April is National Poetry Month, and the staff in our school library has done their best to celebrate by preparing activities for students and teaching them about the importance of poetry.
“There are many reasons as to why we celebrate National Poetry Month,” librarian Tamara Minks said. “Poetry is so often overlooked, when in fact it is the most accessible form of reading for teens and even elementary kids today. But for some reason, students and adults are afraid of it. They think that it’s just confusing and there’s no way to figure it out.”
The library staff wanted to reassure students that poetry is nothing to be afraid of.
“I think the reason we celebrate National Poetry Month is to try to get students to understand that it’s really the exact opposite of confusing,” Minks said. “It’s about your personal reaction to the poem. Not about finding your writing style and not about answering questions on a test.”
The activities prepared in the library were intended to be an easy and quick introduction to poetry for students. There were a total of six activities creating different types of poetry, and three other activities that warranted rewards for participating.
English teacher Emily Graham found it very important for her students to participate in the library’s activities.
“For English learners, poetry can be a challenge because it’s hard enough to figure out literal language, let alone language that has nuance or figurative imagery,” Graham said. “So I think it gave them a comfortable atmosphere to play around with it without feeling criticized or judged. It was just strictly for fun.”
Library assistant Sam Roahrig particularly put a lot of work into setting up the library for students to come in.
“I’d say we’ve been working on this for about a month between all the activities we wanted to do, thinking of the prizes and organizing classes to come in,” Roahrig said. “We decided we wanted to mainly focus on the English department this year, but we have done National Poetry Month with world languages and history departments as well.”
The six activities writing poetry that students participated in were blackout poetry, book spine poetry, pop sonnets, egg poetry, “love at first line” and “I am” poetry. The other three activities that involved rewards were the “Share Chair,” “bookworms” and book races.
The Share Chair was a place where students read the poetry they had made aloud to the entire group.
“Bookworms” was a jar filled with a bunch of jelly worms. Students wrote down their guesses on how many worms were inside the jar, and whoever was closest to the real number won a prize.
The book races were the final activity after everyone finished sharing their poetry. Students walked in lines around the library, balancing books on their heads, and whoever reached the finish line first without dropping their book won.
Prizes included various chips such as Funyuns and Cheetos, and drinks like Red Bull, Dr. Pepper, Coke and Sprite.
Graham particularly appreciates the library staff making the library a nice place to be.
“When I went here, I don’t even remember even being allowed in the library unless I needed a book,” Graham said. “So for them to put the effort out there to show students that the library is more than checking out a book, I like that.”
It was intended to make a calm and fun environment for students to enjoy reading and writing poetry.
“We want the library to be a fun, welcoming place as well as a quiet place to study,” Minks said. “So it’s just a fun way to mix it up with the book races and other activities.”
