One morning a week, I visit a classroom overflowing with 52 fifth and sixth graders, and I ask them to be poets.

It's one of those part-time jobs I hang my hat on when I feel sheepish about citing I-freeload-off-my-spouse as a paid vocation.

It's fabulous work. For one thing, it's fun. Some items I've brought in this year: stones; a guitar; Winston Churchill's voice; cubist portraiture; an empty paper bag; music by KRS-One, the Flaming Lips, and Between the Buried and Me; a stuffed red monster. We talk about rhythm and rhyme, about metaphor and mood, but we also talk about the impetus and philosophies of poetry: what it's good for, how it relates to life. We talk about wonder, and vision, and self-preservation.

The best part is hearing and seeing what they write. Hearing first, because each day a dozen hands shoot in the air, begging to read aloud what they've written. Some days almost two dozen. We never have time for everyone, but 3/4 of the kids in the class have volunteered a poem aloud at least once. That's a crazy rate, and I can't believe my luck.

Equally surprising, perhaps, is the quality of the writing. The students have lively and interesting things to say. They express passions and fears that their peers and parents might not give them credit for. And there's no predicting which kid will drop my jaw in any given week.

But then, why should this be a surprise? When I first taught poetry to elementary school students, I made a list of "Ten things I begin by assuming":

1. Everyone here has a unique perspective and many things to say 2. Everyone in this class is worth taking seriously 3. Often we don't realize how much we have to say until we find it through writing 4. The best ways to discover something (i.e., your voice, your vision, your self) are exploration and experiment 5. Poetry and stories help us to live better, to know the world more deeply, and to experience it more vividly 6. Writing gives power 7. Writing feels great 8. Your writing is a reflection of who you are: whether you're writing about a childhood memory, a song you can't stand, or a strip of aluminum foil 9. Weirdness is wonderful 10. "Imagination is more important than knowledge." -Einstein

With so much of America's educational system moving toward standardized curricula to produce standardized results on standardized tests, it seems there is less and less space for students to stretch their imaginations, to enjoy the playfulness of words, the power of words. But I believe that when students are given that space they are capable of extraordinary things.

One of the teachers I work with described to me recently a curriculum he had seen for teaching poetry. The sequence of lessons was defined, measured and specific. The goal was to get kids to do prescribed writing tasks: compose a certain form of poetic line, perhaps, or fill in worksheet blanks to finish metaphoric phrases. The yield of such poetry lessons would be akin to test results: fragments, completed formulas. But not poems. I see the attractions of this approach -- it's a sort of crawl-before-you-walk setup, designed to let students achieve clear objectives around discrete concepts -- but I resist it. Instead, my approach is to give them a few ideas and a starting point, and ask for a poem. I give them rope. Some pull it taut, some leave it loose. Some knot it, or coil it, or arrange it in a shape. Some tangle it up. No one hangs himself.

Back in September I asked each student to jot down five words they associated with writing. The vast majority had mixed feelings. Two or three were jubilant. For some, every word was negative: hate, bad, boring, scary, hard. Sam H. started the year in this last group. But over the weeks he's discovered he can have fun writing, and produced work that he's pleased with. Here is a poem Sam wrote and shared with the class 3 weeks ago:

Book

This Book is suspenseful and hectic. This Book is evil like a ship sinking. This book is a desert a thick forest a Scottish dancer. This Book is a ghost town surrounded by canyons with a ghostly piano that plays by itself. This book is a jazz club a rock band an electric guitar an Egyptian pyramid being built by thousands of people. This Book is a dust storm blinding people. This book is a still creek beside a mountain a forest full of life a frozen lake.

Last week I complained about Disney's self-congratulatory co-opting of the ideas of "imagination" and "dreams." I think of Sam's poem as an alternative vision. He doesn't have to tell us about the imaginative possibilities of a book -- rather, his poem acts them out before our eyes, so that we feel our imaginations expand in several directions. I'd like to think of such expansiveness as the business of education.

Scott Beal is a stay-at-home dad and the 2009-10 Dzanc Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School. Scott will participate in a Write-a-Thon this weekend to support Dzanc's continuing literary and educational efforts. For information, please contact Scott at swbeal@gmail.com.