Thoughts on Teaching Poetry, Asperger's, and Horses

A month from today, I will be enjoying my first day of freedom after completing my 8th year of teaching.  Currently, we are studying poetry.  Interestingly enough, this is the one thing that has stayed the same in my curriculum since year one.  Novels come and go, writing assignments have been added or dropped, grammar falls victim to other time and content constraints, but I have always made time to teach poetry and always at the end of the year.  This is mostly selfish, in large part because I think it is fun but also is easy and enjoyable to grade, so I like to end the school year on a positive note for me.  This year we have had some great discussions about individual pieces of poetry, and it reminds me how much fun teaching can be.

Not only do I read and study poetry with my students, but we also write poetry during this time.  What's interesting about this is the students who end up writing the most amazing stuff are often the students who write little else (or nothing else) for me all year long; sometimes they are knuckleheaded boys (aren't all 15 year old boys knuckleheads?) who write amazing images, show their sense of humor, capture moments most clearly without the melodrama of emotion that permeates so much of the writing of 15 year old girls; the students who struggle with just about everything, but wear their pride on their faces when they finish a poetry assignment.  It's hard as a teacher not to get high off of that.

But a new wrench was thrown into the cogwheels this year with the dissolvement  of my school's special ed classes.  I have had a number of students join my classes who normally wouldn't, including a few with Asperger's syndrome.  One of the things that many of these students struggle with is things that aren't literal: metaphors and similes; interpretation of emotional expression in reading and writing; expression of emotion in their own writing.  In short, my entire 4th quarter's curriculum.  

What am I to do?  I don't want to just excuse all of these writing opportunities just because it is difficult, do I?  But am I asking the impossible if I don't?  Am I encouraging a "can't do" attitude or punishing a student because they learn differently?  What is the proper balance among including, accommodating, and stretching these highly functioning yet special needs students?  This is the question I still haven't answered two weeks into this unit.

On Thursday, after having a successful discussion about the poem "My Papa's Waltz", I assigned my students to write a poem about a childhood memory.  Some started writing immediately after the directions, others jumped into socializing, and there sat Allison* staring at me with furrowed eyebrows.  After a few students proudly presented to me some of their works-in-progress, I made my way over to her to do some damage control.  How was I going to work through this with her?  Earlier in the year, her mother had told me Allison couldn't do an assignment involving figurative language because of her Asperger's, followed by telling me she didn't want me to just excuse her from it.  After my initial bewilderment at the contradicting statements, I made some adjustments to the assignment and Allison completed it successfully, so I knew that it was possible for her to work with poetic language to some extent, but I have no idea how to adjust the actual writing of poetry that we are doing now (I am so clueless about this side of teaching!).  Allison said she didn't have any memories about her childhood, but I had one trick up my sleeve (here's my plug for getting to know students individually) - I know that she rides horses as part of her therapy.  So I suggested she write about the first time she rode a horse.  Right away she smiled and started listing names and words that weren't coherent thoughts to me, so I had to do some prodding. Simply listing word does not a poem make; adding sensory details does help though.  What about smells?  What sounds do you remember?  Feelings?  Colors?  Though she argued with me that she can't smell and her mother wouldn't like her to smell leather and hay because her brother is allergic and her mother is sensitive to strong smells (hey, her mind works in an interesting way) I started to put together the phrases she had listed to show her that what she did remember could be turned into a poem -  black horse with a faded star, wanting the horse to go "faster, faster,"  English style saddle - and she never lost her smile, even while arguing with me.  And I started to remember the feelings I had from my earliest memories of being on and around horses so that I could get her to tell me what she remembered.  I was grateful for all the times I had posted equestrian calendar pictures up on my bedroom wall, begged my parents to pull over to the side of an obliging field for an impromptu petting session, nuzzled my nose into a dusty neck, felt the wiry whiskers on a velvety nose, breathed in the hay and leather.  She may not be a poet, and she may not even write about that or anything and I'll have to excuse her from the assignments after all, but I'm grateful for my childhood love because 25 years later I would be sitting next to a girl who loves horses just as much as I do, and maybe more, but doesn't necessarily have the words.  But I will somehow help her find them, because I do.

