This week in my Hands on Stanzas classrooms I attempted to teach and broach the subject of symbolism in poetry. Being as my current charges are in the fourth grade, I knew that abstract thinking wasn’t yet the strongest of muscles. I chose the poem, Swans by Mary Oliver. If I were to have read the poem in college I may have immediately noticed the repetition at the end of the poem where she laments how upon leaving Ohio, “everything, everything has changed.” The poem reminds me so much of the Anne Sexton poem, Once, where she is walking around Boston late in the evening, relating how sudden loss can truly be.

I at first spoke to the class about what a symbol is, what is a symbol. The basic ABC approach. I was pleased with the enthusiastic responses from my first few classes, but the energy truly tapered off when I began to realize just how literal the responses tended to be. When showing them pictures of an apple, all the students said it was a symbol of fruit, and when I pushed them to think of an apple as symbolizing teacher or health they looked stunned. I kept pushing them with other examples, a photo of a dove, a tree, an American flag until I felt like the envelope couldn’t be pushed open any further. I’ve known for a great length of time, the inability for children daunted by No Child Left Behind have struggled with creative thought - but I really never knew just how stunted some of these beautiful minds have become. It’s perhaps greater than Sexton’s loss or Oliver’s combined.

Needless to say, one student looked at the symbol of the swan in the Oliver poem and shouted, “isn’t this poem about migration?” I smiled as it was one of the most fantastic moments of my teaching experience thus far with these amazing fourth graders. I responded, “Yes, in a way this poem used the symbol of the swan to represent loss and leaving with the grace that we all must have in the face of adversity.” My student blushed and remained quiet the rest of the class time, a perfect symbol of a child learning to think for herself.