Christensen Chapter 5

I really enjoyed Christensen's insight on poetry: she views it as a therapeutic method for teens to "explore their raw core and handle their explosive feelings." Its funny because she mentions that often students will be so entranced in the writing process while composing their poems, they don't want to be dragged back into the real world to think of about critical applications. Today during my internship we had an hour of free time and I started working on a poem modeled after one of Chapter 5's exercise, I myself was reluctant to drag my brain back to focus on the new group of students coming in when the bell rang. Ha :)
I was very proud of a conclusion Christensen came up with concerning the implications of students writing poetry. Instead of claiming that writing saves the world, (which is the annoying habit of some overzealous and unrealistic education books) Christensen merely posits that poetry writing can "create caring enough to join in our investigation" about the hurts of the world. This disposition is a far more mature perspective than saying that poetry provides any real conclusive answers.
I also really enjoyed some of the student writings in this section, they had a certain edge not apparent in the work from previous chapter. The poems also contained some notions of deep, Socratic philosophy. For example,"Louie I don't want you/ to be a murderer/because I haven't known/you long enough to/let that slide." Come on! That's really rather good! No wishy-washy "War is bad, but people are good, America victorious!" sort of children's pondering. This poem is a deep, sad realization about the cost of war and the ethical ramifications of what it takes to be a soldier.