Millennial Learning: April 16-17, 2009
Michael London
The Poetry Wall: Using Poetic Language to Enrich our Teaching and Transform the Classroom

Michael London is an Associate Professor of Business at Muhlenberg College. Prior to his current position, London taught for 13 years at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been an adjunct faculty to the NTL program at American University, teaching group dynamics and facilitation. In 1989, London earned his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University. London's professional activities involve teaching, research, consulting, group facilitation and music. His scholarship includes work on Management Education, Leadership, Group Dynamics and Motivation. He also coaches top executives, helping them to reach their creative potential in leading organizations and achieving their personal goals. And, he facilitates and mediates through team building sessions, T-Groups, and a variety of training programs. London is known for innovative pedagogy and has recently been writing about the use of poetry and music in business education. He has refined his oral presentation skills through years of experience as a guitarist, folk-singer, and entertainer. His CD debut, "Everything Is New", showcases his soulful, magnetic voice. His second release, "The Soul Wakes; Rumi in Song", is inspired by the deeply moving, transcendental poetry of Rumi, the 13th century Persian Sufi mystic. In both classroom and workshop settings, London uses his musical gifts to uplift participants and inspire them to be fully engaged in their learning. London was recognized as "Professor of the Year" in the Wharton Evening Division for 1996 and 2003.

The Poetry Wall: Using Poetic Language to Enrich our Teaching and Transform the Classroom

Co-presented with William Van Buskirk

As faculty we search for ways to invigorate the classroom and make the content of our various fields come to life. In this workshop we create a “poetry gallery” made up of a host of modern poems to sensitize participants to the power of poetry as a vehicle for building connections between students, finding unexpected depth in one’s self and conceptualizing the content in new and exciting ways. This is not a session for learning how to “teach poetry”. Our focus will be on learning a powerful methodology for using poetry as a tool to enrich a wide range of courses and disciplines.

Session Goals and Activities:

1. Think more deeply and personally about how to bring the vitality of poetic language to the act of teaching.
2. Provide faculty with an opportunity to experience their poetic selves in relation to their individual teaching disciplines.
3. Expose participants to a setting and a sequence of experiential exercises that they can adapt to their own classroom settings.
4. Explore the power of poetic language as a vehicle for enlivening dialogue in the classroom: a venue for deeper voicing of lived experience in the context of (and through) the subject matter.

Participants will enter a room that has been prepared with approximately 50 poems covering the walls. They will be encouraged to walk around, “art gallery” style reading various poems and taking as much time as they need. Live meditative background music will be provided by the workshop leaders. The poets will range from some who are “famous” to song lyricists, to the relatively obscure. Next, participants will be asked to take one poem from the wall to work with during the exercises. This poem should have some kind of special meaning or feeling. Participants will pair up and read the poem aloud. They will discuss why they picked the poem, what it did for them, how they reacted to it. Participants will be engaged via writing, reflection, and discussion.