Poetry

Poetry in school, is always a difficult subject. Reading about how there's a book called Joyful Noises made poetry in the classroom seem not so bad. Then looking back on my poetry experiences in the classroom the farthest back thing I can remember was when we had to create a book of poetry of our own in middle school. This correlates well with Jodi and Laura's findings that a majority of children do not have enough exposure to poetry.
It wasn't until high school when I had a very in depth exposure to any sort of poetry. There were so many ways in which we learned about poetry that can be taught even at a elementary level. We were given an evelope filled with words and it was our job to stick one of those words down on paper and pass it to the person to the next of us. And it went on like that to create a poem. This was to teach us that poems didn't necessarily have to rhyme. Also, the ideas of learning many different poems that can spark the interest of many different students helped. In the end, poetry didn't seem so scary knowing different tools that helped us try to understand and enjoy poetry.
To sum it up, I feel that poetry makes stomachs turn, and children sick because they've had so much poor exposure to it. With the proper techniques and much exposure to it, and eventually everyone will "recognize that poetry could be found everywhere in teh world around them," and that student's jobs as a poet "is to watch, to listen, to notice and record moments wen poems occur."