Touchstone poetry: writing as a catalyst for moments of development

Abstract

Purpose

Extant research has painted a clear picture of the myriad ways that schools are failing to provide a meaningful education, and meaningful literacy pedagogies, to all youth. Given this crisis shouldered disproportionately by youth of color in urban schools, this paper aims to take a retrospective approach to understanding the lasting reverberations of a high school poetry class on a group of students who experienced urban traumas including but not limited to educational injustices. In contrast to the representations of failing schools, some current research offers various portraits of urban students engaging in empowering ways in classrooms that make critical use of media arts, poetry and hip hop. The questions driving this study are based on what happens once students step out of these alternative classroom spaces. For youth who have dropped out of the traditional system, what was the nature of the writing they produced in an alternative literacy learning space and what relationship did it have to their development as young adults?

Design/methodology/approach

Using qualitative case study methodology, this paper explores the memorable writing produced in the context of a high school poetry class by six case study participants to understand its meaning in their lives over time. It is through a dialogic lens that this research makes sense of the relationship between the written words produced by these youth, their actions in and on the world in their early adulthood, and their moments of development as survivors of trauma and as civic actors.

Findings

Student discussion of what I describe as touchstone poems revealed how these poems functioned to reorganize experiences and memories for the case study participants that enabled them to feel increased agency in relation to their personal and socio-cultural struggles.

Originality/value

For these students who were perpetually labeled as at-risk, poetry class served as a space where they could collectively engage in positive risk-taking that held meaning in their lives after high school and catalyzed the development of agentive identities.

Citation

Manning, L. (2016), "Touchstone poetry: writing as a catalyst for moments of development", English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 375-393. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-01-2016-0010