Last winter, we saw a post from a teacher Twitter about the idea of Blackout Poetry. In a nutshell, you take discarded pages of print, newspapers, old books, pages from a magazine, and you find words that go together. Sometimes, the words clomp up and string together easily. At other times, they skip and bounce, having to be drawn together with more creative strings. Austin Kleon has produced some impressive work using this type of approach, inking up portions of entire newspapers, and leaving behind both poetic and visual images. No longer is a page of text something to throw away; it is truly something to recycle. My students seemed to fall in love with it. My box of pages from books that were falling apart would mysteriously empty after the Hopkins sisters visited my room. Mya startled us all with some strikingly vivid imagery. Kenz made me take a deep breath, and Neil showed me that pages from old Harlequin Romance paperbacks may not be the best resource for a class with creative sophomore boys. I could go on and on about the what they kids created, and I am proud of the pages that eventually were tacked to my bulletin board. Old pages, new ideas. Old text, new excitement.
Teachers seem to be natural scroungers. Many of us see an old chair and wonder, "Would my kids use that if I put it in the corner of my classroom?" A table discarded from a science room might miraculously acquire a fresh coat of paint and show up in an English classroom at the other end of the building. Throw-away pool noodles become decorating supplies and exercise ball stands. Garage sales are an addiction, and at every turn, the potential for something that might make a classroom just a little more inviting and effective is found in the oddest of places. Or, maybe that is just me. I doubt it though, since a colleague, Sam Neill (visit her blog too) has coined our ELA classrooms at BHS the "Hallway of Misfit Furniture".
So, it should come as no surprise that a broken chair, a box of old books, and a forgotten display shelf were the inspirations this summer for the latest addition to my classroom. I will let you in on something: I really dislike the plastic student chairs in most classrooms. One goal of mine since I began using flexible seat was to acquire enough office chairs at garage sales so that no student would ever have to sit in one in my room, even if they choose to sit at a table. One of the biggest issues with those plastic chairs is that every single one develops a broken rivet and begins to wobble. I had two such broken chairs in my room that had lost all but one rivet, leaving them useless. Or so I thought. My floor sofa, a student favorite, needed additional support. A plastic chairback became a perfect solution. Because I cannot throw anything away without exploring every potential use, I held on to the base. I am glad I did. A brainstorm and a little bit of work later, I had constructed a low table, complete with student samples of blackout poetry displayed beneath plexiglass. I had one more base, which I tucked away in the garage until my next inspiration hit.
Later, I found an old shelf from a display counter in the rafters above my garage. It was left by the house's previous owners, and I, of course, had not thrown it away. The surface of the shelf was bubbled and, honestly, kind of gross. I needed to cover it with something. I started with the idea of more student blackout poetry, covered with clear contact paper. Then a thought struck me. I had a box of books that I had bought at a garage sale for 50 cents. They were falling apart and "worthless". I collected the pages of one old book of "Classic American Fiction" that had broken away from the book's spine and began gluing. They covered the top of the table, leaving a smooth and intriguing surface. (Note: when transporting a paper-covered table in the bed of a pickup, avoid doing so on a Kansas morning with 96% humidity. The pages won't be so perfect when you get to school. But hey, nobody's perfect.) In my head, it would be an organic piece of creative work for and by the students in my class. I wanted them to circle, underline, write, and scribble all over the table. On the first day of school, I explained to my classes that they were welcome to begin transforming the top of the table into their own work of art. If they liked what they created, we would snap a picture of it and probably post it on Twitter. If they hated it, we could paste a new page over the top of it, and they could go again. If we filled the tabletop with their works, we would snap an image to immortalize it, and lay down a new canvas of pages. They seemed intrigued. However, they hesitated. For so long, we have told our kids not to write on the tables, to remain seated, to keep quiet. Breaking those bindings can be somewhat difficult. Finally, one student from my creative writing class began circling words and then blacking out others. Soon, four students sat around the table, pencils and Sharpies in hand, letting the pages write the poems. One student kept coming back each day, adding a word or two. Another artfully blued out her blackout page, fading away in an artful display, mainly because the marker was drying out. Sometimes the "mistakes" and "screw ups" can lead to the most beautiful results.
The table is still not filled, and there are coffee stains on some of the pages, which I find oddly neat. I leave the markers on the tabletop, and sometimes felt tip pens show up and be added to the collection. I have noticed more students reading through the pages that are inked up. Hopefully, they will grow brave enough to start marking for themselves.
It's for them after all, and I love seeing them make it theirs.
No comments:
Post a Comment