Developing Figurative Thinking

During the four months since my last post, I have been thinking about the format of this blog.  A colleague commented that he didn’t have time to read the last posting when he received the e-mail notification.  He didn’t bother clicking on the link, knowing the essay would require a chunk of time he did not have available to read and ponder.  I guess blog entries should be succinct – people are generally too busy for lengthy musings.  Therefore, I shall shorten my postings.  Hopefully, individuals will have more time to read and then engage in meaningful dialogue via the comments section of each post.

A recurring theme this past school year was how to move students from literal thinking to metaphorical or figurative thinking.  This year, Tom and I collaborated on a poetry workshop project with second graders.  After three months of weekly mini-lessons and writing, the students had not made significant progress.  Initially, Tom and I attributed the problem to a lack of rich and varied vocabulary, so Tom charged us with becoming “detectives of words” as a way of building more interesting word choices.  We took them outside to develop sensory perception; we created sound pieces using musical instruments to enhance poems and develop aesthetic awareness; we had them look imaginatively at things using “a different lens.”  Still they struggled. 

In February, we gleaned a bit of insight into the children’s thinking.  On the overhead projector, Tom put the following poem by Zoe Ryder White:

Pencil Sharpener

I think there are a hundred bees

inside the pencil sharpener

and they buzz

and buzz

and buzz

until my point

is sharp!

Tom:  What did the author do to make a picture in your mind?

Jessica:  Mr. Nolan, are there real bees in that?  I don’t get it.

Tom:  Remember, we’re looking at things in different ways, with different lenses. [he took electric pencil sharpener and sharpened two pencils]

Arisa:  It sounds like the buzzing of a bee.

Tom:  Close your eyes and listen.  Can you imagine it sounds like that?

Addison:  It doesn’t make sense.

Tom:  It’s poetry.

Jessica’s and Addison’s comments are quite telling here, illustrating the key to our frustration and the students’ confusion.  Jessica and Addison are looking at things literally rather than figuratively; they seem to be having difficulty activating imagination, unable to open themselves to a more playful way of looking at things. 

Likewise, I encountered the same literal thinking with my West African drumming/dancing ensemble.  In past years at Flynn, I always gave the students poems to interpret for improvising movement and rhythms.  The students created beautiful original dances.  This first year at Veazie, the students struggled to interpret the poems figuratively.  On reflection, I believe I never encountered this problem at Flynn because I always had one or two students who "naturally" were able to create improvised movements without interpreting the text so literally (I say "naturally" because they must have had prior experiences on which they could draw, unknown to me).  Those students taught the others through demonstration – I never had to explicitly teach the skill. Therefore, the students and I struggled this year.   

Through numerous conversations, Tom and I have realized the problem is not confined to the music room or poetry workshop.  We began to see a pervasiveness of literal thinking (and lack of figurative thinking) throughout the curriculum.   Students haven’t had opportunities to think metaphorically; to look imaginatively with “a different lens”; to engage “playfully” with language; to interpret poetry.   With an emphasis on test scores, our students have only experienced teacher-directed instruction and “right answers.”   Further, I suggest our students have grown to rely on authority figures for thinking itself, preferring to be told what to think.

So the question remains: how do we move students from literal interpretation to metaphorical or figurative thinking?