Nurturing Creativity Through Poetry Writing: Integrating Emotional Intelligence in the Secondary Classroom

By Michael Goldfine

After a few years of teaching high school English, Michael was disillusioned with uninspiring conventional curriculum. Good students simply tolerated the boring content-driven curriculum better than the less academically inclined students. He started reading about an old concept, through a new term: Emotional Intelligence. An epiphany struck: If emotional intelligence (EQ) development was more of an indication of future success than IQ and was vastly more teachable, why did schools not emphasize the development of emotional intelligence?

For the next 25 years as a high school English teacher, Michael drew and learned from vast resources to better understand, articulate, and embed Healthy Habits of the Mind in his everyday lessons. He developed a list of Healthy Habits of the mind which he could discuss with students. Appreciating a curriculum that became relevant and engaging, students invested energy and often discovered their own creativity and voices.

Eventually, Michael understood how developing writing skills and Emotional Intelligence strengthen and reinforce each other. Students who took more risks, succumbed to fewer fears, and developed a revision mentality were better at all life’s tasks, not just writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685629908

Michael Goldfine

After graduating from high school poorly prepared for college, Michael Goldfine dropped out several times, hitch-hiking across North Africa for 10 months and Central America for eight months. Michael became a reader and eventually shocked everyone who knew him by becoming an English teacher. After earning a full scholarship and completing a Masters of Literature at Bread Loaf School of English, he spent a semester hitch-hiking around the country observing 20 dynamic Bread Loaf teachers in 14 states to improve his own practice. Michael married and helped raise two daughters in central PA where he taught high school English in public school for 33 years.

Book preview

Nurturing Creativity

Through Poetry Writing

Integrating Emotional Intelligence

in the Secondary Classroom

Michael Goldfine

Austin Macauley Publishers

Nurturing Creativity Through Poetry Writing

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Chapter 1: Why Teachers Should Trust Me

Chapter 2: Overview of the Writing Unit

Chapter 3: Students Come to You Perfect

Chapter 4: Nurturing Creativity, Metacognition and a Revision Mentality

Chapter 5: Opening Activity Creating a Safe and Open Classroom

Chapter 6: Four Inspirational Exercises Nurturing Creativity

Chapter 7: Freewriting—Using Freewriting to Bypass the Self-Censoring Brain

Chapter 8: The 10×10×10 Exercise: Inspiring Students to Write from Their True Selves

Chapter 9: Good Writing Is a War Against Cliché

Chapter10: A Warm Up Exercise Stretching the Creative Muscles

Chapter 11: Poem Exercise #1 Wild and Crazy I Wish

Chapter 12: Exercise #2 Really, Really Wild and Crazy I Wish Poem

Chapter 13: Grading and Responding and Sharing of Raw Drafts

Chapter 14: Imagery, Imagery and More Imagery

Chapter 15: Inspiring Courage, Inspiring Creativity and Inspirational Nudges

Chapter 16: Poem Exercise #3 Chant Poem Repetition with Variation Draft

Chapter 17: Poem Exercise #4 I Remember

Chapter 18: Narrow, Narrow, Narrow the Focus

Chapter 19: Poem Exercise #5: I Remember Under the Microscope

Chapter 20: Poem Exercise #6 List with a Twist

Chapter 21: Poem Exercise #7 List Thru Space

Chapter 22: Poem Exercise #8 Where I Am From

Chapter 23: Poem Exercise #9 Letter Poem

Chapter 24: Poem Exercise #10 Haiku

Chapter 25: Poem Exercise #11 ‘America-Like’

Chapter 26: Poem Exercise #12 Song of Myself

Chapter 27: Poem Exercise #13 Any Poem #1 and Any Poem #2

Chapter 28: Developing a Revision Mentality

Chapter 29: Schematic for the Revision Process

Chapter 30: Writing Process Overview

Chapter 31: Students Reading Aloud to Classmates

Chapter 32: Contacting the Author

About the Author

After graduating from high school poorly prepared for college, Michael Goldfine dropped out several times, hitch-hiking across North Africa for 10 months and Central America for eight months. Michael became a reader and eventually shocked everyone who knew him by becoming an English teacher. After earning a full scholarship and completing a Masters of Literature at Bread Loaf School of English, he spent a semester hitch-hiking around the country observing 20 dynamic Bread Loaf teachers in 14 states to improve his own practice. Michael married and helped raise two daughters in central PA where he taught high school English in public school for 33 years.

