Confidence and Creativity: The Potential of Poetry Writing in Elementary Classrooms

Researchers agree that self-confidence is an important aspect of young students’ lives (Howgate, 1982). Discovering the relationships between freewriting poetry and confidence may be an important way to improve a student’s outlook on the writing process and their view of themself. Using freewriting poetry in a classroom setting may be a useful method to help students find peace, or tranquility, in writing that can help them explore their sense of self as well as improve their writing abilities. In addition, reading a student’s free-written poem might provide great insight for teachers into the hidden emotions, interests, and personalities of the student that may not have been noticed before. Building a relationship with writing at a young age with these free writing poetry sessions might decrease frustrations and increase willingness to engage in writing. Giving students this freewriting opportunity to describe themselves and their experiences through poetry may help them develop their sense of self, which may increase their overall confidence in who they are as an individual and who they are as a writer. Poetry has been found to be beneficial by multiple researchers (Stange, 2008). However, the benefits and effects found vary and are specific. The idea that self-confidence may be influenced by poetry writing could be an important window into an unexplored area of the potential of poetry