Day Four: Poems, Poems, and more Poems.

My experience within the classroom today was very rewarding. The students were present and ready to start the day. Unlike the last time I volunteered, the students were filling up the seats. At first, the students were very talkative. The teacher did everything she could to make them focus. I helped her pass out the laptops and the chargers to get them started on their assignments. One students raised his hands to ask the teacher a question. She looked at him and said "Ive got to do the weekly progress reports for you guys. We have a tutor from UGA here to help you. Is it okay if y'all work together when you have problems"? At first he was skeptical. However, we began to work together and the topic was poems. There were multiple questions asking the student to write about the poems tone and literary devices the author used. We managed to discet three poems. I asked the student what he knew about poems. His response was " I really don't like poems, I just don't understand them". The first thought that entered my mind was "Challenge Accepted". This semester I am enrolled in ENGL 4500, which focuses on Romantic Poetry during the 18th and 19th century. Therefore, I have recently been learning about poems and how to better understand them so I was excited to see how I could help the student better understand the ones he was presented with.