A
new column in which teachers can share their successful lessons,
techniques and insights about their work. Email: ednews1@aol.com
or fax 212-481-3919. State your school affiliation.
Social
Studies Through Poetry
Ken Siegelman was a social studies teacher in Brooklyn for 29
years. He found that one of the best ways to teach children is
to take an inter-disciplinary approach and tap into their “innate
creativity and imaginative ability.” Accordingly, Siegelman started
teaching “Social Studies through Poetry,” writing and using poems
in his classroom to enhance his students’ critical thinking. He
wrote several volumes of poems which centered on historical events.
“Children are automatically placed inside the very personal environment
of the poem,” he says. “By identifying the persona inside the
poem, they are able to touch base with the emotional state and
philosophical beliefs of that voice.”
After each poem, Siegelman includes analytical questions for students
exploring the themes of the poem. He found that when used in conjunction
with a good textbook and primary sources, his poetry method sparked
class discussions and arguments.
“History
becomes an expression of living people through the poem,” he explains.
Strange
Places
Many
places webbing
Off
these Southern roads
Feel
like a battlefield
Left
fallow-since the civil war.
Fallen
branches shadow skeletons
In
the eerie quiet
Cemetery
dark.
The
soil sponges to my sneakers
Like
a mattress left to rot;
Swallowing
the uneasiness
Of
squeezing on so many
Unmarked
graves.
A
field of long grass
Just
beyond the jungle pines
Feels
alive and dead
Like
an island
Never
visited—
A
piebald horse
With
a shark’s dumb stare
Freezes
in a silhouette.
It
stands dead center in the grass
With
the sun of fire
Around
its head…
I
bolt away
With
the panic of a man
Struck
blind;
Back
to the motel
And
trucker’s stop.
There
the neon sign
With
missing letters
Blink
the night against my
bedroom
wall.
Coding
like an early memory
Of
downtown Patterson
New
Jersey.
Questions:
Americans from different regions and sections share distinct customs
and cultures. Moreover, the experiences of rural Americans and
urban Americans are also likely to have very different ideas and
impressions on what they see and interpret as they travel through
America.
1. Do you think you would share the feelings of this traveler
in the southern woods? Explain.
2. Do you feel that his fears are influenced by his northern urban
upbringing? Do you think southern woodsmen would equally be uneasy
in a northern city?
3. The poem’s title is Strange Places. How might you argue
that the motel/trucker’s stop is also a rather strange place?
4. What makes places seem strange? Explain.
For
information about Mr. Siegelman’s poems, collected in American
Imprints, contact him at 2225 W Fifth St. Brooklyn, NY 11223.
Education Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001. Tel:
(212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of
the publisher. © 2001.
|