Poetry should be taught in schools.

Opening Statement: Poetry should be taught in schools because it develops creativity, supports critical thinking, and builds community within an individual. Teach For America's digital initiative specialist, Emily Southerton, has to say this about poetry: "Poetry ignites students to think about what it's like to share their opinion, be heard, and make a difference in their world. Students can let go of traditional writing rules with poetry. I tell the kids the most important thing about poetry is that people feel differently after reading it."" I. Develops Creativity Poetry develops creativity because poetry defies writing rules and allows individuals to craft, shape, and polish their own piece of work. Many businesses and employers look for the ability to think creatively in recent college graduates due to the development of all industries and how complicated their problems or tasks are. Employers are always looking for a more efficient way to perform a task and creative thinkers fit right into that job of finding that "more efficient way." [http://www.extension.harvard.edu...] II. Supports Critical Thinking Poetry supports the development of critical thinking abilities because when you analyze a poem, usually there are many metaphors used. Take a look at the poem, "America" by Allen Ginsberg. Below is an excerpt from a graduate student's research on poetry in the classroom: "As children proceeded through the steps of the writing process, they worked beyond the basics of knowledge and comprehension, because poetry is a synthetic and an interactive process that naturally encourages critical, creative, and higher ordered thinking (Fehl, 1983). Scriven and Paul (2007) defined critical thinking as "that mode of thinking about any subject, content or problem in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking" (p 2.). After reading these poems, the children gleaned certain truths and drew a group consensus of trust and right and wrong. In addition, they acquired personal insights about family, friends, and acquaintances from reading and discussing poetry, and gained a higher level of learning, demonstrating their awareness of good behavior and positive thinking." [http://scholarworks.wmich.edu...] The paper goes on to illiterate that all students in that classroom improved in reading and writing fluency by reading and composing poetry. III. Builds Community Within An Individual This, I will keep short and sweet as it is probably the least important of my reasonings. "Reason #1: Poetry helps us know each other and build community. In this blog, I described how poetry can be used at the start of the year to learn about where students come from and who they are. Poetry can allow kids to paint sketches of their lives, using metaphor, imagery and symbolic language to describe painful experiences, or parts of themselves that they're not ready to share. Poetry allows kids to put language to use-to make it serve a deep internal purpose, to break rules along the way (grammar, punctuation, capitalization -- think of e.e. cummings) and to find voice, representation, community perhaps." [http://www.edutopia.org...] Being able to build that community early on in the school year provides the students the opportunity to get to know each other better and faster, allowing for greater room for individual growth and development. I will leave my first argument post quite simply. Poetry develops skills that employers actually want. Many of schools today are too much "brain" work, such as math and science, and not enough "creative/critical" work. Allowing students to fall into a hole of routine and limiting their minds. [http://eps.schoolspecialty.com...] [http://chronicle.com...]