“What Could Happen and What Couldn't Happen”: A Poetry Club for Kids

SUMMARY

This essay describes the development of a classroom-based poetry club for young children attending an alternative school, a school-based mental health program, for elementary school students identified as having serious emotional disturbances. The essay emphasizes the importance of pre-group planning, contracting, and negotiating values and norms with teachers; demystifying mutual aid; integrating group purpose and academic goals; and tapping in to children's strengths to develop creative activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Group work
• poetry
• children
• elementary school
• education
• students
• teachers