Final Project: "My President"

 

Topic: "Poetry Workshop with Danez Smith's My President"

Subject: English Language Arts: Creative Writing

Grade: 4th of Eso Bilingual

Description

My final project is a close reading of a poem called My President by poet Danez Smith, followed by a creative writing exercise. The level I picked to design the lesson for was 4th of Eso, bilingual. The reason I chose this particular topic and methodology is because I am a creative writer myself and a big fan of contemporary poetry. In previous jobs I have worked with young people on creative writing, and I would love to be able to teach creative writing in the future. I decided to use the final project of the MOOC as an opportunity to practice teaching creative writing, and I picked My President as the subject because I find it to be a very accessible, yet very profound poem that would be easy and rewarding for English language learners to engage with.

Danez Smith is a Black, Queer poet from Minneapolis who is a part of the "Dark Noise Collective"– an extremely influential group of poets of color in the United States. Smith identifies as genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns. In My President, Smith presents a list of different people that are their "president." The list jumps around from naming specific family members and people in Smiths life, to naming celebrities they admire, to naming average people they encounter on a daily basis and even things like "the birds." It concludes with "show me to our nation/ my only border is my body/ i sing your names/ [...] my mighty anthem." Although there is a lot of colloquial language that needs to be explained to English language learners, overall the poem is very easy to follow, and the main message of the poem is very accessible. The poem almost effortlessly subverts the power structure of the United States, redefining the idea of "President," and the power associated with the word, from a reference to a specific person (i.e. Trump) to a means of empowering the people significant to Smith's life, including every day people that they interact with on a daily basis. Smith presents us with an astonishing possibility: we don't have to admire and look up to the real President, we don't have to let authority figures with massive power define our world for us. We have the power to define our own nation. And what is our nation? A nation of people, people we know and love, people we may not even know but who we are inspired by on a daily basis.

Because My President is so accessible, it actually provides an excellent prompt for a creative writing activity. So my lesson plan culminates in a poetry exercise, where students are asked to write their own version of My President. This creative engagement provides allows students to not only understand the poem from the outside, but to apply the meaning of the poem to their own lives.

Objectives

The objectives of this lesson are as follows:

1. Students can understand most of the language in the poem, and understand the literal meaning of words and phrases they may not have been familiar with.

2. Students can develop their own ideas about the meaning of the poem and express those ideas to each other and to the educator.

3. Students can creatively apply the meaning of the poem to their own lives by engaging with the creative writing activity.

Accessibility

It is important to engage all students regardless of their ability level and learning style, so there are certain accessibility measures built in to the curriculum and assessment methodology. Some students process information better when they read, and others when they listen, so the poem is presented in both formats several times so that both learning styles are accommodated. Additionally, a large amount of time in the curriculum is spent defining terms and unpacking specific language, and it is important for the educator to not rush this step and take all student questions seriously, as a careful term-by-term analysis will help students with lower English skills catch up to those with higher skills.

In terms of communication, some students express themselves better through speaking and others through writing, so both methods of communication are included in the curriculum and assessed. It is important to not penalize students, for example, for having a hard time speaking up during discussion, if they are able to demonstrate engagement in the writing component, and visa-versa. Finally, the last homework assignment is artistic and should be treated as such. Art should be a great equalizer, poetry should be open and accessible to all and treated as the subjective. Students should be assessed and praised for their work not based on "talent" or "skill," but based on engagement (as detailed in the assessment session.) This will allow students with all abilities and skillsets to get a fair chance.

A note on Teacher/Language Assistant roles

There is not one way to divide the work between the Teacher and Language Assistant for this exercise, because it depends on their established in-class relationship. The way that it worked in my class, which I would recommend to others, is sort of a "Teacher as structure, Language Assistant as content" relationship. That is, this entire lesson can and should be facilitated by the Language Assistant, simply because of the many American cultural references and colloquial language in the poem and the distinctly American political context for the poem's meaning. But while the Language Assistant facilitates the discussions and activities, the classroom teacher, who is the expert on classroom management and on the specific students in class, should standby to interject to help keep things on track. Also, the curriculum culminates in a homework assignment, and because Language Assistants do not assign homework it is up to the teacher to select a due date and collect the work.

Procedure

The lesson plan is best performed over the course of two class periods, which is how I chose to implement it. However, it could be adjusted to teach over just one class period by simply shortening the time given for each step.

Before class: 

Here is a link to the poem: My President. 

Send each student a copy of the poem My President and tell them to read the poem on their own before class.My President was published in Danez Smith's 2020 poetry collection Homie, and I highly recommend that the educator purchase the whole collection, as significant dimension is added to the poem My President when it's read alongside Smith's other work.

Day 1:

1. (5 minutes) Open up the class by introducing the poet. You will likely have to introduce the word "Queer," and talk about "they/them" pronouns, as you will be referring to Smith using "they/them" pronouns throughout the lesson. Also, you will likely need to introduce "Spoken Word" poetry as it is not as common in Spain and students might be unfamiliar with Danez Smith's reading style.

2. (5 minutes) Here is a link to a video of Danez Smith reading the poem: My President Reading. Play the video and ask students to follow along reading their print copy.

3. (5 minutes) Instruct students to take a few minutes to underline all of the people they don't know and the words and phrases they don't understand. 

