By Padre Spencer
I’ve been teaching for weeks now here at the Holy Family Bilingual School, La Familia Sagrada. I’ve got five eleventh graders, all around the age of 17, getting ready to think about university. I’ve got thirteen 9th graders. Just today the two 10th graders have asked to be taught poetry as well. And the 7th graders want in, too. So something is happening.
(Producer's Note: Padre Spencer began teaching poetry to girls at Our Little Roses orphanage in San Pedro Sula, Honduras in January 2013 and will continue for one year)
I’ve been teaching for weeks now here at the Holy Family Bilingual School, La Familia Sagrada. I’ve got five eleventh graders, all around the age of 17, getting ready to think about university. I’ve got thirteen 9th graders. Just today the two 10th graders have asked to be taught poetry as well. And the 7th graders want in, too. So something is happening.
I’ve got the 9th graders learning Shakespeare’s Sonnet #18. In order to teach them meter I have them stomping their feet on the accented syllable. They are each memorizing a line. It is quite a sensation to hear them all shouting the sonnet in unison, especially that last couplet: “So long as men shall breath or eyes can see/ So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”
Poetry is a vulnerable art: it exposes the soul. Poems are X-rays of the soul. It is why I find them so compelling. But it can make the writing of them a little daunting. It makes some of the students squeamish, especially the girls from the home. Poetry is not mathematics or engineering where everything is black and white, simply right or wrong. Poetry thrives in all the murky ambiguity that makes up a great deal of life, especially the life of the heart and the soul. It occurs to me that for the girls in the home, their story is one of the few things they own, a place that is truly theirs, along with their bed and what is under their bed. One girl wrote a spectacular poem the first week from the home, but she kept saying it was “Personal,” pulled faces in class, put her head on the desk, and she didn’t want it read and she didn’t want it in the book. Rather than ignoring this, and forcing her to read it, I chose to applaud her efforts at speaking about her emotions, honoring them. I said to the 11th graders that poems bring up feelings, deep soul-stirrings and that makes some uncomfortable. Her difficult behavior in class indicated we were actually moving forward.
I am amazed at how intelligent these children are. They are earnest. Some need help with pronunciation in English. I know firsthand how embarrassing it is to speak in another language and how painful it can be when people laugh at your bad pronunciations, the Spaniards in Madrid, where I lived, are encouraging of people speak their language, but my professors could be merciless when I mispronounced words (Still do sometimes).
I am amazed at how intelligent these children are. They are earnest. Some need help with pronunciation in English. I know first hand how embarrassing it is to speak in another language and how painful it can be when people laugh at your bad pronunciations, the Spaniards in Madrid, where I lived, are encouraging of people speak their language, but my professors could be merciless when I mispronounced words (Still do sometimes).
Only two weeks have passed. They’ve heard Shakespeare and an anonymous poem called, “Homesick,” from the Terezin concentration camp, poems by a modern Honduran poet named Gustavo Campos whom they adored, a poem by Richard Blanco, and two poems by Roberto Sosa. They are keeping journals. They’ve written poems about their future. Just now they are writing dramatic monologues based on some clay religious figurines I found in the storage shed that the guard was going to throw out: one boy is writing in the voice of the cathedral and another in the voice of a cow.
I’ve found the best way to access their material is to work with them individually outside of class and have them write the poem in Spanish first and then translate it into English, because Spanish is the language of their hearts.
One poem by one of the girls from the home I am using in a homily . There is a mission group coming from Tennessee and they asked me to deliver the homily in Spanish, it’s about Jesus being tempted in the desert. I am talking about the power of words, when Jesus says no to the devil his words carve his bright future. Words changed my life. And I hope these poems might change the future of how these children view themselves. There is much hope in this place.
Poetry is a vulnerable art: it exposes the soul. Poems are X-rays of the soul. It is why I find them so compelling. But it can make the writing of them a little daunting. It makes some of the students squeamish, especially the girls from the home. Poetry is not mathematics or engineering where everything is black and white, simply right or wrong. Poetry thrives in all the murky ambiguity that makes up a great deal of life, especially the life of the heart and the soul. It occurs to me that for the girls in the home, their story is one of the few things they own, a place that is truly theirs, along with their bed and what is under their bed. One girl wrote a spectacular poem the first week from the home, but she kept saying it was “Personal,” pulled faces in class, put her head on the desk, and she didn’t want it read and she didn’t want it in the book. Rather than ignoring this, and forcing her to read it, I chose to applaud her efforts at speaking about her emotions, honoring them. I said to the 11th graders that poems bring up feelings, deep soul-stirrings and that makes some uncomfortable. Her difficult behavior in class indicated we were actually moving forward. 
Only two weeks have passed. They’ve heard Shakespeare and an anonymous poem called, “Homesick,” from the Terezin concentration camp, poems by a modern Honduran poet named Gustavo Campos whom they adored, a poem by Richard Blanco, and two poems by Roberto Sosa. They are keeping journals. They’ve written poems about their future. Just now they are writing dramatic monologues based on some clay religious figurines I found in the storage shed that the guard was going to throw out: one boy is writing in the voice of the cathedral and another in the voice of a cow.
I’ve found the best way to access their material is to work with them individually outside of class and have them write the poem in Spanish first and then translate it into English, because Spanish is the language of their hearts.
One poem by one of the girls from the home I am using in a homily . There is a mission group coming from Tennessee and they asked me to deliver the homily in Spanish, it’s about Jesus being tempted in the desert. I am talking about the power of words, when Jesus says no to the devil his words carve his bright future. Words changed my life. And I hope these poems might change the future of how these children view themselves. There is much hope in this place.
