Word: koch
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...Santa Claus is going on a diet.' Oh, I like that." He laughs again, moving among what is now a forest of raised hands. One child, standing on tiptoe, drapes Koch's head with tinsel as if he were a Christmas tree. School-or, for that matter, writing poetry-was never like this...
Secret Feelings. Koch arrived at P.S. 61 two years ago. A noted poet and professor of English at Columbia, he brought with him a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the suspicion that children are full of verse, and a determination to make them aware of it. His success is convincingly demonstrated in Wishes, Lies, and Dreams (Chelsea House; $7.95), a collection of his pupils' work. In a long introduction to the delightful primer, Koch tells how he did it and how other teachers...
Ignoring such "barriers" as rhyme and meter, Koch emphasized repetition, which is more natural to children. More important, he got the children to express their "secret feelings, their fantasies-turning them on to their imaginations." As he puts it: "There are lots of kids who have never been praised for saying the sky is purple." His first success came when he asked the class to begin each line with the words "I wish . . ." When Koch read their wish poems aloud, the children began waving, blushing, laughing and jumping up and down. Koch recalls: "It was the first time they realized...
...basic "I wish" formula, Koch had the children add colors, noises, even comic-book characters...
Huge Creatures. Koch insists that any child can be attuned to poetry by any good teacher. He is now spreading that message by way of lectures and television (The David Frost and Today shows). NET will soon air a half-hour documentary filmed at P.S. 61. Though he has given up a regular schedule at the school (the program continues under Poet Ron Padgett), Koch likes to return every couple of weeks just for the fun of it. On each visit, he is startled to see how small the children really are: "From their poetry, I think of them...