Spoken Word Poetry

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, a student reached out to me on email...

Jacqueline was right, I did enjoy the spoken-word poem, To This Day Project by Shane Koyczan. While one might argue that all poetry at its core is meant to be heard aloud and is "spoken-word" poetry, I see something else going on here: the importance of teaching digital texts.

Perhaps the importance of teaching the components of digital texts (visual text, spoken text, written or composed text) is as plain as the nose on our face. My student did not send me a newspaper article, or a book, or even song lyrics. She sent me a video...with enthusiasm. Consider her words:

I would love for you to watch this...


We can't forget that reaching out to an adult--whether parent, teacher, coach, pastor, et al.--is a big leap for young people. We have to reach back too.

In the process of sharing something with me, Jacqueline has given me pause to reflect.

image from Koyczan's To This Day Project

Digital texts have been composed for several decades, but it was restricted only to those trained to work in expensive studios. While we might think of digital literacy as the ability to access and present information, digital literacy has become bigger than that.

What Jacqueline shared with me is more than just a fun, fluffy activity. It is another option in the arsenal of writers. Digital Literacy reminds us that writing does not have to just be essays.

As teachers we can work outside the box.

Digital Literacy includes an ever-expanding number of ways that people tell stories...and it makes it accessible to anyone with a device. Just as I responded to the astonishing energy of MTV as an adolescent in the 80s, the current culture is responding to digital texts...and I can't express how rewarding it is as teacher to have students who reach out to include me in a piece of their world.

Video & Informational Writing

Using a short news video, especially a student-produced news story, has been effective in helping my students understand the conditions of informational writing.

While asking students to speak a specific list of vocabulary from the board, we discuss the news story: analysis, evidence, implicit, explicit, and inference. 

Part of our discussions gravite on organization, the use of transitions, and whether the lead and conclusion struck us as effective. It has been useful to scribe the opening sentences on the board aloud with the class--to break it down, to analyze the strategy the writer used in composing the news story.

The PBS Student Reporting Labs have been a great resource of student-produced video for me. I find a range of topics as well as examples from both middle school and high school students.

The use of video to discuss informational writing becomes another access point for the students. Too often, we tend to see writing as something we just do for school, or worse...something done just for English class. After a steady diet of student video, students analyze  professional news stories in the same way, and we find very few, subtle, differences among them, structurally speaking.

Students have been able to apply these lessons to their writing of informational texts and become excited to compose videos of their own. Right now, we are brainstorming and digging for news stories about our community.

I like that we can watch a 2-3 minute video and then either discuss or response to a CCSS-type prompt in order to practice those question types, find a comfort level with the test jargon, and still remain on course as writers and readers of relevant, accessible texts in multiple formats. Even my next test on informational writing will include a section where students analyze an alphabetic text news story and a different section where they watch a video on a personal device in order to analyze that story.

Showing students the relevance of informational writing outside of our classroom--and how dependent it is with strong narrative skills--has become an energizing focal point in this unit. My kids still think of the tenets of story-telling throughout the informational writing unit.

Not the least of which is the great, grounding question for student writers: why does it matter?

Podcasting our Family Histories

Podcasting has found a niche in my writing life. It stems from one seed heard again and again from people in my generation or older:

I wish I knew more about my family, but no one is around anymore to ask. I wish we wrote things down when they were still with us.

When I interviewed Rita Sorrentino on Saturday for Episode 3 of the I Remember podcast series, this regret came up again and again.

My family shares Rita's lament. 

But what are families to do? If few or none remain to tell the stories, the stories no longer live. Unfortunately, writing does not come naturally to everyone. The fear of not knowing what to put down on paper can make writing a chore. Others may feel lost, unsure of where to start, what to write down.  

Yet, most of us enjoy telling a story to another person.

Podcasting may be a great way to make a change in our families.  If we start recording our family stories, we preserve our heritage, our history, and our memories for future generations. Our stories live on.

While I am not a member of Rita's family, I still connected many times with her stories. Early in the podcast, holding back tears, she shared the importance of a library card and reading books in her childhood. I remembered my own experiences walking to the neighborhood library on Broad Street. I remembered our elderly Italian cousin reading library books in large print because her eyesight was failing. The books were also in Italian because English had always escaped her grasp.

Writers know that one of the best prewriting activities available is simply turning and talking to another person. Some writers rely on speaking to someone to help draw their ideas out. It is amazing what we can dredge up simply by talking. Even though I interviewed Rita for an hour, I know that we only scratched the surface. I hope Rita continues to dig and search and write...and maybe even record herself and her family memories.

For anyone who shares my interest in this process, some consideration in the art of conversation or asking good questions to help nudge your interviewee is helpful. NPR's Story Corps publishing a solid list of questions to get anyone started. I like to start with a few specific questions, but then I try to let the interview develop its own momentum and arc. I try to listen and building follow-up questions based on the specific memories the subject shares. I try to ask questions or make connections that allows the person to dig deeper.

If you share my interest in family history, and you want to commit to preserving your family stories, consider podcasting your family stories. Our memories may be unreliable, but they are all our families have sometimes.

I am always looking for guests for my podcast series. If you would like to engage in an interview with me and share a piece of your family heritage on my podcast, please write to me at bjk925@gmail.com or leave a comment below and I will be sure to get back to you.