Where Im From (with a Twist): Two poems, Many Lessons

Promoting a Community of Writers in the Classroom and Facilitating the Writing Process While Exploring Culture and Identity
Rosanne Mello NWP@FGCU summer 2012

Learning Objectives of Lesson

Students will use mentor texts for close reading, analytical thinking and discussion. Mentor texts will be used as models for the students poems. Students will understand how writers use imagery to create voice and convey meaning in poems. Students will recognize the impact of culture on identity.

Multiple Purposes of Lessons Using Where Im From Poems

Excellent start of the year activity to support and facilitate a positive community of writers and learners in the classroom. To teach or reinforce the writing processes and to establish Writers Workshop procedures. Can be used at the beginning of a Memoir or Personal Narrative Essay Unit to start tapping memories for meaningful stories and lessons from life to write about or to launch a poetry unit.

Where Im From by George Ella Lyon

I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbontetrachloride. I am from the dirt under the back porch. (Black, glistening, it tasted like beets.) I am from the forsythia bush the Dutch elm whose long-gone limbs I remember as if they were my own. I'm from fudge and eyeglasses, from Imogene and Alafair. I'm from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons, from Perk up! and Pipe down! I'm from He restoreth my soul with a cottonball lamb and ten verses I can say myself. I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch, fried corn and strong coffee. From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger, the eye my father shut to keep his sight. Under my bed was a dress box spilling old pictures, a sift of lost faces to drift beneath my dreams. I am from those moments-snapped before I budded -leaf-fall from the family tree.

When I start out working with writers, regardless of age, I begin by saying that writing belongs to everybody.
The main purpose of writing is to get whats in your head and your heart out on paper so that you can get to know yourself, so that you can understand your stories and make sense of your experience. Often the response is But I dont have any stories! (G.E. Lyon)

The intense interrogation of personal histories afforded by Where Im From helped students learn that there experiences are deeply grounded in their social and cultural histories and do not represent universal truths; each individual (and future student) brings unique and valuable experiences- a whole gamut of Where Im Froms- which can be used to value and honor diverse backgrounds. (Here comes the twist!) As we deconstructed the images in Lyons poem, we saw mainstream representations of an ideal American childhood portrayed as reality
We realized that we chose a poem that rendered the norm as reality, and we questioned ways in which we may have marginalized the multiple realities of our students and their livesIts possible that other students quietly erased their histories and rewrote stories that more closely resembled accepted cultural models. We think it is important to provide students with multiple mentor texts that explore alternative as well as dominant discourse models of childhood experiences. (Till and Miller, 2010)

Where Im From by Willie Perdomo Because she liked the kind of music that I listened to and she liked the way I walked as well as the way I talked, she always wanted to know where I was from. If I said that I was from 110th Street and Lexington Avenue, right in the heart of a transported Puerto Rican town, where the hodedores live and night turns to day without sleep, do you think then she might know where I was from? Where Im from, Puerto Rico stays on our minds when the fresh breeze of caf con leche y pan con mantequilla comes through our half-open windows and under our doors while the sun starts to rise. Where Im from, babies fall asleep to the bark of a German Shepherd named Tarzan. We hear his wandering footsteps under a midnight sun. Tarzan has learned quickly to ignore the woman who begs her man to stop slapping her with his fist. Please, baby! Por favor! I swear it wasnt me. I swear to my mother. Mameee!!! (Her dead mother told her that this would happen one day.) Where Im from, Independence Day is celebrated every day. The final gunshot from last nights murder is followed by the officious knock of a warrant squad coming to take your bread, coffee and freedom away.

Where Im from, the police come into your house without knocking. They throw us off rooftops and say we slipped. They shoot my father and say he was crazy. They put a bullet in my head and say they found me that way. Where Im from, you run to the hospital emergency room because some little boy spit a razor out of his mouth and carved a crescent into your face. But you have to understand, where Im from even the dead have to wait until their number is called. Where Im from, you can listen to Big Daddy retelling stories on his corner. He passes a pint of light Bacardi, pouring the deads tributary swig onto the street. Im God when I put a gun to your head. Im the judge and you in my courtroom. Where Im from, its the late night scratch of rats feet that explains what my mother means when she says slowly, Bueno, mijo, eso es la vida del pobre. (Well, son, that is the life of the poor.) Where Im from, its sweet like my grandmother reciting a quick prayer over a pot of hot rice and beans. Where Im from, its pretty like my niece stopping me in the middle of the street and telling me to notice all the stars in the sky.

