The Town Talk from Alexandria, Louisiana • Page 50

E-2 Town Talk, Alexandria-Pineville, Sunday, May 4, 1980 Poetry a Teaching Tool Hffivi- xii I If I vfe ifjiif 1 1 Ml 'if ill 1 rfor ia( their imagination, their writing: opens up, she said. For example, the poem "My; Mother" by one student "My mother smells like pink roses in the Garden of Eden. And when she tucks her little boy in bed it's like she was tucking in a million dollars she is so care-; Once the student has opened up it's possible to work on grammar and sentence structure, she said. Ms. Swansea's program is one.

of the oldest and biggest among-hundreds nationwide. She says-the point is to make students-happy about themselves. "Anybody who's iiappy is getting along better in the world than somebody who's miserable. So if you're trying to make someone more joyful in their life, then you're attacking the malignancies that are eroding society at every level." human after all. 'That class started with a feeling of tension, and it ended with camaraderie," she said.

She takes the poetry written one day, types and mimeographs it overnight and distributes it the next morning. Students become motivated when they see their thoughts in print, she said. Ms. Swansea permits any kind of writing as long as it expresses the way someone feels. "If a young'un says to me 'I feel like a stove with all four burners turned on I know not to talk with the young'un," she said.

'That's communication. That's poetry." Students often become frightened by demands that they clothe their papers in formal verbiage, she said, and thus never get around to writing at all. But when they do break out of those strict old rules and use 4.1 A birthday party at Dr. King Rand's home on George's Lane in Alexandria about 1924 in honor of his daughter Frances Rand. They all attended West End Grammar School at the time and later attended Bolton High School.

Bolton is celebrating a reunion oi tne graduating class this week end. In top photo (from left), are, Frank Brame. Leo IUncs, James Bradford, Thomas Keller, Out of the Past Charles Segrest, James Harris, George Greene Bottom photo (front row, from left) Doris Dam mon, Mathiide Taylor, Ruth Eicher, Rae Thomas Evelyn Owen, Frances Rand, and Dorothy Brous By Craig Webb RALEIGH, N.C. (UPI) -Charleen Swansea learned a lot about communication the day a student in her poetry class threatened her with his switchblade. She had been trying that time four years ago to get the youth to talk about what he wanted.

His story might have had a bloody ending were it not for another student who yelled, "Put that knife down, boy. She's trying to teach you how to talk so you won't need to use that thing." Tension That broke the tension. It gave her the break she needed in her campaign to produce better students through an unusual weapon: poetry. "If we don't give youngsters the ability to talk us into giving them what they need, they're going to take it from us," she said. 'Talking is something youngsters have got to learn." A child who can tell what he is feeling and wanting, she said, is "less impotent and therefore less dangerous." The verse Ms.

Swansea teaches as director of the Poetry in the Schools program at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system in North Carolina is not the works many adults encountered as pupils. Ms. Swansea uses only poetry written by the students. Danger Sometimes those works can defuse potentially dangerous situations, she said. Two years ago, West Charlotte High School was racked by racial tension born in cross-town busing.

Ms. Swansea asked what the students wanted to write. "Let's write about being black," a student said. Another wanted to talk about being white. Ms.

Swansea told them to write about what being white or black means. She unrolled a 40-foot sheet of paper and had the students invite the rest of the student body to add their thoughts. The class took the results and formulated a poem that talks about experiences of blacks and whites and how everyone is SUMMER COOLER. Great Gift for sard; (top row, from left) Elizabeth Brooks, Ann Stafford, Elizabeth Albert, teacher Mary Lee Cambre, Billle Barksdale, Althea Spikes and Dorothy Miller. Photo supplied by Bradshaw Watson of Alexandria.

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