How one college uses a poetry tree to increase student engagement
The legend of the Poetry Tree at Randolph College dates back to the 1960’s, its protagonist an English professor named Margaret Raynal.
Every Spring, Margaret would write out the poem, ‘Loveliest of Trees’ by A.E. Housman, and hang it on a cherry blossom tree near the front of the school as an homage to both the cherry blossom and springtime.
Margaret’s annual springtime poetry hanging has since taken on a life of its own for the entire campus community at Randolph College. Faculty, staff, administration, and students usher in the excitement and youthfulness of springtime by hanging their favorite or original poems with ribbon on the same tree.
For many campuses, cherry blossoms are pretty to look at, but for Randolph college, they are the center of an engaging springtime campus tradition.
This blender event is both beautiful and engaging. A tree, at the entrance to campus, covered with poetry is a splendid image, and a hard experience for a student to walk by without noticing. Students, administrators, and faculty gather at the tree between classes, reading the poems and sharing the moment together. Suddenly, engagement on campus has increased with the rising temperature.
In Dance Floor Theory, we talk about using unexpected surfaces to create this effect.
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MEET Tom
LEAD FACILITATOR
After starting his first business in college that grew to $1.5 million in annual sales, Tom went on to be the Founder and Lead Facilitator of Swift Kick. Since 2004, Tom has trained over 850,000 leaders around the US and the world including England, South Korea, Indonesia, and Bermuda on how to build a Culture of Connection™ within their organization.
Tom has trained leaders at some of the largest companies in the world such as Coca Cola, Pfizer, Apple, and Nike. Through his speaking, he holds an unprecedented 7 National Speaking Titles from APCA. He is a TEDx speaker, held a Guinness World Record, and he sat on the boards for both the NYC Entrepreneurs’ Organization for 5 years and the NYC National Speaker’s Associating for two years.
Tom’s award winning program, Dance Floor Theory™, is recognized as the standard best practice for increasing community member engagement and retention rates. Organizations both small and as large as the U.S. Military have brought Tom in to train and deploy his methodology to turn apathy into action.
And on a personal note, Tom lives just outside of New Year City, was named after a cat, was on a reality show on NBC, was featured on the Tofurky box, got kicked off the Oprah Winfrey show, and loves peanut butter so much that he filed paper work to start a festival in NYC called the NYC Peanut Butter Jam.