Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School

I am a middle school teacher who found this book full of useful ideas which I have incorporated into my poetry unit. I also have Ms. Heard's book, For the Good of the Earth and Sun,and I found this one (Heart)to contain more practical lessons on poetry mechanics. She describes the how-to's of poetic language, form, rhythm and rhyme, etc, which were easily adapted to fit my students' needs. I did have to do a lot of reading and typing (no ready-to-copy pages) but it was worth the effort. I esp loved the heart mapping and the six-room description process.

Georgia Heard's book Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School suggests ways for teachers to help students have positive, successful experiences with appreciating poetry and creating their own poems. Heard gives poetry workshops for teachers and has worked in many classrooms with students at different grade levels in schools across the country. Her book, Awakening the Heart, reflects how far our understanding of the teaching of poetry has come: students will not come to see themselves as poets if poetry instruction is relegated to a "poetry unit" after state tests have been administered.

Heard's book reaches out to teachers who haven't taught poetry in a workshop format before in that it offers the same descriptions of poetry and poetic terms that she uses when she speaks to students, reteaching us the essentials of poetry as we prepare to teach others. She gives examples of directions useful in explaining the centers to students, and includes student work produced in classrooms Heard has worked in. The reader gains the confidence that taking time to gain inspiration from Heard's minilessons, coupled with dedication to a positive classroom environment that integrates poetry into daily life, will really help students to become poets who read poetry with understanding and craft it thoughtfully.

I used this book as a basis for starting a poetry study in my classroom of 4th graders. The information and ideas that Ms. Heard gives are fantastic. It helps you create an poetry friendly environment, not just a few lessons. My students responded whole-heartedly to the suggested activities. The heart map activity was one of their favorites. She gives advice on how to help children write from their hearts and access true emotion (as opposed to writing about surface feelings,"I like my Nintendo"). This is the best poetry book for classroom instruction that I've found. Also, it is an easy and quick read.
I saw her speak on this book at Regis University in June 2003, she is an engaging speaker and it made me love the book even more.

This is a wonderful book for both the new and the experienced teacher hoping to bring depth and breadth to their classroom poetry programs. I used it as a first-year teacher of writing, but ended up buying a second copy after sharing-out my original with a colleague with substantially more experience.

For starters, the book is well-written and concise. For busy teachers (is that a tautology?) this means you will really read and really use it. It has all the elements that keep such readers engaged: practical classroom ideas, samples of student work, segmentation of topics into smaller components and, wide-ranging perspective.

Most importantly, however, the book has PASSION! Heard launches you with an introduction entitled "Poetry, Like Bread, Is for Everyone". She maintains this level of enthusiasm through to the last page, where she quotes Matthew Fox to the effect that "The Celtic peoples... insisted that only poets could be teachers... knowledge that is not passed through the heart is dangerous."

I agree - passion HAS TO BE the core of a poetry program in elementary or middle school. Amidst the wash of demand for reading and writing more expository material that standardized testing has brought to the writing class, passion and poetry have often slipped to the background. The poetry 'program' can become a quick trot through narrow 'tricksie' forms like name-poems and shape-poems. Kids need more. You do too.

Heard offers a wonderful suite of approaches to poetry 'centers' in a chapter on "Making a Poetry Environment." These include listening, illustration, performance and music centers as well as poetry windows, amazing language center and a handful more. The centers-based approach can be hard to manage unless properly prepared, but it is a wonderful way to build fluidity into a process that otherwise suffers from rigidity of task or schedule. This book will offer strong support for such an approach.

In the chapter discussing "Writing Poetry", Heard takes the metaphor of the door as entryway, suggesting, among others, the "observation door", the "concern about the world door" and the "wonder door." She then moves to the details of crafting of poetry with a "toolbox" metaphor and a nice collection of tools. In this as in the earlier instances, her pedagogical metaphors will serve your students but also serve to structure your planning and presentation of concepts. Heard concludes with a chapter about the observational element of the poet's craft - what she terms "sharpening outer and inner visions", and a number of useful appendices.

I'm certain this book will light-up your enthusiasm for a poetry-based classroom.

Ms. Heard has put together exercises and knowledge to create a stunning list of usable classroom exercises. She uplifts even the most discouraged teacher heart and gives you the renewed vigor to attack ignorance while inspiring others to find the light within.