Emotions,
Strange little things
That march across your heart.
I imagine them to be
Yellow, like minions,
Capable of causing palpitations,
But also hard to know
Which is which
And why I cry
Or why I laugh
So ridiculously hard.
I know that emotions are really hard to put into words, and I know that it’s even harder to do this when you’re a teenager and you have all those hormones whizzing round your body.
However, I do find it worrying how bad some of my students are at understanding emotions and putting them into words. Some of them only seem to know happy and sad. The whole rainbow of other emotions seem to be totally lost to them and I find that heartbreaking.
There have been many occasions where I have asked them what a poem makes them feel and they just say ‘happy’. When I raise an eyebrow they then backtrack and go for ‘sad’. They don’t seem to have any sense of what these things mean?!
I hope that it’s not the internet and their reliance on their mobile phones that has done this as I don’t know if that kind of damage is repairable. They are so disconnected that I worry they have lost their human-ness. I hope I’m wrong.
Much Love
Rachel xx
Margot Kinberg
It’s really interesting that you look at this topic in this post! My uni offers an emphasis in our teacher education program that has a focus on social-emotional learning. The idea is to help our teachers help students to identify, and act appropriately on, their emotions and the emotions of others. It’s surprising how few of our teachers have thought of this, considering how important it is.
patientandkindlove
Yes! We need more of this. And it’s why the arts are so important. The kids get numeracy and literacy shoved down their throats with no time to look at feelings.
Greg Dennison
Hmmm…
clcouch123
I’d like to think that poetry would open your learners to a range of feelings and of thoughts. Maybe if they wrote their own verse, that would help. But if their choice right now is binary, happy or sad, I don’t know. As you know, there’s so much more.
patientandkindlove
There is soooo much more and it sometimes feels (by the blank look on their face when I ask them) that they really don’t feel a thing when they read this poetry. Hopefully they will grow into it!