THE NOVELS IN VERSE COLLECTION: Essential Question Possibilities for The Poet X [Ep 244]

Last week, we talked about the possibilities for novels in verse and broke down two approaches to teaching these texts. Today, we’re continuing the conversation using Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X as our guide.

We’re exploring two distinct essential questions that can shape a thoughtful unit - one that focuses on the craft of language and another that taps into the journey of self-discovery. No matter which approach you take, this conversation will help you build a unit that sparks engaging discussions and critical thinking in your students.

The Poet X would be perfect as a read aloud or an opportunity for students to listen to the audiobook! We’ve even created some sketch notes for you as a free resource that students can use while listening. These notes hone in on the essential question that students are focusing on in your unit and can be used with any text. 

Don’t forget to join us in Happy Hour where we’ll provide you with a unit makeover slide deck resource specific to The Poet X!

Resources: 

• Freebie: Theme Snapshot Notetaking Guide
• The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo

Show Notes: https://www.bravenewteaching.com/home/episode244

Head to bravenewteaching.com/waitlist to become a beta tester for BNT University!

Transcript

Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

Amanda 00:00:06  Here at the Brave New Teaching Podcast. We are always looking for the newest, most engaging and fantastic books for you, the teachers, to step up your game and enhance your practice. And we have a brand new book recommendation for you that we just couldn't wait for an entire episode to share. If you are looking for a professional development book that's going to serve you over this winter break, or maybe even as a gift to a fellow educator, we have got your next recommendation. You need to check out Roll Call by Doctor Jenna Cooper. As you know, Doctor Jenna Copper is one of the greatest friends we have over here at the podcast. You have downloaded her interview with Marie almost more than any other episode. So I know that a lot of you have heard Jenna and her work and what she's up to. So not only should you listen to listen to that episode, but you need to check out Jenna's brand new book. This book is phenomenal. And as you know, Doctor Cooper is an education professor and former English teacher, so she's in everything from teaching students to teaching teachers.

Amanda 00:01:14  And she has written The Ultimate guide to creating lessons that will really and truly captivate your students while still meeting those all important standards. This book roll call is packed with practical strategies and innovative ideas that will transform your classroom, and for a very special bonus time. Jenna is offering an exclusive perspective plan toolkit absolutely free when you purchase Roll Call. It's going to be so awesome, and you are going to love all of the new ideas that you that you get. you can bet you can buy Jenna's book right now on Amazon, so head over to Amazon.com, Com. Find your copy of Roll Call. And then once you have your order you're going to go to roll call bonus. That's r o l e c a l l b o n U.S. dot com roll call bonus or head to today's show notes and claim your free Perspective plan toolkit. It's a freebie right now. When she's launching her book for the very first time, it's not going to linger around for very long. Your students will thank you, and you're going to thank you, because this is going to make you feel good about teaching and really amp up your energy.

Amanda 00:02:35  We're so excited for you to read it yourselves and let us know what you think. Talk to you soon and enjoy the show.

Marie 00:02:43  Well, hello and welcome back to Brave New Teaching and welcome to chapter two of our Novels in Verse Collection. Hello, my pretty friend.

Amanda 00:02:52  Oh, you thought that face was pretty.

Marie 00:02:53  It was beautiful.

Amanda 00:02:55  I have a lot of teeth and I don't ever, like, really look at myself this much other than when I'm recording with you and I'm like, God, I got a mouthful of teeth.

Marie 00:03:04  I feel like you have the same amount of teeth as the average human. Just did you get your your wisdom teeth removed?

Amanda 00:03:12  I did, it was awful.

Marie 00:03:13  Oh, then you have the same amount of teeth as I do. Assuming. Well, do you know what? Something weird. What's that? And he's gonna hear this. My dad has his wisdom teeth, so he actually has a mouth full of teeth.

Amanda 00:03:24  Why is he holding on to them?

Marie 00:03:26  I don't know.

