Husbands, Ghosts, and Journals

So when I first titled this blog "You Can't Imagine How Much Fun I'm Having," I was being a little sarcastic. Just a little. After this last week, though, I can really say that I'm having some fun. (Who cares if it was a short week?)

On Wednesday in my 11th grade class we read through a poem called "When the Young Husband" by Donald Hall. The poem basically tells a story about a young husband who picks up his friend's wife. They're in a taxi cab, supposedly on their way to a hotel room, and then a voice shows the husband what his future will be like if he chooses to go through with this, kind of like the Ghost of Cheating Yet to Come.
The class did fairly well with the poem. I'd say it was a fairly accessible poem, but it did have some obscure details and unfamiliar vocabulary words. I can say that for the most part, the class was able to make some pretty good guesses about what certain details alluded to. They were really willing to take the risk of guessing about what words mean, which is something you have to get used to doing when reading poetry. We pretty much went through the poem stanza by stanza breaking down the plot of the poem and more obscure details. After we got through the basic plot of the poem I had students write about what message they thought the poem was communicating about life.
I'd say that one of the small successes for the day was that every student in the class participated in some way. From my observation of the class while reading poetry in class last semester, many students would be disengaged while poems were being read. Students who remembered to bring their textbooks wouldn't even have the book open or would just have their heads down at their desks. During most of the reading of the poem and the discussion, students had their heads up or were looking at the text. I would have to give lots of credit to the content of the poem, though. It was a pretty steamy poem, and it felt great as a teacher to see the kids' facial reactions to parts of the text. I was definitely expecting the giggles to come when a student had to read the phrase "the penis elevates." I was glad to see students react to the poem. They handled that line pretty maturely, though.
The most rewarding experience was having students share from little journal entries/quick-writes I had them write. A student who failed last semester, cut once in a while, and often arrived tardy read his entry. And he nailed it. He mentioned how the poem was telling people to be more responsible with their actions and to take the time to examine the consequences of their actions before making choices. Sadly though, he didn't turn in his journal entries for the week! AHHH! I was looking forward to reading his other thoughts for the week. But oh well. Still a fun week.