LM Week 4: Experience and Learning

 Week 4: Experience and Learning

 

Project Title: Getting Personal with Poetry

Goals: Through the use of reflective journaling and instruction, students will learn how to write poems that show an understanding of poetry basics while also offering depth and imagination. By engaging in reflective journaling techniques, students will utilize their emotions and observe their connection to learning.

Rationales:

Writing poetry may seem intimidating. How does one start a poem? Where do you find inspiration? Those new to the subject, or those wanting more practice, would benefit from a program that showcases how life experiences intertwine with poetry. The use of journaling is a pathway to creating poems that reflect the personal, as much of poetry is steeped in perspectives, feelings, and life. The Getting Personal with Poetry program reflects the “psychoanalytic framework” for learning that “elicits emotion” (Merriam & Baumgartner, 2020, p. 210).

When students enter a learning space, they arrive with their own set of experiences. These continue as they progress through adulthood. By giving students a space to reflect their experiences in writing, they are tapping into the connection that happens when emotions become a type of instructor. Merriam & Baumgartner (2020) explain this as “concrete experience….the learners’ meaning-making processes as the result of an experience” (p. 200). While there are difficult aspects to poetry, the format can often appear as a letter or confession. Journaling is the “abstract conceptualization”, or thinking process, that will aid students in understanding how to transfer their thoughts into the poetry format (this being the “active experimentation part” of the learning cycle) (p. 201). Students will begin the program by learning the basics of poetry writing, from structure to imagery, and reading different author styles. Next, they will journal freely, allowing themselves to openly express their thoughts on paper. From there, the journaling sessions will flow into poetry writing. By working with personal expression, poetry becomes approachable and therefore “may uncover aspects of our unconscious that block our learning” (p. 209). Students spend time learning a new skill while also understanding themselves through the methods of self-reflection.

 

Design:

Using Humber Centre’s Experiential Learning Model (2017) as a guide, the program will be broken down into four parts: experience, group work, process, and application. (The generalization part of this model is not as necessary for learning poetry, in my opinion). Each participant will enter the program in the learning by doing phase and end with the ability to comprehend poetry in writing and composition.

 

References: 

Merriam, S.B., & Baumgartner, L. (2020). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide (4thed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

YouTube. (2017, January 23). Teaching Tips | Experiential Learning Model. YouTube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDchcHORheMLinks to an external site.