Amanda 00:03:28  Tell your dad that Disney World is better than Disneyland.

Marie 00:03:30  Oh, I don't.

Amanda 00:03:31  I'm telling him right now.

Marie 00:03:33  Hey, listen, we are a family of Southern California born and bred. Yeah. We know. Yeah. So we're not gonna agree with you because you're wrong. Anyways, friends, we are here to continue our conversation about novels in verse. If you missed last week's episode where we were just, like, honestly, spitballing quite a bit. I mean, we knew what we wanted to talk about, but it was one of those brave new teaching, raw, just brainstorming conversations where Amanda and I each kind of like, take our own lane and go with it. Talking about possibilities for novels and versus how to do novels. Inverse as in all class unit as ideas for choice. Unit when you might use one or the other, looking at a skill based approach or a thematic based approach which like spoiler alert. Really, the only difference is going to be how you plan and like your essential question, which is what we're going to be looking at today and like the heavier focus, but all the things are still going to happen.

Marie 00:04:35  We also talked last week about a freebie that we have. Amanda, tell them what they've won.

Amanda 00:04:41  Tell them what they want. Okay. Well, I was just distracted, so I was trying to think of a metaphor, but I will I will tell them what they want. Our freebie is amazing. And I will come back to the metaphor because it was coming together. We really think that a novel inverse is poised beautifully as a read aloud or as an opportunity for students to listen to the audiobook. We're particularly obsessed with Elizabeth Acevedo, who, at least in the two that I've listened to, she narrates her own. And because of that, students get to hear from, you know, the actual creator. And so what we created together were some listening sketch notes. And the sketch notes are broken up into pieces, but they're really kind of honed in on the theme or the essential question that students are focusing on in the unit. And they can be jotting down doodle notes, evidence, all kinds of things that they hear while they're listening.

Amanda 00:05:35  So this is a very universal template that you can use basically with any text that you want kids to listen to. We're really thinking about novels and verse, but you probably could find a dozen other ways to use it after you go grab it and print it out.

Marie 00:05:49  And that is at Brave New Teaching. Com slash theme notes or in the show notes for today's episode. Okay, we are going to be talking today through two possibilities for an essential question, right? Because everything we do here at Brave New Teaching is inquiry based. So we are always going to start with a question. If you are newer to the podcast, I highly encourage you to take a look at our website teaching. We have so many episodes about essential questions about why you should use essential questions. I mean, if you go back to the beginning, it's like, why building the case? Amanda has a really good interview. We have many interviews with other professors and educators who use an inquiry based approach. So if this is something that you're like, why? I feel like I know what you're talking about.

Marie 00:06:38  We have so many resources for you. But today we are going to dive in. We have two essential questions that we are going to just do a deep dive into. And then we're going to send you on your way to think about it. And yeah, it's going to be great. Oh, and after the break, we're going to talk to you about what all of our happy, our friends get because we took this poet X novels and verse series, a collection, and we put it on steroids for happy hour members. So get excited for that. Amanda, are you ready.

Amanda 00:07:08  After the break? I'm going to share my metaphor.

Marie 00:07:10  Your metaphor? Okay. I was she's like furiously writing something. So I was trying to forget a little bit, but she's not quite ready. So you know what we're gonna do while she's writing her metaphor? We are going to go ahead and cue the music.

Amanda 00:07:23  You're listening to Brave New Teaching, and we are so much more than a podcast.

Marie 00:07:27  We give teachers the inspiration, support and tools to challenge the status quo.

Amanda 00:07:33  I'm Amanda and I'm a former English teacher from Illinois.

Marie 00:07:36  And I'm Marie and I'm a high school teacher from Southern California.

Amanda 00:07:39  Join us after the show and happy hour to extend your VMA experience with instant access to our resources, workshops and courses.

Marie 00:07:48  Visit shop for new teaching slash happy hour to join us today. We are so glad you're here. Enjoy the show.

Amanda 00:07:57  Oh, they're ready, they're ready.

