By Sofia DeLeon
Talon Staff Reporter

The one competition during the school year that covers history and English together is Poetry Out Loud, in which students memorize a poem and recite it to their fellow classmates with emotion and heart. The one student that receives the best score moves on to the community’s competition, and to state. This competition aims towards those that are interested in poetry, history of the world in poem form, or emotion from the author that they can relate to.
English teacher Gabe Judah held a small competition for Poetry Out Loud in his classroom during lunch on February 13, in which only three students participated. “Poetry teaches students how to work. If you work, it shows. If you don’t, it shows,” Judah explains.
These students had their own reason to compete in this competition. For junior Maui Glass, it’s the skill of memorization. “The better your memory, it’s good for your character,” Glass says. Memorizing anything, such as an important phone number, a schedule, or a speech takes work. It will definitely show if a person chooses not to work, which will definitely affect them later. This type of competition will take dedication to their own time to choose and memorize a specific poem that they feel passionate about, whether it be short or long.
Many students have the same question for their English teachers: “Why do we have to memorize and recite a poem to our class? What does that teach us?”
Learning poetry helps with the skill to memorize and understand the complex content of a poem, and analyze the words to learn what the author had been meaning to tell the reader about. Working on memorizing a poem is a great skill that adds to your English class. Some students may think that memorizing a poem can be a difficult thing to do, or that it isn’t worth their time because it doesn’t have anything to do with their education. Glass had given one reason why memorization is a great skill, and there are many more that some students have yet to find. A variety of students will constantly ask why memorizing and reciting poems can help them in life, and that question will allow them to find out.