WINTER 2024 EDITION | Page 29

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Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

While Amazing Grace is now considered a classic by some as it was written in 1991, it is a quintessential book for teaching about tolerance, equity, and gender. Amazing Grace features one of the first black heroines in children’s literature. Grace is a young girl who wants to play Peter Pan in the school play but is told she can not since she is not a boy and not White. Grace decides to stand up for what she wants by auditioning and secures the role as Peter Pan. This book provides an opportunity to discuss gendered roles in society, racism, and implicit bias. From kindergarten through fifth grade, Amazing Grace allows the space for teachers to have courageous conversations with their students.

Studies show that children start to form racially biased behaviors as young as three years old based on observations of their surrounding environments. It is critical that teachers impart positive dialogues about diversity and race in the classroom. In younger classrooms, Amazing Grace could be coupled with Persona Dolls, giving voice to dolls in underrepresented communities. In older classrooms, Amazing Grace is a good book to discuss gender equality but also the notion of color blindness and the urgency to be color aware, not color blind. Being color aware does not prohibit or limit one's capabilities, rather it enriches opportunities. As discussed through persona dolls in the younger classrooms, these topics could be discussed through journaling with older classrooms. Journaling can increase the students' understanding through language but also allow for critical engagements with these topics. Table 6 provides the window and mirror questions to use with Amazing Grace.

Joy. Playfulness. Reflection. Understanding. Empathy. These ideas are ones we embrace as educators. These are also constructs that we hope to teach and instill in our students, especially considering the social, emotional, and learning challenges that students face today. The prevailing societal and political climate in our communities can either support or shun teaching practices associated with social emotional learning (SEL). Keeping these ideas in mind, it begs the question of how we can build relationships with our students and support their social, emotional, and academic learning needs without adding one more thing to our school day? Poetry might just be the answer.

Poetry holds a unique place in literature, offering all of us an artistic form of expression and educators an essential literacy tool. By including poetry in our classrooms, we can address not only students’ SEL needs, but the needs of English learners as well. Thoughtful and intentional selection and integration of poetry throughout the day can nurture well-rounded students who are proficient readers and writers and compassionate and creative thinkers.

Several years ago, Kwame Alexander was interviewed on National Public Radio. He noted that poetry is so powerful because it allows us to take emotionally heavy moments in our lives and turn them into smaller, more manageable lines and phrases. It is through this that we are able to cope and deal with the world (Martin, 2016). Take a moment to consider how you have dealt with the heavy moments in your life. How about your students?

SEL Through Poetry

As children, many of us were blessed to have people in our lives who read to and played games with us. We learned how much fun words are through nursery rhymes and word games. As middle schoolers, we learned that words had the power to give us a voice and provide a way to heal our hearts. We wrote of friendships and unrequited love. We bemoaned our frustration with life and those around us who did not understand what we were going through. We wrote songs and poems to understand ourselves and communicate our feelings in a safe space. As teachers and adults, we have an opportunity to provide similar opportunities for our own children and students.

Let’s be honest. The last few years have been difficult for students and teachers. There are more reports of acting out and poor behavior in school than ever before and student misbehavior is consistently ranked as one of the top reasons that over half of Missouri’s teachers leave the job by their fifth year (Stanford, 2023). Much has been written about the importance of SEL. SEL is viewed as critical to development because we live in a diverse society in which children must be able to recognize and manage emotions, make decisions, and build positive relationships (Wigelsworth et al., 2021).

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (n.d.) developed a framework for education practice that details five core competencies that form SEL. The competencies are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Schools around the country have used this framework to pursue an avenue of instruction to prevent poor behavior and improve school climate.

In December of 2022, the Missouri board of education’s climate and culture committee charged the education department with developing standalone K–12 SEL standards. However, last October, Missouri’s department of elementary and secondary education decided that the SEL framework was too confusing and divisive. Without the state’s backing, local school districts will have to decide if SEL will continue to be weaved within the curriculum to support students’ needs (Manley, 2023).

Morning meetings and English language arts classrooms are natural places to incorporate these soft skills. Gunn, Bennett, and Peterson (2022) noted that the intentional selection of read-alouds is a mainstay of teachers’ instruction and the books chosen help foster care, empathy, and different perspectives. These read-alouds provide windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors (Bishop, 1990; McNair & Edwards, 2021) in which children can view themselves. However, these texts can take a significant amount of time to read, discuss, and understand.

