Poetic Inspiration

Recently, we were asked to focus on ways that we could better integrate art into our history lessons.  Naturally, my mind went directly to actual art and I eagerly designed an “Art Walk” that would require students to analyze and interpret various paintings, advertisements, and pictures from the time period that we would be studying.  I am still excited about the project, and I’m busy creating a Webquest to support it, but now that I have some time separating me from the actual requirement of the assignment, I find myself coming up with more thoughts and ideas concerning the topic of integrating art into my lesson plans and, perhaps more importantly, what is “art”.

            As anyone in education is well aware, April is National Poetry month and it usually marks a time in the LA curriculum where students are immersed in figurative language and rhyming.  For the past 5 years my son’s school has worked hard to create a week long program where students are exposed to multiple forms of poetry and even treated to a “Poet in Residence”.  This year’s poet was Richard Blanco, the 2013 Inaugural Poet and Maine resident.  I was able to attend the final evening’s events where Mr. Blanco spoke to the public and read many of his own pieces.  I left that night fully aware that I had been in the presence of a true artist.  After being brought to tears numerous times, I realized that I had totally forgotten about the spoken word being an art-form that could/should be incorporated into my lessons. 

            To that point, Mr. Blanco is a wonderful example of how poetry and art can be integrated into all subjects.  Even though he has published many books of poetry and two memoirs, Mr. Blanco is actually a trained and practicing Civil Engineer.  He stressed through his talks to the students, and later to the public present for the final night, the importance of exposure to all subjects and the dangers of overexposure to just one area.  In his own words, he’s a better Civil Engineer because he is a poet and a better Poet because he is an engineer.  The Washington Post recently ran an article titled "Why America's Obsession with STEM Education is Dangerous", that speaks to just this point--the way to make students true innovators and learners is to expose them to Science, Math, and Engineering, but not at the expense of the liberal arts. As the article’s author states, “Innovation is not simply a technical matter but rather one of understanding how people and societies work, what they need and want. America will not dominate the 21st century by making cheaper computer chips but instead by constantly re-imagining how computers and other new technologies interact with human beings.”

            After my evening listening and learning from Mr. Blanco, I was reminded of other famous individuals that have successfully embraced science and art: Leonardo Da Vinci (artist and inventor), Thomas Jefferson (architecture, music, meteorology), William Carolos Williams (Poet and Pediatrician), Lewis Thomas (Physician, author, Naturalist), Frank Lloyd Write (Architect, artist).  How wonderful would it be to examine this list further?  There are so many more names to add to it, such a wonderful angle to examine.  We learn Social Studies, Math, Art, English, etc., not so we can become Historians, Mathematicians, Scientists, or Artists some day, but to expose us to as much learning as possible so that we can truly figure out what inspires us, what interests us, and how to do it to the best of our ability.  It all works together; the science, the art, the history, the language arts.  I come away from my experience with poetry with many inspirations of how to integrate art into the Social Studies curriculum beyond simply examining poetry/storytelling from whatever time period we are studying.  The content of the poems, just like the subject of the artwork, or words of the songs, tells a story about that moment in history, certainly--beyond that is the importance of the storytelling, the poetry, the artwork, to science, math, and engineering.

Perhaps my favorite poem from the evening:  Looking for the Gulf Motel

Richard Blanco reciting his Inaugural Poem, "One Today":