Dedication

For all the teachers who are disturbed by conventional curriculum and question its relevancy. For all the teachers who dare to envision a curriculum that is relevant and dynamic and engages students. For all the teachers who dare to pursue a vision of curriculum which helps students self-actualize. For all the teachers nurturing emotion intelligence within themselves and with their students.

Copyright Information ©

Michael Goldfine 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Goldfine, Michael

Nurturing Creativity Through Poetry Writing

ISBN 9781685629885 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781685629892 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781685629908 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023908261

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Chapter 1

Why Teachers Should Trust Me

My success as a teacher comes out of years of failure. I was as far from being a natural as any teacher who eventually flourished through a full career. I spent 33 years of teaching trying to overcome my early overwhelming incompetence. I spent 33 years fighting tears and enduring disappointing difficult classes. I spent 33 years relentlessly identifying my weaknesses and adjusting them metacognitively, especially my lack of bedside manner. I desperately wanted to improve my practice so every student became a dynamic writer. I believed that if students could free write recklessly; draw from their deep selves and war against clichés as the enemy of good writing; revise multiple drafts, expanding, cutting, expanding and cutting for clarity, for an audience; they would all self-actualize and blossom in life.

I locked into a vision when I discovered the term ‘Emotional Intelligence’. Locked into that vision for the last 25 years, I endured more failure and more frustration, but nearly succeeded in realizing a dynamic writing unit embedding the deliberate development of ‘Emotional Intelligence’ into everyday lessons.

My first three years teaching were a disaster. I am humiliated remembering how much trouble I had managing my classes. I commanded students to be quiet with a patronizing tone. I choose The Diary of Anne Frank as a whole class read in a lower level, male-dominated class that mostly disliked reading. How could I be so out of touch with who my students were and what might engage them? It took years to understand good class management starts with relevant curriculum. It took me even longer to understand how essential it was to respect and acknowledge and understand every student as an individual whose needs were more important than my own.

After my first three disastrous years, I took a year-long leave of absence. I spent the summer attending the intensive Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, reading theory for the first time and learning to think like a researcher, doing case studies. I spent the fall at Penn State taking three writing classes to bolster my own skills. I spent the spring hitchhiking around the country observing 20 veteran teachers (whom I had met at Middlebury) in 14 states. I spent the next summer back at Middlebury. By year 4, I was ready to restart.

I returned to the classroom at the Alternative Program in the State College Area School District still struggling. But my head was full of educational theory and hope and a refusal to give up. It would be many years before I would see myself as successful, but I sensed how much I would come to love teaching, in spite of a disheartening beginning.

I was able to create my own classes, which allowed my passion to compensate for some of my incompetence. In the early 90s, I began incorporating choice reading, throwing away grammar and composition books, leaning heavily into the writing process (thanks Nancy Atwell) and employing Louise Rosenblatt’s Transactional Reader Response Theory to promote more joy in reading. I began to understand deep learning only happens in the Zone of Proximal Development.

Having observed highly evolved, exceptional teachers around the country, I learned that great teachers still endure bad days, ineffective classes and self-doubt. I had become an aggressive reflective practitioner and eventually started coaching some good and effective classes. I was transitioning from a teacher of content to a coach of writing who nurtured emotional intelligence. I transferred from the Alternative Program to the traditional high school.

After reading Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, I started working on a list of essential Habits of the Mind. Eventually my vision crystalized into using poetry writing exercises to coach writing with Healthy Habits of the Mind deliberately embedded into almost every lesson. For 25 years, I was locked into that vision, developing more responsive revisions, making bigger leaps each year.

