Ms. Testfa speaks on the growth and improvement of the Poetry Club
by Decarus Wright
If you like to write about feelings and current issues in your life, then join the poetry club! Instructor Ms. Shu-Shu Tesfa, a science teacher at OHS, hopes that you want to become a poet of the future!
Earlier this week I had an exclusive interview with Tesfa and we discussed the history of the poetry club. The debut of the club, Tesfa explained, occurred last spring. “I had a couple of students in my class writing poetry so; I looked up some information about young poets expressing themselves and I was contacted by a middle school teacher who was having an open mic. Then, I took the students there.”
The poetry club started from an idea coming two years ago through the Latin club Tesfa was involved in. It happened when a poet came in and spoke to the students. She thought perhaps students would enjoy a poetry club.
The members of the poetry club are Jessica Smith, Bentu Dumba, and Raynall Williams. The club meets every Wednesday in room F105 from 3:30 to 5pm. “If you want to join, attend a meeting and sign up,” Tesfa says.
Tesfa feels she has made a special connection with these kids because she has seen their work evolve over the past year. “I am trying to get them to expand to formal poetry and my students’ poetry has gotten better. Most of them write on gloomy topics or things that were bothering them,” she claims.
In the poetry club, none of the students have a specific role or job they have to do. It is all about hard work.
The purpose of the poetry club is to push the students toward spoken word, get them to perform poetry, expand their writing and develop their writing skills. The student that Tesfa feels has shown the most progress is Bentu Dumba. “Her writing is improving this year and she is more expressive and willing to go outside of conventional topics that young ladies face,” said Tesfa.
In class, the students work on free verse most of the time. Sometimes, Tesfa will give them a topic to work on. Currently, they are trying a group collaborative project on Women’s oppression. Tesfa wants the students to believe in real writing and take it with them each day. She enjoys teaching poetry because she loves to express herself with written words and when she read the students’ work it blows her away.
- Volume 4, Issue 1 -
