Students focus on classic art form during World Poetry Day

WEBUTUCK — If one were to walk by Webutuck High School (WHS) English Language Arts (ELA) teacher Jenna Garofalo’s classroom on Monday, March 21, they would have found her senior Dutchess Community College (DCC) English class entranced.

The students were organizing their ideas into original poems in celebration of World Poetry Day, which fell on the 21st this year.

As to what inspired her to assign the interdisciplinary art/ELA lesson, Garofalo said the class just started a new unit. She wanted to challenge them while celebrating the classic art form. Incorporating different styles of poetry into the lesson, Garofalo said the objective was “to use our knowledge of poetry and our enjoyment and appreciation for all art forms in order to create our own poetry and art.”

An enthusiastic teacher, Garofalo often comes up with innovative and dynamic lessons for her students.

“I also want to get the message out that poetry doesn’t have to be hard,” she said.

As she watched her students craft their poems and critique each other’s work, the ELA teacher said, “Sometimes it’s best to get back to our basics, to practice those social skills. [We’re] kind of getting back to our roots with a paper and pencil assignment.”

Students had a choice of poetry forms to explore: name poetry (acrostic poetry) where the first letter in each line is used to spell out a word or phrase; blackout poetry, where a page from a magazine or book is used to blacked out lines and create poetry; and free verse.

Those who chose free verse poetry watched a film by Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado to explore different cultures. Garofalo hoped it would inspire them to appreciate different cultures and art forms.

“It brought light to a multitude of crises,” said student Joaquin Broughton. “Having a voice is power, and poetry is a form of self-expression; there’s an infinite amount of ways to describe yourself through poetry. Self-expression is one of the things that makes us human.”

Classmate Samantha Meehan agreed, adding she enjoyed learning about different forms of the art.

“Poetry is one of the things I enjoy reading,” said Samantha. “You have to have the creative imagination and mind-set to put it together.”

The students dove headfirst into their poetry lesson, and finished it by their class the next day. While Garofalo originally wanted to hang one long poster of poetry on the wall outside her classroom, she said a student suggested having individual projects form a collage of student poetry along the wall instead.

Garofalo said her eighth-grade class did a similar assignment for extra credit. She was pleased many of the students were exposed to poetry for their first time.