Marie 00:07:59  Oh, okay. Go! Let's hear it. You've hyped up this metaphor. Or maybe I've hyped it up for you, but either way, it's been hyped.

Amanda 00:08:05  I don't I don't know that it's going to live up to the hype, but I wanted to just revisit this idea that we were talking about last episode and that we brought up at the beginning of the show with every essential question inquiry unit we talk about. In a lot of those episodes, there's a trifecta, right? There's three things that go into creating an essential question unit. They are the text, the themes and the skills. It's a trifecta.

Amanda 00:08:30  All three of them must happen. They all work together. But when we actually decide the direction for the unit, we can't do all three of them with equal energy. That doesn't serve anybody. And so kind of what we were trying to do.

Marie 00:08:44  Exhausting.

Amanda 00:08:45  It's exhausting. So today we're going to look at essential questions that are going to take us down two different paths. But like we said, it's not at the neglect of other things. So metaphor I was thinking about like when you design a room, like my living room, for example. I really wanted to do like the half wall, like the not the baseboard. What are the what does that call the wainscoting rail?

Marie 00:09:08  Yeah.

Amanda 00:09:09  Yeah. So like that would be a solid color. And then the top half wallpaper. So then for here, is that like, yes, the room will exist, but there are going to be dominant things and more like accessory types of things like well an outfit would be another great metaphor, right? Like maybe your pant is going to be the star of the show, but that doesn't mean you're not going to wear a shirt.

Marie 00:09:35  I mean, I don't know about you.

Amanda 00:09:37  I mean, not necessarily.

Marie 00:09:39  Just kidding. Okay. So, Okay, good. Does that word metaphor.

Amanda 00:09:44  Like one, one piece is going to dominate in a good way, right? Like it's going to like lead the Lead the charge so that.

Marie 00:09:50  The foundation.

Amanda 00:09:51  Kind of fall underneath of it.

Marie 00:09:53  Yeah.

Amanda 00:09:54  It's going to make more sense as we develop these units because really makes sense. It makes sense, right. Because you just I don't know, the thread is hard. And this is one of the things that for me, like when I was in the beginning stages of learning inquiry, I didn't get why it was so important until I finally was like, oh, this is helping me make decisions about my outfit.

Marie 00:10:15  Yeah, well, it's one thing. It's what we always say. Just pick something. Yes. Focus on pick one thing. Pick the thing that's going to be important. Maybe not the only important thing, but the thing that's going to be the most important right now.

Amanda 00:10:29  That's how many coach teachers now say, well, you chose these pants. Do you really think that these earrings belong with this outfit?

Marie 00:10:35  Yeah. There's not even belt loops on it. How are you going to go and wear a belt? Right?

Amanda 00:10:39  So stop trying to add random stuff to your unit that doesn't match your pants.

Marie 00:10:43  Okay, so let's talk about the pants of the unit. Let's talk about let's talk about the underwear of the unit. Oh, the essential question. Okay.

Amanda 00:10:56  Yeah. Sure.

Marie 00:10:57  Yeah. Sure. It covers all your bits. See what I'm saying?

Amanda 00:11:00  It covers all your bits. So there are two ways to go about this. Okay. I think I'll go first because you already decided that we're not you. I know you do. We already decided which of these two directions we're going to follow for the rest of our series. So let's do the one that we're not going to follow, right? So that the people can hear it and then be sad that we didn't choose it.

Marie 00:11:25  Well, but if you are a happy hour member, you are going to get both of these ways that we were following the series and then some, because we have a whole unit makeover like slide deck resource for you specific to the Pokedex, but also very adaptable to any novel and verse that you would like to use. And like all the things that we talk about from here forward. Happy hour members are getting as a resource this month. So just make sure that you at least check out Brave New Teaching. Com slash happy hour to see what we are talking about because it has had a whole glow up. It's a teacher work club and this is one of the first like concrete materials that we are working on together. So if you're wondering like where do I get that? How can I see that happy hour? That's how. Okay, Amanda, do you want to start it off with our first essential question?

