Chapter Five of Reading, Writing, and Rising Up

I love The Color Purple and the way Christensen uses it in her teaching. I love that she uses it because not only is it relevant because of the poetic quality of the writing, but it's also historical in nature and thus educational in more ways than one. I think it's great how Christensen illustrates how students reading their poetry helps their classmates realize they aren't alone, and that many of the same things have happened to them.

As we found through our poems in our class, it seems that a lot can be discovered about others and about ourselves through writing and reading our poetry. This is important because we, as educators of English, are teachers first - English teachers second.