Paths, Roller Coaster, Doors

all related: path in life, sometimes scary but fun, doors to change decisions

Goals
● Promote student conversation about personal struggles in order to form insightful poetry
● Inspire students to realize that problems in their own lives are representative of the world's largest political
issues

Class goal
● Realize that personal issues are shared by community and
● Paths poem
○ Extension:
■ Imagine when you take a walk down a path make it a quiet experience. What do
you notice around you? Day or night? Hot or cold? Who is with you? Create your
own paths and invite to share about them at the end of the trip.
● Roller coaster poem
○ Extension:
■ Which words in the poem suggest an unpleasant noise?
■ In every stanza of this poem, the second and fourth lines end with a?
■ What is the message in this poem?
● Roller coasters are scary but so much fun
● Door poem
○ Extension:
■ theme​ ​of change.beyond comfort zones and open themselves to the possibility of change.
door symbolises new opportunities. repetition of ‘Go and open the door’ establishes
urgency for change.
■ take a chance and change
■ word ‘maybe’ however, cautions individuals that change may be challenging..
■ beyond the door will be different to everyone
■ ‘Eye’ is symbolic of the windows to the soul. Holub uses this symbolism to imply that
individuals can go through a process of self-discovery.

Students write
● Create a list of 3-5 powerful memories that evoke intense, possible scary emotions

Activity
● Create poetry!
● How to rhyme
● Students group up and will have 15 minutes to compose a brief poem (5-10 lines) directly related to one of
the memories from their list with help from group members
○ Example: #1 I dropped by money down the drain
○ #2 I should have bought that candy cane
● For the next 5-7 minutes, share poems from different groups
 ● For the remainder of class, students and teacher discuss how the personal themes revealed in the shared
poems relate to larger, political and societal themes that affect the world as a whole

Follow-up HW
● Students will branch out from writing navel-gazing poetry to broader themes by revising the poem written in
class to reflect an issue in society today
 1 서은호 Stella

2 신지윤 Julia

3 오주한 Juhan

4 정이헌 Iheon

5 정지민 Camilla

6 조성하 Ryan

7 최지원 Jake

8 한주안 Juan

How to make a rhyme!

Our picnic was ruined

by too many ants.
At least I am grateful…

My brother’s a genius,
as smart as they come.
Without his computer though…

Tomorrow we’re having a test

at the beginning of class.
I didn’t remember to study…

I dreamed I was riding a zebra

with curly pink hair on his head.
And when I woke up in the morning…

If I had a dollar
I know what I’d do.
I’d go the mall and…

What If You Can’t Find a Word that Rhymes?

Try changing the word into a color