From story to poem: poetry therapy mechanisms in challenge-based writing instruction in an Indonesian elementary classroom

Research on poetry therapy in elementary education rarely explains how creative writing functions therapeutically and educationally. This qualitative case study examines four mechanisms (aesthetic distance, emotional naming and differentiation, condensation, and witnessing) as elementary students transform their own stories into poems within a Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) structure. Six fifth-grade students were purposively selected from a private Islamic elementary school in West Java, Indonesia. Questionnaire responses, paired story-poem artefacts, and assessment records were examined through reflexive thematic analysis and paired-artefact analysis. Students negotiated aesthetic distance, particularly through character naming. Emotional naming developed from single labels towards differentiation and co-existing states. Condensation reduced chronology, retained affectively loaded imagery, and created compressed forms. Reported relief reflected completing a symbolic representation, not a clinical outcome. One negative case showed that improved emotional indicators did not mean writing felt helpful. CBL functioned as an enabling condition, not a therapeutic mechanism.