In my last five years, when I finally learned to listen deeply and attentively to whatever my students were saying, I came close to the effectiveness I dreamed.

My later success teaching writing and embedding Healthy Habits of the Mind came out of heaps of failures, decades of revision and reflection, and a clear vision.

I never completely succeeded, but made significant progress which led me to write this book. I hope my groundwork will help younger teachers fully realize a writing unit far deeper and life building than just meeting state standards. Best practices in the future will embed metacognition into challenging exercises with essential content. Best practices in the future will bolster student courage and creativity.

Chapter 2

Overview of the Writing Unit

The unit is built around 14 poetry writing exercises, a progression through the revision process (broken down in many steps) and a public sharing.

The assignments scaffold from playful and easy, to more open-ended with some structure to less and less structure, to no structure and open-ended, easing students further and further from their original individual comfort zone.

The 14 exercises are organized providing more structure to no structure, starting with a couple of warm ups. Although the later assignments, especially #8 thru #14, might have generated tremendous dissonance and anxiety in my students early on, they hardly do so because of the scaffolded build up. The early activities, nurture creativity, invite idiosyncratic expressions, and encourage students to be vulnerable and wild and have fun, along with lots of modeling and sharing to inspire boldness and risk taking. I give great emphasis on creating a safe and open classroom.

I intersperse activities and lessons which nurture creativity, risk taking and promote fighting cliché, as well discovering and exploring personal voice.¹ The chapters discussing those activities are placed approximately when I introduce the lessons in the unit.

After the 14th assignment, the unit transitions from generating lots of raw content to revising two of the 14 drafts for a real audience. Breaking down the writing process into a number of steps and exercises and encouraging multiple drafts is an essential culmination of the unit.

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¹ It could easily be argued that 1. creativity, 2. risk taking, 3. fighting cliché and 4. personal voice are all the same thing by different names. At the very least there is tremendous overlap.↩︎

Chapter 3

Students Come to You Perfect

(Developing an Open, Safe and Vulnerable Classroom)

Successfully embedding Healthy Habits of the Mind requires student buy-in and collaboration. I evolved from the paradigm of expecting my students to fit into my curriculum to developing curriculum to fit around each student’s individuality.

Deep learning happens in the Zone of Proximal Development.² Most students can only be nudged out of their comfort zones if they feel safe and valued as an individual, and free from judgement.

By far, the greatest single take-away from my 33 years of teaching was understanding and accepting that students come to you perfect in the moment.

Students Come to You Perfect

Do not expect any student to ever be different than they are in the moment.

If they don’t do their homework, if they don’t or can’t focus in class, if they talk too much, if they are a bit disrespectful or bitter, if they have unsanitary habits, even if their attendance is poor; you should not wish or expect them to be different. I am not saying you don’t work hard as the dickens to help them improve, but you need to completely accept and love the kid as they are in this moment. They are not imperfect, but a perfect imprint of their social and economic experiences and parental influences up to that point.

I know this sounds Buddhist, but it is Christian too and just secular right mind. The students are not incompetent adults; they are forming young adults who have not been blessed with the perfect upbringing. The Executive Functioning of our brains is not fully formed until adulthood, which helps explain why we all made such short-sighted boneheaded decisions when we were teens. Do not expect any student to ever be different than they are, because that ACCEPTANCE can transform a functional student into their dynamic self. And transform a functioning class into a self-actualized class.

Do not expect any student to ever be different than they are.

As I came to know my students through the school year, especially the more difficult and challenging students, I would often learn about the lack of stability and the high level of dysfunction in their home lives.

In my first 15 years, did I actually accept and love my students in the way I am hoping you will? Heck no! I did not even begin until my 15th-20th year to understand how all import it was to listen and accept my students as they are. But I worked harder and harder to accept and listen to my students. The results were wonderful and gratifying, and the effectiveness of my teaching improved greatly in ways that even standardized tests might have measured.

In my early years, I did not