*student's name has been changed

The Grown Up

When I was in middle schould, I thought being a grown up would be so cool because I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to.  I wouldn't be bossed around anymore.  I could eat as many Oreo's as I wanted.  I would have all this money I could spend on all the things I wanted to do (my parents were just being selfish and stingy; I knew they just HAD to be ROLLING in money and they wouldn't buy me the stuff I wanted because they just didn't want to share).  Life would be glamorous starting at about high school (Beverly Hills 90210) and would just get better from there (Melrose Place, which, interestingly enough, I never watched.  But they sure looked like they had important stuff going on!)  I didn't know what that would look like, but it would be so much better than what I had at the moment.

When I was in middle and high school, I thought being a grown up would be so boring because I'd have to go to work and I wouldn't have any friends anymore.  College was the pinnacle of life, so I just had to get there.  Getting out of Green Bay would make me happy because, let's face it, anything HAD to be more exciting than Green Bay, Wisconsin.  There, I would really start living life to the fullest (Friends).  Friends, boys, parties, and classes that I actually was interested in would be so awesome...I couldn't wait!  I didn't know what it would look like, but I would be so happy because it would be so much better than what I had at the moment.

When I was in college, I thought being a grown up would be cool because I would finally have money to do what I wanted to do while I was in college; I would have a husband and home of my own, which would be great.  It would be clean and picked up because it's always easier to keep things clean when you don't have roommates and you know which messes are yours.  It would be well decorated, this house of mine.  I didn't necessarily want to have to go to work, but when I or my husband had time off, we would explore the world - my own new little family, of which I would be the coolest involved most easy going wife and mother ever.  And we would always have enough money that we would never have to say no to anything really amazing.  I didn't know what that would look like, but things would fall into place in a way that was very different than the way they were at the moment.

Now I'm here, I guess.  Adulthood.  The problem is that I still don't know what it means to be an adult.  I still feel like college was just a few years ago, and my lifestyle hasn't changed too much since that time.  There is no husband or children or home of my own.  I keep late hours (sleeping and rising).  I answer to parents (of my students).  I have homework (to grade) and tests to prepare for (the standardized variety).  I have summers full of lazy boredom off.  I eat a lot of the same easy to make meals like mac 'n cheese, sandwiches, and breakfast for dinner, just like I did in - wait for it - college.  I am neither motivated to regularly plan meals ahead of time, nor do I usually eat at the table.  I am not great with money.  I'm actually becoming more selfish than I used to be, if that is at all possible. I still have a roommate, there is no rush to keep things super clean, and I am not even close to owning my own home. And when activities are planned for LDS singles of my age to meet other singles, they usually end up being dances - the same activity that was planned for 14 year olds.  I think the only thing that has really "grown up" over the years is the way I dress.  To be succinct, I am not an adult, or at least what I pictured one to be.

This has led to a lot of dissatisfaction with my life. In a side by side comparison of success,  I am a stunted cougar/college student hybrid (not in the dating younger men way, just in the too old to be a coed but still being one anyway) minus the cool parties and tropical spring break.  My former students are more likely to comment on my Facebook page than people my own age, in part  because of my hypothesis that there is an unspoken club that women are invited to join when they get married that separates the women from the girls, and yet another when they have children, and I am now two VIP passes behind.  In all actuality, I am in a different world than my peers, which makes us not really peers anymore, does it.  

So what is this eternally single, emotionally and motivationally immature woman-child to do?  How do I become a real boy...er, adult?  According to Wikipedia, "one may legally be an adult but possess none of the maturity and responsibility that define adult character."  I worry where I fit within that framework, or more accurately where other people would say the details of my life fit.  It actually frightens me a little bit.  That being said, I am determined to feel comfortable in my own skin.  The last few years I have been trying to love me, or at least the outside of me.  While that is still a work in progress, I am determined to not just like the physical shell, but also the life I have created for myself.  Sure, it isn't what I would have chosen for my pseudo-adulthood, but I've got to make it work somehow until it changes or doesn't change.  Being productive, having a daily purpose, contributing to the greater good of the world around oneself - I think these are all things that transition a person into an adult.  I have had moments of each of these, but I don't know if it's been simultaneous.  I need to meld these things together,  in addition to changing behaviors that I thought I would be forced to change when my relationship status would when I still thought my relationship status would change ever so many years ago.  I shouldn't be waiting for that to happen first - what a ridiculous thought after all the times I've stopped waiting for other things!  I will figure out how to be proud of the life that I have  now.    I will grow up.