Good Company: Celebrating Community with Art and Poetry
How do the places and people around us create a sense of belonging, and what is our role in building it?
How to Use This Lesson
This is a Harmony Student Wellness lesson, a week-long, music-centered social-emotional learning lesson designed to be taught across multiple sessions, culminating in an arts-based project. This lesson can be taught in isolation or as part of the larger Harmony Student Wellness program. For more support on implementation, see the Implementation Guide on the program page.
Essential Question
How do the places and people around us create a sense of belonging, and what is our role in building it?
Objectives
Mastery Objective
- Students will be able to experience and explain how place-based communities create belonging by analyzing Chicago art and poetry and collaborating to create and perform an original spoken word poem.
Day 1 - Students will:
- Listen to “Take Me Back to Chicago” by Chicago featuring Chaka Khan
- Identify places where people gather in their community
- Map 2-3 place-based communities they belong to
Day 2 - Students will:
- Listen to “Sunday Candy” by Chance the Rapper and The Social Experiment
- Analyze how artists celebrate people in their communities
- Reflect on important people in their own communities
Day 3 - Students will:
- Watch Kevin Coval perform the spoken word poem, “Chicago Has My Heart”
- Learn about spoken word poetry and its history in Chicago
- Begin brainstorming for collaborative spoken word poems (Note that this week’s arts-based project begins today and will continue through Day 5 of this lesson.)
Day 4 - Students will:
- Watch a team of elementary school students perform a spoken word poem
- Distinguish between chosen and assigned communities
- Collaborate to build spoken word poems about their community (continued from Day 3)
Arts-Based Activity - Students will:
- Rehearse and perform collaborative spoken word poems
- Reflect on how creative collaboration builds community
Background
In this lesson, students will explore how place-based communities create belonging and examine their own role in building community. Students will identify the difference between chosen and assigned communities, recognizing that they can create meaning and connection even in communities they didn’t choose. Through a case study of Chicago’s artistic community, students will analyze how musicians and spoken word poets express appreciation for the people and places that shaped them. Students will learn about the history of slam poetry and examine specific techniques spoken word artists use to communicate emotion and meaning. Working collaboratively, students will then create and perform their own spoken word poems reflecting on their school community.