Amanda 00:12:16  So we are operating under the assumption that we have a generally normal amount of time for a regular unit.

Amanda 00:12:26  Right. So we're talking about, at least for me on a non quarter system, we're talking about like a 4 to 6 weeks 50 minute class period ish kind of time frame. For me that's like a normal unit. Marie can translate that later for other other versions, but in that case a skill based approach with the poetics, a novel and verse unit. A question that I like. To do that would be something like this. Which is more powerful, how much you say or what you say.

Marie 00:12:58  And it's so good for kids because it reaches every child. It reaches the you and me's of the world who are yeppers, and it reaches the kids who are not, and everybody in between.

Amanda 00:13:15  And I think, absolutely, the answer is somewhere in the middle that they're going to have to wrestle with defining. And that is what makes that essential question kind of tricky, because the answer is both right as we as will be our other, you know, so many other of our questions. And it really sets up poetry and even small pieces of rhetoric and speeches as kind of a genre based, right, skill focused type of a unit.

Amanda 00:13:41  So we're going to be looking at the efficacy of language. We're going to look at the at the flowery kinds of language we're going to look at. What is the purpose of a metaphor versus a paragraph? So it really sets up skill in a much more interesting way than I've ever really done when I was first starting. Because the goal is to figure out which is more effective or which is more powerful. And I think that that is something that kids can do. And it really gives you the chance to choose, okay, I want to do this through the lens of a novel and verse. I want to do this through the lens of a speech, and I want to do this through the lens of a handful of other poems. Right? You can really mix and match the texts that are in there in order to give kids the chance to evaluate. So yes, it's going to be about skill, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to be looking at like the power of language, right? And like what those concepts are of what makes people.

Amanda 00:14:39  I think when I think about power and language, to me that means that the people who hear it. Do something. There's action. And I think having that conversation with kids and, well, what makes language powerful? Just feeling it or that there's action. So like you're going to get all those big conceptual conversations going by focusing on the skill first.

Marie 00:14:59  And you know, you have a good essential question when there's room for a very robust conversation at multiple steps along the way.

Amanda 00:15:08  Absolutely.

Marie 00:15:09  Yes. And actually, the same can be said for our thematic question, which is the one that we're going to barrel down this track with. And it's similar. And yeah.

Amanda 00:15:19  Before you do that I do want to let people know. Sorry I because we're not going to do the skill one. It's super cool. And I've done it I've coached it before. So I told Marie I said if you guys want I can. Yeah I will do a live coaching training and we will post it in the show notes.

Amanda 00:15:34  We'll post it on Instagram when it's going to take place, but I will do a video kind of version of what we're doing on the podcast. It will be available for just, you know, a short amount of time. Curriculum rehab teachers. We're going to end up putting it inside of curriculum rehab. But if you want to come to this live coaching session, you can sign up and get tickets online. And I would love to have you and walk you through this version if that's something that you wanted to do.

Marie 00:15:57  I think that that sounds great because the true downfall to every single time we do a conversation like this is that I end up wanting to rewrite at least a piece of my curriculum, if not the whole entire thing. It's such a problem, but it's also like making me so much better. Like just refine, refine, refine. I am so glad you said that, because I almost forgot to mention the training that you're going to do because, I need it.

Amanda 00:16:22  Well, it was hard to decide.

Amanda 00:16:23  I mean, this is this is a very cool direction. I think that for us, when we were talking about it, though, poet X in particular is so deeply rich in theme that it would be it would be hard for me to do poetics, I think, from a more clinical standpoint then the the really emotive thematic side. So we did choose the thematic way route to go for our happy hour resource and the rest of these episodes. But I'm glad that we chose that well.

