Silver Bear Poetry Project as a Community of

PracticeHeather Harrison

History of the Silver Bear Poetry Project

12+ year involvement in a monthly poetry writing workshop.

Experience with WSU Libraries’ Chapbook Literacy Project

Sample activity: I Remember poems

Joe Brainard, poet and visual artist, 1942-1994

“I Remember” poems:

Detailed, vivid, down to earth, personal

Let students know that poems can be made of their own speech patterns and experiences

Communities of Practice Social Learning Theory

Etienne Wenger

Definition:“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.”

E. Wenger

http://ewenger.com/theory/index.htm

Domain Community Practice

Characteristics of communities of practice

“A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people.”

E. Wenger

Domain

“In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together. But members of a community of practice do not necessarily work together on a daily basis. The Impressionists, for instance, used to meet in cafes and studios to discuss the style of painting they were inventing together. These interactions were essential to making them a community of practice even though they often painted alone.”

E. Wenger

Community

“A community of practice is not merely a community of interest--people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction. The development of a shared practice may be more or less self-conscious. Nurses who meet regularly for lunch in a hospital cafeteria may not realize that their lunch discussions are one of their main sources of knowledge about how to care for patients. Still, in the course of all these conversations, they have developed a set of stories and cases that have become a shared repertoire for their practice.”

E. Wenger

Practice

Sample Activity: Invisible Bird poems

Craig Arnold’s “Invisible Birds of Central America”

Focuses on specific sounds & actions

Invisible Bird poems: Encourages students to

describe things/birds they cannot/do not see (imagination)

Focuses on at least one of the five senses: sound (detail)

Older students (3rd grade+) explore metaphor & simile

Problem solving Requests for information Seeking experience Reusing assets Discussing developments Mapping knowledge and identifying gaps

Activities involved within a community of practice

How do we get from there to here?

An involved classroom teacher who is invested in the success of the project

A teaching artist who is committed to building relationships with students and teachers over the course of 12-25 weeks

A classroom teacher and teaching artist who are committed to collaborating on lessons and who meet regularly to discuss what works and what doesn’t.

Ungraded writing journals=student writer space

Non-negotiables

Commitment to domain (passion, shared interest)

Shared competence Students helping one another Shared information Building relationships Practice (practitioners)

Qualities to encourage

Orientation: locating oneself—getting a panoramic view of the landscape and our place in it.

Reflection: looking at ourselves and our situations with new eyes, being aware of the multiple ways we can interpret our lives.

Exploration: not accepting things the way they are, experimenting and exploring possibilities, reinventing the self.

E. Wenger

Educational Imagination

Best/Worst Experiences with Literature

Tom Romanohttp://www.users.muohio.edu/romanots/Tom_Romano.html

Informal poll w/200 English Education undergraduate students

50% of students have had their best experiences with literature in school

90% suffered their worst experiences with literature in school

Student Writers with Passion

Read out loud!

Students need to view themselves as writers with important and unique voices

Uncensored/ungraded writing journals encourage space and time for writing each day

Get students writing!

Get students reading poems aloud!

Sample Activity: Neighborhood poems

Based on Romare Bearden’s iconic collage, “The Block” 1971

Guided mini-tour of one’s neighborhood

Neighborhood poems Poetry (and art) is

everywhere! Allows students to

transform their neighborhoods into exciting, vibrant communities

The big question: How do YOU see/view your neighborhood?

Poetry Foundationhttp://www.poetryfoundation.org/

The Academy of American Poetshttp://www.poets.org/

Poetry Dailyhttp://poems.com/

Poetry 180http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Let the poem be your guide: finding poems that will interest/intrigue students

Free: Internet blogs—Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr

Cheap: MS Word + photocopying with stapled binding. Alternative: comb binding via Kinkos or another copy shop

With funds: Internet-based, print-on-demand publishing. Can be as low as $4.95-6.95/book◦ Example: Blurb.com

Publishing

Communities of Practice: learning, meaning, and identity, by Etienne Wenger. Cambridge University Press. 1998.

Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: teaching children to write poetry, by Kenneth Koch. Harper. 1999.

Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?: teaching great poetry to children, by Kenneth Koch. Vintage Books. 1990.

The List Poem: a guide to teaching and writing catalog verse, by Larry Fagin. T&W Books. 2000.

Poetry Everywhere, edited by Jack Collom and Sheryl Noethe. T&W Books. 2005.

Bibliography