I work at one of those charter schools where culture is paramount (think KIPP). This extends to expectations for teachers. We produce lesson plans that are reviewed every two weeks. We follow specific assessment procedures. We discipline our students and mete out consequences in a consistent way. We all use the same phrase — SUP! as in “wazzup!” — to get our students to track the Speaker, sit Up straight and Participate.
Twyla Tharp says in her book The Creative Habit:
Poems come in many forms, from sonnets to villanelles to pantoums and sestinas. Some forms confine the poet, others make him or her sing.
Does our school culture confine me or make me sing?
Tharp distinguishes between the sestina, “more of a parlor trick than a deeply felt poem” and the sonnet, whose “length and rhymes make it pleasing to the ear, and provide room for linguistic and thematic invention.”
She says:
Creating is all about playing and innovating within familiar forms. It’s natural to want to establish as many ground rules as possible about form before we get down to work, but you have to choose the form that’s not only appropriate for you but right for your particular idea.
I find myself wondering, is my school’s culture and administrative approach more sestina, confining in restrictive and arbitrary ways, or sonnet, releasing creativity by establishing rhyme and consistency and a beginning and end to my work?
For now it feels like a sonnet, though I chafe sometimes at the expectations and restrictions.
Are you wondering if teaching is creative anyway? I think it is — from making lesson plans to performing them (it is a performance and that is the part I really need to improve) to figuring out how to make meaning… teaching is an exercise in creation and maybe that’s why I love it so well.
[Thank you Merlin Mann for suggesting Tharp's book.]