3. (20 minutes) Open up the room for discussion, allowing students to ask you questions about the literal meaning of different names and words. Make sure to include the entire class, calling on students who don't volunteer immediately. Also make sure that other students don't know the definition of a word before you tell them. It is useful to have a computer handy to search certain people or phrases to provide a quick visual aid as you explain things. Note: It is important to do this work yourself before class to make sure you understand all of the references. Also, you will probably not be able to answer every question because some words and phrases are creative liberties taken by Smith and don't have a definition, but you can interpret as best you can.

4. (5 minutes) Now that students have most terms defined, play the video again, instructing students to focus on the meaning of the poem this time.

5. (10 minutes) Prepare for the next day by having a basic discussion about students impressions of the poem as a whole. This should be a free form, open discussion. As the educator you should ask broad questions like "did you like the poem?", "Have you ever encountered something like this before?", "What stuck out to you?"

Day 2:

Here is a link to a powerpoint to use for the second day: My President ppt.

1. (5 minutes) Watch the video for a final time, again asking students to follow along and again asking them to focus on the "meaning" of the poem.

2. (5-10 minutes) Divide students into small groups of 3-4. Pull up the powerpoint and display the second slide with the discussion questions. Instruct the students to talk about the meaning of the poem, following the discussion questions. You can have them assign one person as a "scribe" to take notes on their conversation, but this is not necessary if you have a talkative class that wouldn't need to be prompted in the discussion. (Note: When I taught the lesson I had to skip step 2 because we were teaching online and small group work was impossible.)

3. (10-15 minutes) Come back together and have a discussion on the meaning of the poem as a whole class. Start by asking a representative of each group to summarize their group's discussion, then open the conversation up to the whole class, being mindful to include students that are not volunteering to talk on their own.

4. (10-15 minutes) Assign the in-class writing activity that is detailed on the third slide of the presentation. Students will create a list of about 5 people to "elect as their President," and add some detail to each. It is not that important that every student finishes the activity before you move on, as it is really just a brainstorm/ warm-up for their homework

5. (5-10 minutes) Give students a chance to share what they wrote. Feel free to call on students if there are few volunteers.

5. (5 minutes) Assign the homework project that is detailed on the fourth slide of the presentation. At home, students will use their in-class activity as an outline to create their own My President poems.

After class:

Collect and assess the poems that students wrote as they finish. If you have time, you can let students share their poems during a third class at a later date!

Assessment

The first two objectives can be assessed through the in-class discussion. In order to get an accurate assessment, the educator must attempt to engage as many students as possible in the discussion, and encourage each to express their own ideas. If the class seems confused by the literal meaning of language in the poem, or about the broader abstract meaning, then the objectives aren't being met and the educator needs to provide more background information or redirect the conversation. 

The third objective can be assessed by reading the poems created by the class. Of course, being a creative project, the quality of the poem is subjective and will be different for each student. Students at different English levels will engage very differently in this activity, and they should not be assessed in terms of their command of the English language such as the grammar in the poem etc. The objective is about engagement, not about English language ability. So to assess engagement, the educator needs to read each submission with the student in mind, and look for evidence that the student has genuinely attempted to apply the poem to their own lives. This will be especially obvious in terms of students listing a "President" idea that was not in the poem or discussed in class, or adding details that are unique to that student. A less engaged poem will simply list "Presidents" that were in the poem or were discussed in class, and will not add any details that are unique to that particular student.

Implementation and Reflection

On the week that I had scheduled the lesson plan, all of the Madrid school system was shut down due to snowfall from storm Filomena, and I had to do the lesson online instead of in person. Luckily, the curriculum proved to be very adaptable and was very easy to implement online. The only aspect that I had to leave out was step 2 on day 2, where the students would have chatted in small groups. It was a shame to leave this out, because it provides an important component to the curriculum by allowing space for students to develop and share ideas amongst themselves, however it worked pretty well without it. Some students were more engaged than others, but according to my assessment, the entire class was able to adequately understand both the poem's language and it's abstract meaning. 

Some parts of the discussion were surprising to me, for example many of the students had not engaged much with art produced by Black artists and Queer artists in the U.S.A., and they were very shocked by the visibility of these communities in the poem. Many of the students spoke on this point, and said that they were very happy to read a piece that included these and other points of view that are repressed by mainstream culture in the Spain as well as the U.S.A.. This showed up quite a bit in the student's creative pieces, with several of them choosing to lift up similar repressed voices and label them "President." Students also told me that the majority of poetry they had worked with in school was Spanish poetry from the medieval period, and they said that it was refreshing to read contemporary poetry. I was also surprised that most of the class was not familiar with "spoken word" poetry, and they were taken aback by Danez Smith's reading style, saying that it reminded them of rap. I spent some extra time explaining "spoken word" as an art form on the second day.

Overall, the implementation of the lesson was a major success, and sufficiently accomplished all objectives. The results, the students poetry, speak for themselves. Many students were able to produce amazing poems that not only demonstrated significant engagement with the lesson, but also helped me get to know the students better as people. I am confident that this lesson could be transferred to other schools and even other English ability levels fairly easily.

Student Work!

Here are some of the poems that my students turned in!