Introduction

Often we naively assume that we know someone simply because we know what race or gender they are or what they look like. In reality, race, gender, and physical appearance play only small parts in determining a person’s character. Where they’re from (they’re families, cities, states, countries, etc.) generally has a greater impact on defining who they are. This project focuses on uniting students from diverse backgrounds through their poetry. Students will create poems that represent their cultures (not ethnicity based, but based on the immediate culture they are part of). The poems should be at least 8 lines long. When they are completed, they will be posted on this website in the Students’ Poems section (here) of this website.

Getting started

First, download Tips for the Enjoyment of Poetry by Robert G. Shubinski (here). Make copies and pass them out to your students. Go through each of the steps so that your students become familiar with them. Next, download and make copies of these samples (here) of poems that piercingly represent immediate culture. Finally, create a Poetry Lesson that incorporates the basic information found (here). Students will be encouraged to use any of these forms as they create their poems.

In closing

Students should be allotted classroom time to read the poems in the Students Poems section of this website. As they read each poem, have them consider the title for a minute or so before reading the poem, and have them predict what they think the poem will be like based on the title. Use these predications as examples of how we often make dubious assumptions about poems, and more importantly people, based on limited information. Further lessons detailing and extending what students learned from the poems of others should be considered. The central themes that should be threaded throughout the lessons are how culture shapes our identity and how we are likely to misjudge others if we measure them by race, gender, or other physical attributes.