Some Theories Behind the Lesson

Classroom writing instruction and activities help students to find an authentic voice.
When I talk about voice, I mean written words that carry with them the sense that someone has actually written them. Not a committee, not a computer: a single human being. Writing with voice has the same quirky cadence that makes human speech so impossible to resist listening to. - Ralph Fletcher What a Writer Needs Voice does not arise from nothing . Its influenced by much .Our voices are shaped by the places where we learned language-in our parents arms, at our school desks, in the neighborhood, on playgrounds and streets. In my case, my dads barroom and bowling alleys had me experimenting with spicy vocabulary by third grade. Tom Romano Crafting Authentic Voice

The writing tasks we give to our students should be meaningful and allow them to write with a sense of purpose and for an audience. Fundamental in the making of writers is not a knowledge of this or that grammatical point, a strategy of style, or a strong desire to write, but fully carrying out the act of writing to be read by real persons who respond.
- Ken Macrorie Writing to be Read

Our writing takes on a greater urgency when we have real purposes for writing and real audiences who are reading the writing , which suggests that publishing student writing in some form is a critical aspect of the process.
-Reade W. Dornan, Lois Matz Rosen, and Marilyn Wilson Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary Classroom

There is no singular writing process-there are multiple processes-and the processes are recursive rather than linear. Writers need a toolkit of strategies, activities, and approaches to draw on as they compose. Learning to write means learning to use a variety of genres and forms..(and) students need to write for a variety of purposes. Writing can and should be meaningful to the writer, a source of personal pleasure and satisfaction, as well as a means for social action and academic success. Writing is a tool that gives students power over their lives.
-Reade W. Dornan, Lois Matz Rosen, and Marilyn Wilson Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary Classroom

More Assumptions About Facilitating Writing in the Secondary Classroom Writing is thinking. Students learn to write by writing and by reading other authors. Mentor texts help students improve their writing. Conversations about mentor texts (Text talks or Invitations to Notice) are engaging and effective instructional activities. The teacher needs to participate in the classroom as a writer herself and model writing behaviors and processes. When an environment of a community of writers has been established in the classroom, student will take risks and grow as writers.

Much of our best writing begins with the personal connection because we write best out of what we know. (Dornan, Rosen, and Wilson)

Suggested Instructional Sequence

Day 1 Before reading Poems Quick talk- Where are you from? Focused Free Write- Where are you from? Whole Group-Read and Chart noticings -Poem 1 Whole Group Read and Chart noticings- Poem 2 Day 2 Reread poems silently Highlight examples of imagery in both poems Small groups chart and list imagery under senses-sight sound taste touch smell Notice additional categories for words and phrases- Proper nouns, phrases people said, brand names, things in the house, things in the yard, street life. Discussion: How are the poems similar and how are they different? Writing Task: Choose one poem to write about

Day 3- Writing our own Day5-Polishing Final Drafts, Where Im From Poems Publishing Brainstorming Activities And Celebrations Focused Freewrite Imagery Chart and Categories List or List of Questions prompts Begin Drafts Day 4- Continue Writing and Revising Peer Reviews and Revisions Teacher Conferences

References

Dornan, R.,Rosen, L.,& Wilson,M. (2003). Within and beyond the writing process in the secondary English Classroom. Boston, MA: Pearson education Group.
Fletcher, R. (1993). What a writer needs. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Lyon, G.E. (1993).Where Im from. Retrieved June 10,2012, from http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html. Macrorie,K. ( 1984 ). Writing to be read. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann. Perdomo, W. (1996). Where a nickel costs a dime: poems. New York,NY: W.W. Norton & Company. Romano,T. (2004). Crafting authentic voice. Portsmouth,NH: Heinemann. Till,S.,&Miller,E. (2010). Where Im from:One poem, many journeys. Talking Points, 21 (2):2-8.