the presentations of "truth" in the poetry of Robert Lowell and the prose of Alex flaky and Malcolm X. After a year of post-modernist inquiry. Young finds the canons of modernism much less simple, the lessons of literature much more ambiguous. After three years of work with schools, we can applaud these indications of the use to which their fellowship time has been put by these teachers, and note with them, and their colleagues, how scholarship can be successfully used as a basis for curriculum development in the elementary and secondary classrooms, in British Columbia and Colorado, as much as in Massachusetts and Wisconsin--everywhere, that is, where teachers have the opportunity to study current research in their subject areas and responsibilityrespo forcreaung theircurriculum on that foundation. Michael I folxman Project Director Female Poets of the First World \Var: A Study in Diversity for the Fifth Grade Stx•ial Studies Curriculum Randy Cummings Reexamining the Neglected Female Experience of War The elementary schtml sot ial studies curric ulum is beginning to take seriously the requirements of social history.

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