Poetry is my heart. When my class finished their curriculum two days ahead of schedule, I was ecstatic at the opportunity to teach them poetry. I taught them simple verse, free verse, haikus, and even played them videos of spoken word artist in America. All of my students said they had never seen anything like it before. What an opportunity! My heart almost couldn't take it. We talked about poetry, public speaking, and about other medias to communicate our -what they called, "heart feelings." They ended up coming up with some of the most magnificent ideas, and were very vulnerable and creative with the assignment. We created a poetry collage of everyone's favorite poems, and they cut out pictures from magazines to go with each of their poems. It was incredible to watch.
I was able to talk on the phone with two of my students earlier this week, both teachers in their provinces, and both of them said they shared my poetry curriculum with their schools in their hometowns, and heard my other students did too. Lawrence Ferlinghetti once said that "Poetry in handcuffs handcuffs the human race." Thanks to a willing, ambitious class of 54 chinese teachers, there are hopes of the students of China being a little more free.
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