I started off with a poem of my own:
I set small sticky notes near by in case they wanted to create by lines as I had demonstrated, but no one ever did.
I didn't directly address the area of the room or create any rules for it, and it took most students quite a while to realize it was even there. Some students noticed it right away, however, and went over of their own accord to play, and I generally left them to it. Most of them had the sense that it was an "after-I'm-done-with-my-assignment" type of activity without me even mentioning it.
I documented every creation that was left after the students left the classroom. As shouldn't actually be surprising with teenagers, some poems got quite vulgar, so I'll include our adventure after a jump. Be warned, teenagers are very creative! They're exploring their sexuality and can put words together in ways I would never have expected. Most of their creations are Not Safe For Work, and a couple of them made even me blush.
My immediate urge is to transcribe all of the students' work to text, but I will resist. Some of it is so artfully arranged, with deliberate spacing, that to transcribe would rob it of some of its originality. So I'll just leave them for what they are, works of art, and let you, the viewer, take from them what they are. Since I'm not the artist, I don't trust myself to convey their true meanings.
That being said, I CAN annotate with a few notes of context here and there and describe MY thought process along the way.
Without further ado: The poems.
September 15. My first response. The sophomores discovered the center first, so this is undoubtedly one of theirs.
September 23. And located just below. It's unknown if it was the same author or not. After this, I tried to start taking the board together as a whole, as though it were a community project. At times, I would have three or four students working here at a time.
September 25. Work in this center was getting off to a slow start, so I wrote this to prompt more.
September 26. An inspiring response. It's unclear whether the center was intentionally included or not.
October 2. I'm assuming that this was the work of at least two authors. The first, inspired by the previous work (you can still see the remains of it to the side), a declaration. Below, a reference to a popular song.
October 2. Two imperatives. One religious sounding, the other romantic.
October 4. Another declarative, this time with improvised tile usage.
October 4. This sounded quite poetic to me, with "the fluff y" giving a vague, artful feel.
October 4. I took these two declarations together, though it's not clear if it was intentional.
October 4. A full image created in a mere two words.
October 4. I almost missed this one-word creation up at the very corner of the available space. Its use of three separate tiles to create one word is distinctive.
October 6. This is where I began to grow uncomfortable. Previous uses, even of the "breast" tile, had inspired somewhat vivid imagery, but not at the scale that this one does. I blushed when I saw it, may have even gasped aloud. Thankfully I had gotten into the habit of leaving the students to their creative process and only checking after they had left the room. I didn't know, however, how many other students, if any, had seen this author's work. Because of that uncertainty, I had no choice but to inform the principal of it. I started thinking about different options I had. I definitely didn't want to take this creative outlet away from them. I didn't even want to censor it by removing any tiles. It is the students' right to explore their feelings, and it's my job to help them to do so through words. If they don't have an opportunity to, it may manifest in some other negative way. My principal left me to think about it, and I continued to remove vulgar creations at the end of class. I suppose I only hoped that no other students saw them, but I know that wouldn't be enough for some people.
October 10. An artistic imperative.
October 23. The implications with this one are more clear.
October 23. Interesting.
November 3. This one made me blush, as well. Again, I hurriedly scrambled the tiles among the others. I would have to decide what to do about this soon.
November 6. Finally, I decided that if work of this vivid imagery continued to appear, I would have to ask the students to erase their own work before they left the center. It never came to that, however, as any new work with vulgarity that appeared seemed more mundane.
November 7. A compliment?
December 4. I admire the spacing on this one.
December 4. A junior working alongside the author of the previous work became frustrated at the available selection of tiles. He gave up and wrote his poem on the marker board nearby. I decided to include it because he shared his intentions with me. The edited portion is a signature.
December 8. Inspired by the previous work?
December 8. I was quite sure there was a poem in here somewhere. I just couldn't make out exactly where.
December 9. Interesting.
December 12. A brief image.
December 12. Hmm..
December 12. Is that pencil? I can't quite make it out.
January 21. Interesting.
February 10. Second semester, interest had waned. I created this prompt, but before I could take a picture, someone had rearranged one of the words.
February 14. A two-authored Valentine.
February 26. A three-word vagary.
March 25. The last entry of the year, by an author eager for summer.
I did enjoy this venture. It was a nice side area for students to play with language on their own, free from grades and expectations. It did turn into more of an outlet for sexual exploration and curiosity than I would have guessed, but that's fine. I mean, we are talking about adolescents, after all, and to deny them that part of them is to deny an important part of who they are. I was proud to offer a judgement-free zone for that. I think I handled it in the best way, as well, by not demeaning them or their play. In fact, by not mentioning it at all, I left creation completely up to them.
Of course, had I needed to go through with discussion about erasing work before leaving the center (which I probably would have had to do with only one class), things probably would have gone one of two ways, knowing the psychology of teenagers. Perhaps it would have discouraged any further play, or perhaps it would have led to an onslaught of even more vulgarity created in spite. I'm glad we didn't need to have that discussion.
Looking forward to next year, I will leave this center up, possibly adding to it with an additional set. I'm planning a larger poetry unit, but I will continue to leave this area free of expectations.
