I was lucky enough to have a guest poet in my room today. Our school district has a partnership with our county humanities project, and they sponsored his visit. It was awesome! He had some fresh poetry activities that the students found really engaging. In a couple of my classes, we had a Lune (11 word poem) competition, which he mc-ed. Other classes composed rant poems based on lists of fifty things that drive them crazy, and some classes did simile poems modeled on Renegades by Tim Seibles. He introduced the basic elements of poetry slam performance, too.
Yesterday was the deadline for the school newsletter, and I was trying to write a quick blurb about this poet's upcoming visit, but I couldn't put my hands on the materials that came from the humanities office, so I figured I'd give him a quick google. The first item was a link to a site with three of his poems, each containing some pretty sexually explicit details. A couple of links down was a youtube video-- turns out my guy has been on HBO Def Poetry Jam. I watched the clip, and it was funny, but pretty raunchy. It was also apparent that this poet was an openly gay man.
Our community is pretty liberal, and I like to think that I am, too, but I confess that I thought carefully about this turn of events. What if my students or their parents performed the same easy search that I had? Would they be offended? And what if they were? Would it matter? Should publishing or performing a certain kind of material preclude someone from being a visiting artist in schools?
Of course, as it turned out, in addition to being awesome, his presentation was strictly age-appropriate. Over the course of the day, we had the gifted teacher, the counselor, the special ed teacher on my team, and the humanities coordinator in the room with us, and they all agreed that he was wonderful. I honestly don't anticipate any complaints, but I wouldn't have any trouble defending his presence in my classroom, should anyone raise a concern.
I'm still wrestling with the question of moral standards for those who teach. It seems like there are some unwritten rules and expectations out there; I felt them yesterday. Maybe it's time for them to be out in the open.
Yesterday was the deadline for the school newsletter, and I was trying to write a quick blurb about this poet's upcoming visit, but I couldn't put my hands on the materials that came from the humanities office, so I figured I'd give him a quick google. The first item was a link to a site with three of his poems, each containing some pretty sexually explicit details. A couple of links down was a youtube video-- turns out my guy has been on HBO Def Poetry Jam. I watched the clip, and it was funny, but pretty raunchy. It was also apparent that this poet was an openly gay man.
Our community is pretty liberal, and I like to think that I am, too, but I confess that I thought carefully about this turn of events. What if my students or their parents performed the same easy search that I had? Would they be offended? And what if they were? Would it matter? Should publishing or performing a certain kind of material preclude someone from being a visiting artist in schools?
Of course, as it turned out, in addition to being awesome, his presentation was strictly age-appropriate. Over the course of the day, we had the gifted teacher, the counselor, the special ed teacher on my team, and the humanities coordinator in the room with us, and they all agreed that he was wonderful. I honestly don't anticipate any complaints, but I wouldn't have any trouble defending his presence in my classroom, should anyone raise a concern.
I'm still wrestling with the question of moral standards for those who teach. It seems like there are some unwritten rules and expectations out there; I felt them yesterday. Maybe it's time for them to be out in the open.
Since the poet limited his classroom presentation to age appropriate materials, it's ok IMHO. It would be interesting if you did a follow-up entry in a week or so telling whether there was any fallout.
ReplyDeleteI have had quest artists visit my classes and it's been great but I do know that you can't always control or predict what someone might do. I know that colleagues had guest artists who did use pretty racy language which was embarrassing for all concerned but it was a number of years ago and nothing happened to the teacher. But you can't always know.
ReplyDeleteI was very lucky. I did make sure to let my guests know something about the kids they would be working with.
It was great.
Bonnie