Poetry, less dense than many read-alouds, can provide similar benefits. According to Shechtman and Abu Yaman (2012), poetry can be applied on three different levels: informative, conceptual, and valuing. The authors detailed the poem “Joey” by Shel Silverstein (1974) as an example. First, teachers can have students read the poem to learn the content and vocabulary. In the poem, “Joey,” the reader learns that Joey knocked down the sun with a stone and the world became dark. At the next level, students learn that acting out or being impulsive can have negative consequences and therefore one should exercise caution when acting out. In the poem “Joey,” plants do not grow, and the wind does not blow, all because of a stone. Lastly, value adding can occur. At this level, discussions are connected to children’s lives, asking about similar experiences of anger, losing control, acting impulsively, and feeling regret.

As previously mentioned, morning meetings provide a daily opportunity to embrace both poetry and SEL. In the morning meeting slide (see Figure 1), we have provided a format that showcases both of these important components of an elementary classroom. Note the development of vocabulary with an emphasis on discussing emotions and increasing words kids know. We feature a poem each day that can be a published poem or one written by members of the classroom. Moving to poetry written by your own students also encourages poetry performance to create an even more engaging learning opportunity. Lastly, note the use of different languages to embrace multiculturalism and our students who are English learners.

SEL Through Poetry

As children, many of us were blessed to have people in our lives who read to and played games with us. We learned how much fun words are through nursery rhymes and word games. As middle schoolers, we learned that words had the power to give us a voice and provide a way to heal our hearts. We wrote of friendships and unrequited love. We bemoaned our frustration with life and those around us who did not understand what we were going through. We wrote songs and poems to understand ourselves and communicate our feelings in a safe space. As teachers and adults, we have an opportunity to provide similar opportunities for our own children and students.

Let’s be honest. The last few years have been difficult for students and teachers. There are more reports of acting out and poor behavior in school than ever before and student misbehavior is consistently ranked as one of the top reasons that over half of Missouri’s teachers leave the job by their fifth year (Stanford, 2023). Much has been written about the importance of SEL. SEL is viewed as critical to development because we live in a diverse society in which children must be able to recognize and manage emotions, make decisions, and build positive relationships (Wigelsworth et al., 2021).

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (n.d.) developed a framework for education practice that details five core competencies that form SEL. The competencies are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Schools around the country have used this framework to pursue an avenue of instruction to prevent poor behavior and improve school climate.

In December of 2022, the Missouri board of education’s climate and culture committee charged the education department with developing standalone K–12 SEL standards. However, last October, Missouri’s department of elementary and secondary education decided that the SEL framework was too confusing and divisive. Without the state’s backing, local school districts will have to decide if SEL will continue to be weaved within the curriculum to support students’ needs (Manley, 2023).

Morning meetings and English language arts classrooms are natural places to incorporate these soft skills. Gunn, Bennett, and Peterson (2022) noted that the intentional selection of read-alouds is a mainstay of teachers’ instruction and the books chosen help foster care, empathy, and different perspectives. These read-alouds provide windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors (Bishop, 1990; McNair & Edwards, 2021) in which children can view themselves. However, these texts can take a significant amount of time to read, discuss, and understand.

Poetry, less dense than many read-alouds, can provide similar benefits. According to Shechtman and Abu Yaman (2012), poetry can be applied on three different levels: informative, conceptual, and valuing. The authors detailed the poem “Joey” by Shel Silverstein (1974) as an example. First, teachers can have students read the poem to learn the content and vocabulary. In the poem, “Joey,” the reader learns that Joey knocked down the sun with a stone and the world became dark. At the next level, students learn that acting out or being impulsive can have negative consequences and therefore one should exercise caution when acting out. In the poem “Joey,” plants do not grow, and the wind does not blow, all because of a stone. Lastly, value adding can occur. At this level, discussions are connected to children’s lives, asking about similar experiences of anger, losing control, acting impulsively, and feeling regret.

As previously mentioned, morning meetings provide a daily opportunity to embrace both poetry and SEL. In the morning meeting slide (see Figure 1), we have provided a format that showcases both of these important components of an elementary classroom. Note the development of vocabulary with an emphasis on discussing emotions and increasing words kids know. We feature a poem each day that can be a published poem or one written by members of the classroom. Moving to poetry written by your own students also encourages poetry performance to create an even more engaging learning opportunity. Lastly, note the use of different languages to embrace multiculturalism and our students who are English learners.

 

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