I’m not one to shun change in education, in fact often I love it. New curriculums make me excited, not exhausted, and I’ve loved adapting and changing what I teach as times have shifted. I am also, however, a huge fan of the Power & Conflict AQA anthology - so when the new Worlds and Lives poetry anthology was released, I was dubious. Teaching Checking Out Me History has always been a highlight of my academic calendar - it is so linguistically rich, lets me use my A-Level Language knowledge about creole, and watching That BBC Video of Agard read-singing it aloud as he walks along a slightly ill-cared for school football pitch is what I live for. Ozymandias is so fantastically accessible; London so relevant to society today; Remains such an enlightening exploration of post traumatic stress and the masculine experience. I even quite like Tissue. I’m a Power & Conflict girlie through and through - or at least, I was.
I read the Worlds and Lives poetry anthology when it came out, obviously. I liked it - the poems seemed well-selected and perhaps more pertinent to society in 2023. There was greater diversity and the pull of there being far more living poets on there than the other two anthologies offer. There was no denying it did everything I’d want a new anthology to do, but I couldn’t shake the idea that it would take a lot for me to love these 15 new poems as much as I love the old set.
Our curriculum intention is, as I’m sure many of yours is, to expose students to the wider world around them, create empathy for their fellow citizens, and broaden their world views beyond the little town we teach in. We carefully select our Key Stage Three novels, books, plays and extracts so that they align with this intention. Our KS3 is bursting with literature that exposes our children to other cultures, places, spaces, and faces - and we pride ourselves on the ability of our curriculum to create well rounded citizens. And then at KS4 we study A Christmas Carol, An Inspector Calls, Macbeth. Each of these are rich with merit - I love them all. They teach empathy, love, the importance of family, of caring about one another, and of defending your father when he dies by allowing murderers to call you an egg. What they don’t teach much of, however, is what it’s like to not be white and wealthy.
Why, then, is our Key Stage Four so disconnected, when it really needn’t be? AQA were finally offering me a way to teach poetry that perfectly aligned with my Key Stage Three curriculum - that teaches about life in other countries, about the power of protecting our Earth, about our own identities and how they fit within a wider society. I knew, really, that Power and Conflict poetry wasn’t serving our students as well as Worlds and Lives would - that it didn’t align quite right with the rest of what we taught. Turns out - perhaps I don’t like change as much as I thought I did.
It’s the end of the year, I’m exhausted, and the mental capacity of learning 15 new poems, planning at least 15 new lessons, redesigning the Year 10 curriculum to fit them in, creating resources from scratch, new knowledge organisers, deciding the explicit vocabulary, and trying to convince the rest of my department that it was a good idea is a lot - and there’s no getting away from it. Thankfully, I work with a team of incredible forward thinkers, who in the end were the ones to convince me it was the right thing to do. But, when I was honest with myself - this was why. Planning fatigue comes for all of us - and it had come for me good and proper.
We vowed to give it a go. Each of us took one or two poems each (our favourites, obviously) and researched, annotated, and created resources about our poems. Two poems felt far more doable than 15. I had a fantastic time - I was a student again, forming new ideas on new poetry. I spent several hours researching my poems and I genuinely viewed it as a treat. Time for being a nerd - the best time of them all. I got my highlighters out and I annotated to my heart's content.
We each presented back our findings during CPD time. We’ve managed ten of the fifteen so far. And what I saw and heard was that these poems are richer, more varied - they are genuinely moving and reflective of what is actually happening in our world right now. We learned about Hindu Gods and the black country accent. We learned about the Kauri tree and Maori women. Mormons and an incarcerated Nigeran pot. We even listened to a video of the birdsong of the Tui bird - but that's just because we're utterly crackers.
There is so very much to go at in these poems - and it's all so very interesting. I love learning - I’m a teacher, it’s part of who I am and what I do. Learning these poems made me love poetry again - even more than I already do. I am my best teacher self when I love what I am teaching - and my passion for these poems, and for having something new to teach at GCSE is going to make teaching Year 10 next year exciting. And what we said to one another all the way through was “this reminds me of X poem that we do in Year 7”. It slots in perfectly for us - and so, I imagine, it would for many of you too.
Much of what I have said there relies on several things: CPD time, a department who is interested, time at home to learn about your poems - there are endless reasons why this is, perhaps, easier for us than it may be for you. We are lucky to have so much time together as a department, and the freedom to choose what we do with it. There's a whole other blog post in here, about the importance of CPD being centred around subject knowledge - and I know that we are so lucky to be able to indulge ourselves in sitting around talking about poetry after school for several hours. What it has meant for us, though, is some curriculum cohesion. Some clear progression into KS4. Some actual rationale as to why we have chosen the anthology we have chosen - as opposed to 'this is just what we've always done'. There was a disconnect for us previously, and I'd imagine we aren't the only ones.
So, take this as a call to arms. If the only reason you aren’t making the switch is - like it was for me - planning fatigue - get going on those poems. Or at least, if you haven’t already, give them a read.
Over the next few months what I would like to do is write 15 blog posts - one about each poem. I’m not making a habit of blogging - I’ve not got much to say worth listening to - but if our departmental research into these poems helps someone then it’s worth sharing. I will attempt to put something together and share the first one soon, and if they prove helpful you’ll have to let me know.
Andie x
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