One of my greatest pleasures is reading poetry.  This hasn’t always been true.  I used to hate poetry.  

First, I had to get past the Great Lie that in order to appreciate poetry, I had to pick it apart to understand it.  I was the student from Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry” who tied a poem to a chair in order to get a confession out of it.  I mean, I’m an English teacher.  That’s what I was trained to do, right?

As a PAGES teacher, I have had the opportunity to experience various paintings, writings, songs, dances, fabrics, sounds, photos, videos.  At first, I tried beating them with Collins’s hose to see what they really meant.  

However, also as a PAGES teacher, I was taught to show my students a way in.  I had to build a place of trust and then let them play with words and sounds. And to do this, I had to DO what I expected them to do.  

I was fortunate to be immersed in my own creative expression.  (Confession:  I might consider myself expressive but I wouldn’t call myself creative.  Or a writer.  I used to think I hated it.  But PAGES showed me a way in.)

Here are some of my favorite creative writing prompts that inspired me and my students, all gifted to me through PAGES and Dionne Custer Edwards, Kari Gunter-Seymour, and other PAGES resident artists and teachers.  

Listing.  I might not feel like I can write a poem or a story, but I can write a list.  I try to come up with an unusual one like, “Things I Wish I Had Said,” or “Things That Were Said That I Wish I Could Forget,” or “What Triggers Me,” or “Things I Daydream About” (this was a student’s idea), or “Things I Can’t Throw Away,” (thanks, Kari)  or “If You Knew Me” and “If You REALLY Knew Me.” Maybe my creative expression IS my list or maybe I take an item from my list and write about that.   

Letter writing.  This year I’ve had students write letters to their dead dog, Drugs, Martin Luther King Jr., and Depression.  

Listing and letter writing.  Go from a negative space to a positive space.  Make a list of all the times when I have felt less than or unworthy. Then, make a list of all of my positive qualities (and I could use a friend to help).  Finally, write a letter to myself going from my negative space to my positive space.  

Listing and letter writing #2.  Kari Gunter-Seymour once had us write a list of what triggers us.  Then, we made a list of people we wish we could have a conversation with.  Finally, we chose the fourth person and the second trigger and we wrote a letter to that person about our trigger.  I wrote a letter to Jesus about my bad dogs.

Free Association Poem.  Choose a word.  List words related to that word.  Use the words from the list to write phrases and then see how I can combine them.

     My list: clock, time, past, future, age, grandma, death, life

     She glanced at the clock on the mantle

     Her life was running out of time

     She can no longer remember her past and her future doesn’t exist

     She is the same age as her grandma 

     When she met death

Soundscapes.  Find ambient sounds of cities, streams, thunderstorms, coffee shops.  Play one and find myself there.  I can describe the sounds and what I see there.

Perspective.  To get us thinking about Cindy Sherman’s photography, Dionne Custer Edwards gave us a costume prop (a frilly hat, feather boa, cane, beads).  We donned the item and then wrote from the perspective of the owner of that item.  

Visual art backstory.  In the art gallery, I’ve had students choose a photo or a painting and imagine what happened before, during or after whatever was captured in the piece.  For example, here is something I wrote about one of Cindy Sherman’s photographs:  

     “Serenity”

     The dead woman’s eyes gaze into the rising sun.

     She contemplates her existence.

     She is not angry,

     she is not terrified,

     she accepts.

     There is a serenity in her acceptance. 

These are just a handful of ways I have found my way into thinking creatively for myself and some of my students.  I am grateful for PAGES showing my South-Western Career Academy students ways to find their words, their voice.  

So yes, one of my greatest pleasures is reading poetry.  Maybe someday, I’ll be able to say that one of my greatest pleasures is writing poetry.  

I’m working on it!

Want to solve a murder mystery?  Nab an art museum bandit?  Escape zombies and prevent global destruction?  Now you can!

Escape rooms are the newest trend in entertainment.  Couples, families and friends around the world enjoy working together, discovering clues and solving puzzles to complete a mission.  Critical thinking and collaboration is essential.  Why not transfer those skills to the classroom through similar activities?

This year, with the help of our media specialist, my students participated in several breakout games.  I created the first one for my AP Literature students to apply literary terms.  Students entered the room to the sound of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” blaring on the speakers, with the lyrics scrolling on the screen.  They found two locked boxes on their table, along with a note which read: “Your lyrics are unique because they utilize many literary devices.  You receive an urgent text message from one of your bandmates telling you that Rolling Stone is about to publish fake news about your latest song, which is sure to be a top-ten hit.  Rolling Stone is going to give YOUR song songwriting credits to Taylor Swift!  Evidence proving this news is bogus is stored in their editor’s lock box.  You need to break open the box soon because the story goes to print in 45 minutes!  You must rely on your knowledge of literature terms studied years ago to solve the clues and break into his box before time is up!”

