The power of poetry

So, I'm teaching summer school nowadays: a high school English "Review" class for any and all students who need to make up credits of high school English. It has been going well, for me, at least. Some of the students are having a rough time of it, largely due to the schedule. They are in class from 8 A.M. - 12:50 P.M. We do have breaks, and we change activities often, but it is still a long time for anyone to focus. The students are remarkably more awake during the last hour.

Today we worked in the computer lab from 11-12:15. [Incidentally, almost all of the kids got into http://www.freerice.com/, which was a shocker to me.] We got back to our room with about twenty five minutes left of class. Of course, after the excitement of the computer lab and their imminent departure for the day, the kids were pretty worked up. Some of them were even arm wrestling.

At this point, I'm like, what the hell am I going to do with these kids for another half hour? I picked up their anthology and flipped through it--trying to look like I knew what I was looking for. (Teaching is mostly illusion, you know.) My eyes fell on "The Death of the Hired Man" by Robert Frost. The fate of the afternoon was sealed. We turned to the first page. I told the students about narrative poetry--that poetry that tells a story and doesn't rhyme is often preferred by students. They look dubiously disheartened.

I read the first stanza and everyone calmed down. I read the next stanza and all the noise in the room stopped. Alas, they were not mesmerized by the verses; they had become sedated. I did, however, accomplish exactly what I set out to do: fill time. Thank you, Robert Frost, for your boring poem.