[Memo 5] Just thinking about it, hopefully the puzzle is almost complete.

As an English major, I write a lot. Then I write some more. Then some more. Read more and then write about it. And so, the cycle continues. However, I sort of lost that artistic freedom in my writing that I got to experience in high school. Thinking back, I remember having stacks of notebooks filled with drawings and poems and songs that I was so proud of at the time. Until now, I had not realized that I do not write as much as I thought I was. No longer was I writing for me; I was writing for a grade. 

When I first began contemplating my I-Search assignment, I was at a loss. I had ideas; however, they were either too broad or not broad enough. I was only thinking about ideas that sounded good or would make for a good essay, not really putting myself into it. Like most of my ideas, one came to me last minute: poetry in classrooms. My original focus was how some teachers used poetry in the classroom and why other teachers did not include it, when I have personally seen it used effectively.

That was when I went straight for JSTOR, a very reliable, but scattered, scholarly journal website. It was difficult at first to pin point ideas applicable to my assignment. I was able to pull out some, one of which I was not even entirely sure if it would fit my assignment. My initial instinct was to look for articles that stood out to me, “English Language Arts, Basketball, and Poetry Collide”. Yes, that would work. I wanted to find ways that teachers used poetry in their classrooms, so I suspected that this teacher had found a way to link poetry to something his students liked, basketball, and then used that in his classroom.

What I got was something a little bit different. He instead found similarities between coaching basketball and teaching poetry that would change how he taught both. Well, it was not exactly what I wanted or expected, but it was an interesting article nonetheless.

However, that was when my mindset on this whole project began to change. Instead of searching for why teachers did not use poetry, I began to see a shift: how was I going to use poetry in my classroom? In all honesty, I never actually thought about it. I looked back at the article before heading towards my other steps, how basketball changed Douglas Baker’s attitude about teaching. Even my second article, it was giving me ideas and I never realized it. What I was really searching for was not how or why teachers teach poetry, but about how and why I should. 

It was around Memo three when I really began seeing this shift. During memo 2, I did not think it would be enough for me to just compose a couple of poems. I could do that whenever. In fact, I felt I was cheating myself and others if I did that, so I desperately searched for something much more prevalent to talk about in my blog. I look back, and I wish I wrote more. As I said, I do not really write for me anymore. If I cannot even write for myself, how am I supposed to expect my students to? How will I be able to teach them? 

(I know that bookshelf! This was from the poetry meeting I attended!)
 

That is when I decided to see Gary Whitehead’s poetry reading. I will be brutally honest, the only poetry reading I went to before this, I was reading and listening to Poe works; I stuttered over every line. So, this was a nice chance to hear a poet reading his own work. And I was so glad I went! I really saw what it were like to be both a poet and a teacher at the same time, and what that could be like. Not to sound too cheesy, I was inspired. I wanted to be that clear, that precise, I wanted to live in the mountains for a year with no electricity and just write. It was high school all over again, I just wanted to write! And that is when it hit me. My I-Search was not about other teachers, it was about what I could do as a teacher. And so that is where the rest of my searching went.

I looked up other poets, see what inspired them; find political or literature related topics in their words and poems.

I still needed to find a why though, why was this so important? “As an English major, I write a lot. Then I write some more. Then some more. Read more and then write about it.” All teachers do is ask their students to write. And write some more. Then read and write about what they read. It. Gets. OLD. Even for teachers, we do not want to spend hours of our Christmas break grading essays! Poetry, thought I am making it sound like just an easy route, is a great way for students to write vigorously, but they feel accomplishment finishing their work. Why else would Nikki Giovanni inspire SO many people, such as Kanye West's song "Hey Mama". The whole song is about how wonderful his mother is, and it includes this lyric:

"Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni,
Turn one page and there's my mommy."  (Jessica). 

I still want to look a little further on my own, about other poets and such, but I think I am certainly on the right route. I certainly found what it was I was searching for through this whole process. In fact, I am glad I did not choose my other topics, this was more rewarding.