Marie 00:16:54  And the thematic route was this question was born of a conversation about story because our students, the kids of 2025, are so inundated with content, and that content comes absolutely from social media and even the way that, like TVs and movies are now changing their storytelling. It's so character driven, almost only character driven versus plot driven versus relationship, right? Like the different types of story that you can have is so character centered that that's how they're looking at their own lives. I'm noticing my students are looking at I'm getting very philosophical here, but like, not philosophical, more like psychologically analytical.

Marie 00:17:39  My students, It's so ingrained in them the idea of be the main character in your own life. To people like you and me, Amanda, who are millennials, who are moms, this idea of being the main character in your own life is not new to us, but it's like renewed in this season of like, motherhood, right? Because we grew up in the days of rom coms, we grew up in the days of the chick flick, like ruling all. And so we've seen that main character energy, but now it's being redefined as be the main character of your own life. And I think it has a lot of great potential. But to a child in their formative years, being the main character in your own life can create an asshole like quicker than anything else. Like it can create a self centered, centered, and self righteous. Yes. Just behavior. I'm not saying that the kids are bad. I'm saying that their behaviour is unsavoury. When I can see that, they are really implying that I'm the main character in my own life, because I think it gets a little bit lost in how to translate that, because they are frickin adolescents and their fatty layer of frontal lobe has not dissipated.

Marie 00:18:56  It's not their fault. It is what it is. And so anyways, that was a long setup for. I always want to ask them about their story and not just the story that they are telling everybody, but the story they're telling themselves and how the two intersect because they're not ever the same. And so our thematic essential question for this unit, using the poetics is which is more important, knowing your story or telling it?

Amanda 00:19:24  I am really proud of myself.

Marie 00:19:26  Yeah, that was good. I just kept saying, it's about telling your story. It's about your own story. It's about the importance of your story. And Amanda was like, I hear you stop. Let me think about this.

Amanda 00:19:38  It's tricky, and I'm really glad we didn't record that session because it was pretty rough. But the thing about writing an essential question is there are just a lot of moving pieces, and I, I'm sure plenty of you guys have tried to type in getting ex out of out of eye or of any kind of, you know, chat software.

Amanda 00:19:56  And the thing is, you can get a lot of sort of close things, but you have to be able to think about what does this look like with my students, right. Who's it for always?

Marie 00:20:06  Who's this for.

Amanda 00:20:07  And what does this look like in practice for 4 to 6 weeks?

Marie 00:20:11  Yes. Can this be maintained.

Amanda 00:20:14  And like how do we pull the threads of the answers out of this text? So one of the things we started doing was talking about camera, right. The main character energy of poets and cameras. And one of the things I love about poet X is structurally, it's so beautifully set up as like a beginning, middle, end, coming of age character arc story. Right at the at the beginning, we have Chamorro, who is really kind of stuck in a world that's been that she's been told about, that she's kind of a part of, but it's not hers. Right. She's really uncomfortable with how men look at her, how she feels objectified when she's looked at on the street.

Amanda 00:20:57  She's kind of a subject of her mother's ruling over the household. She's an observer of the relationship between her mother and father, but doesn't really understand it. She's got a twin, but they're at an age where they're not communicating the same way they used to when they were kids. They're just kind of in the same room. So she's definitely like in her story, but I don't know that she really knows her story or is certainly she's certainly not telling. Well, she's telling it to us kind of. Right.

Marie 00:21:25  Right. But she doesn't feel ownership over it.

Amanda 00:21:28  No.

Marie 00:21:28  She's. Yeah.

Amanda 00:21:29  I don't think she's a victim of it. She's just kind of like a bystander in her own story. Right.

Marie 00:21:33  Well, she's kind of floating through it. She hasn't gotten to the top. She hasn't gotten that bird's eye view yet. Yeah.

Amanda 00:21:40  Well, then and then it kind of like transitions, right? She starts to experience things, right. She falls in love. She starts to kind of break her mom's rules.

