Bethany Houde

UWRT 1101
Campbell
8 October 2014
Poetry; from love to hate
Second grade; a time of laughter and naivety. No bills, curfews, or stress; the
simple life. I remember sitting in the brand new white classroom at Asheville Christian
Academy in the second grade. The blonde curly haired Mrs. Bishop showed up every
morning with a bright smile and cheerful voice. She genuinely made learning fun and I
looked forward to every day I went to the magnificent school, because of her. Mrs.
Bishop always kept every students best interest in mind while coming up with new ways
to teach us boring subjects in fun ways.
One day in particular she told us in her peppy voice that we were going to learn to
write something new and exciting. She handed each of us a small white sheet of paper
with about ten lines on it and told us we were going to learn about something called
poetry. Being the eager eight year old I was I decided to engage every part of my mind
into this new and exciting learning experience. Mrs. Bishop said Poetry is a form of
writing that is used to write anything in your life. I raised my hand and despite all the
judgmental stares from my peers I exclaimed, So youre saying we can write about
whatever we want? Mrs. Bishop responded, Yes, you can write about fun experiences,
hard times in your life, your favorite things to do, what has effected you thus far, really
anything you want. I was awestruck by this statement and suddenly felt excitement
about the abundance of opportunity I had with this new genre. Along with excitement I

also felt intimidated by this white sheet of paper that seemed to stare back at me and taunt
every word I wrote down. I tried to ignore all my peers in my head laughing at me and
just write down everything that popped into my head about my family. My family was
and is still is of most importance to me. I started with everyones names and ages, where
we all went to school, where my parents were from. The more I wrote the more I couldnt
stop, it was as though my conscience had taken over; something I had never experienced
before. Every day previous to this one I jumped out of bed, because I knew the next day I
would be able to write a new poem. While writing poems we also learned about drafts.
Our first draft was simply what popped into our head. Mrs. Bishop sat down with us for
our second draft to read over and make sure it made sense, although most of the time she
approved. It seemed as though she was too sweet to dislike any of my poems, or maybe
that was just my naivety. After we wrote our second draft we composed our final draft,
which contained detailed colorful pictures, and we were able to paste them on bright
colored paper of which we had a multitude to choose from.
Now, the most memorable poem that I wrote was about spring. I wrote about the
colors I saw, the smells, how spring made me feel. Every sensation I felt while being
outside on a spring day jumped out of my hand and landed on the paper. My hand didnt
seem to move fast enough to keep up with my overwhelming thoughts. At the end of the
editing session with my teacher I pasted this poem on a pink sheet of paper and drew an
abundance of colorful flowers all over it to make it more appealing to the reader. This
poem was the best one I had written that year and opened a door of opportunity for my
writing in the future.

Later on that year, I walked into school and the ora seemed unusual. It was
somber in that white dim classroom and contained a musty smell, extremely strong and
Mrs. Bishops voice didnt seem so chipper anymore. Mrs. Bishop told us that we were
going to work on something new and prior to my knowledge I though it would be
something fun, however it did not end up being that way. She announced that we [were]
going to be working on grammar. As we had been writing our poetry we had always
fixed spelling mistakes, but that was about it. Now, we had to follow so many rules as to
have subject verb agreements, commas here but not there, proper tense throughout and
many other rules. This took the fun out of something I had enjoyed so much. Instead of
letting my thoughts flow out onto the bright pieces of paper I now had to think about
every single word I wrote down.
When Mrs. Bishop handed our grades back I was excited, because I knew they all
had to be good (I may have been a little cocky about my writing at this point). However,
to my surprise high grades throughout was not the case. At the top of the stack I saw an
abundance of one hundreds, but as I continued to shuffle through my poems the grades
kept decreasing. My heart started to beat faster and my head started to pound I was
outraged at the fact that all my hard work had received such low scores. I was very
confused by this, because I knew I had made a conscious effort on each poem to make
sure everything was grammatically correct. I decided to go talk to Mrs. Bishop to see
why my scores had deteriorated at such a rapid speed. Mrs. Bishop, I exclaimed why
are all the grades prior to learning grammar so bad? She said, You have to many
mistakes and continued to point out mistake after mistake. I did not like this at all,
because it felt as though all my hard work had been tormented with. The type of writing I

enjoyed most in second grade had just been ruined. That day I wanted to go home so bad.
I though to myself there is no reason being here if what Im doing is not enjoyable.
Today, I dont mind to write but I do not like to write poetry. I feel as though
while being in school my imagination and creativity have withered due to the fact of the
multitude of grading systems used solely based on what is right and wrong. In a perfect
world students would receive a grade for the way they capture an audience and a separate
grade for grammar. Many students that produce the best pieces may need help with
grammar, but it is much harder to get an interesting piece of writing from someone that
solely focuses on grammar. I believe it is of great importance for all participants in our
society to be literate in writing, however it is not something I particularly enjoy.