Students were curious and excited to tackle this mystery.

The first clue comes from the allusion in the lyrics: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”  Upon hearing that line, most students recognized the words and used their electronics to find the source.  For those who didn’t notice the allusion, I rewound the line again and again until it was painfully obvious!  The line leads them to Psalm 23:4, which is the code for the first lock.  Inside the box they found an black flashlight and a poem- another clue.  By using the literary terms we studied in class, they were able to solve a variety of puzzles, open the final box and find their reward!

The students loved this activity and begged to do it again.  Here are some of their comments from their subsequent reflections:

“Playing this game showed me just how unique each of us are with individual skills and certain parts of the game required skills that the other had. I learned that I am a really analytical thinker. I heard it a lot from my teachers but it’s another to see it really play out.”

“Me and my group worked together by sharing each other’s ideas and trying them. We gave each other turns to try different things. Playing this game taught me that I actually have some patience.”

“Solving a puzzle in the game relates to solving a problem in the real world because you have to go through steps to solve it, the things you solve could be real problems that need to be solved. Also because you could use the ways you solved the puzzle to solve your real world problems.”

“I found it very entertaining and mentally intensive.”

“I thought the Breakout activity was very beneficial in applying our knowledge of literature while also exercising our brain to conclude and be like detectives: thinking quickly… We didn’t want any hints because we knew we would feel better getting to the conclusion without cheating our way to it.”

Since the first try was a success, I also had my general ed English classes try breakouts over literary terms and Macbeth. The results were the same. This is an engaging activity to use with students at any level!

Our resourceful media specialist, Jessica Klinker, was fortunate to receive a grant from the South-Western City Schools Educational Foundation (SWCSEF) to purchase the equipment, but before that, we made do with regular wood boxes and locks the staff donated.  Breakout EDU has many free scenarios available.  Our next step will be having the students create their own breakout games.  The critical thinking skills necessary to plan the clues take it to a higher level.   I would strongly suggest trying it out with your students!

Last summer, I took my children on a family vacation to Utah.  At the zoo we fed rhinos and watched elephants paint masterpieces, and we drove to the top of the mountains to play in the snow and take in the scenery.  When we enjoy beautiful moments like these, it’s impossible to capture each second with a camera.  Weeks later we sifted through the pictures and chose the best ones for our album- the ones that captured the beauty of the landscape and our enjoyment of our time together.

This year through the PAGES program, I was reminded of this process.  The students and I visited the Wexner Center to experience A Thousand Thoughts: A Live Documentary by Sam Green and Kronos Quartet. Before our visit, we explored the ways in which language and sound coexist, the ways sounds in words express meaning and tone.  Saxophonist, composer and teacher Michael Torres helped us toy with sounds and analyze what they communicate.

One activity involved each student recording a “found sound” on their phones to share in class.  In the midst of our busy days, we often overlook the many sounds that compose the soundtrack of our lives- a winter coat zipper zipping, coffee beans grinding in the grinder, water sloshing and swirling down the drain while we wash dishes.  Students shared their sounds without revealing the source and while listening, we wrote.  We described a perspective, a scene, a character, or a story.  Michael played his saxophone to mimic and speak back to the sounds.  The students’ writing was highly imaginative and descriptive and they were engaged in sharing their varied interpretations.  What’s truly amazing is that they automatically took their writing to a higher level without prompting.  Instead of writing, “This sounds like a machine making a noise”, they wrote things like, “Tick, tick, hum, crunch.  She slowly churned the handle, allowing the rhythmic motion and redundant sounds lull her into a trance”.

Another activity incorporated The Scarlet Letter.  We had been reading the novel in class and students were so preoccupied with figuring out the plot, characters and tensions that they had lost sight of an appreciation for Hawthorne’s prose.  Arts educator, poet and PAGES founder Dionne Custer Edwards pulled individual sentences from the novel, sentences that were figurative, alliterative, and/or euphonious.  Students came into the room and found a sentence on their desk.  They each read their sentence aloud and discussed the arrangement of the words, sounds and meaning.  Then they wrote, and again, students pushed themselves to mimic the elevated diction of Hawthorne’s writing.

PAGES taught us that much like choosing photos for a family album, we can (and should) slow down, isolate and appreciate more fully the music that makes up our daily lives and isolate and appreciate the individual words and sentences that weave together to create literature.

grieving

for a landscape full of fragments

scraps

debris

broken pencils, jagged glass, cigarette butts frayed and peeling

hair ties, straws, gum permanently smashed into the concrete

carmax tube, bottle caps, candy wrappers whirling in the breeze

god’s creation is a wasteland