Amanda 00:21:46  There's more action verbs involved in this kind of transformational middle. And then by the end, right, she's up on stage. She's actually like, literally sharing her story slam poetry style. So, I mean, we can really see that EQ arc on from all the way through, from both ends of the either or so that is, I think what gets me so excited about that Ek is that we can I can visualize that arc for her. Same with when we talk about Fahrenheit with montage transformation. I love it when it's so clear. The example is so clear because when we talk about ourselves, it's not so clear. And that's great because we're human and it should be a little bit messier. But to have a clean example makes the text that much more, I think, effective.

Marie 00:22:29  Well, and it's again, just like the one about the skill question, the conversations can be rich throughout a unit. So for me, you had said earlier I would translate like a, you know, 4 to 6 week unit.

Marie 00:22:41  I think this would be a three, maybe four week unit because I like to bake it. So probably like a three week unit on the quarter system where I see students every day for 90 minutes a day because we would have, you know, certain days where we can take in a lot of content, certain days where we have to process the content, certain days where we need to be doing some assessment. One thing that's kind of a misnomer or like misconception, I guess, of like something like the quarter system, like, oh, you have them for 90 minutes a day. That's so long. Yeah, but any teenager can only sit and, you know, any human being can only take in so much on any given day. And I truly miss the semester system where I had kids for 50 minutes a day and then like one day a week, I had them for two hours because I, I honestly got through content quicker because they had like overnight to process and then come back versus I am trying to jam two days day's worth into their little noggins and it.

Amanda 00:23:36  Just doesn't always work.

Marie 00:23:38  That was a little sidebar for us all. But Happy hour members, make sure that you go and take a look at the resource that we have coming at you for well. Truly, the resource is for January, February and then in March we will update all of that because we're doing like a three part. We're looking at things on more of like a three month arc in happy hour, where we can get our lives together and inspire each other, where we can work on really like specific curriculum things, and then we can help each other out. It's truly more of a teacher work club than anything else, but the unit makeover that we're talking about here is all there for you.

Amanda 00:24:16  Yeah, well, I think just to kind of round us out, I think one other thing that we had or two other things that we had mentioned in our like when we were prepping for this, is that the unit works beautifully how we've described it. But Marie was also really interested in really having an approach with lenses.

Amanda 00:24:31  Yeah. And so I think that this question. Right. Which is more important, knowing your story or telling it when I coach teachers to sometimes when we look at our unit calendar and we're thinking about supplements, which we'll get into more in a upcoming episode, is like, how do you break down your weeks? So we could do, like I said earlier, you could kind of do like the beginning, middle, end, but you could also break down your weeks by lens. You could look at like a feminist lens in the first week, you could look at a race lens. You could look at all these different lenses on that EQ throughout the unit. It's really set up beautifully for that. And then if you are doing American Lit and you're wondering what is America's story and who gets to tell it? This, I think, is just a wonderful way to just kind of it just sits right under that question as a great unit example to then come back to at the end of the year.

Amanda 00:25:17  Okay. So what is America's story? What is your story? How does your story change depending on who would have told it? It's just good.

Marie 00:25:25  Yeah I know and I this is a problem because now here I am going home. Where can I what what can I shift in my nine week quarter. Okay, well, friends, we just threw a lot at you, and it is time for you to go. Think about that. Have a great week at school next week. We are coming back at you with chapter three of this novels in verse collection. We're going to talk about gateway activities, and I'm excited about it because I have a really fun idea. It's simple. Oh my gosh, it's so simple. So make sure that you head back here next week. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Go to the show notes for all of the things that we've been talking about. And, make it a good one. See you next time.

Marie 00:26:05  Bye bye.

Amanda 00:26:09  Thanks again for listening to Brave New Teaching.

Marie 00:26:11  We'd love to keep the conversation going over on Instagram.

Amanda 00:26:15  And while you're there, check out the links in our bio for the most up to date events going on in Happy Hour and the brand new teaching community.

Marie 00:26:22  Thanks for being here and have a great week at school.