Benefits

As a professional arts educator, I recognize the transformative power of poetry in arts education and arts therapy. Our goal is to inspire colleagues, students, and their families to share their unique minds, voices, and actions, finding healing and self-discovery through this alternative means of communication in their personal lives.

The modality of poetry as an expressive therapy incorporated into Art Foundations teaching and learning, is beneficial to the literary elements of speaking and writing as a means to demonstrate their understanding of age/grade-level curriculum. Teaching students to use the poetic power of metaphor empowers them to first think creatively and then in their own words explain, respond, describe, and express what they are learning. Poetry serves as a benefit to the writing components of Artist’s Reflection Statements and Exit Tickets where free thinking will support the student response. As a learning assessment strategy, it is beneficial for academically challenged students to have differentiated methods of relaying their understanding of learning outcomes in a verbal or nonverbal format.