Another poem I enjoy teaching, Gwendolyn Brooks’s "We Real Cool" has been a powerful tool for discussions of voice and style in the classroom. Like "The Writer," this poem inspired a ReadWriteThink lesson plan, Many Years Later: Responding to Gwendolyn Brooks’…
Category: Teaching
Poem 7: “The Writer”
I’ve liked Richard Wilbur’s "The Writer" since I came across it my first year as a teacher. I may have read the poem earlier, but I don’t have any memories of it. Instead I remember teaching with it. I guess I’m…
Poem 6: “Concord Hymn”
Today would have been my grandfather’s 94th birthday. He passed away November 2006, and it wasn’t until the funeral that I heard some of the stories of his time in the U.S. Navy during World War II. I knew that…
Poem 5: “Locksley Hall”
Tennyson’s "Locksley Hall" isn’t the Victorian poem I like the most, but it is the one that gave me the publication bug. For a survey class, I was asked to write an analytical paper on something we’d read. I had…
Poem 4: “Those Winter Sundays”
Robert Hayden’s "Those Winter Sundays" is one of those poems that can be very easy to teach. It’s short. The diction is lovely. Its narrative is easy to understand, even for younger student. It’s an easy success in the classroom, but…
Poem 3: Green Eggs and Ham
Weren’t expecting this one next, were you? I confessed my love for Dr. Seuss a couple of years ago, so I may as well admit that Green Eggs and Ham is one of my favorite poems. How can you look at these…
Poem 2: The Waste Land
Because of the opening lines below, the other poem that everyone expects to hear at the beginning of April is T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory…
Poem 1: The Canterbury Tales
It’s terribly obvious to begin with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but it’s not here for the obvious reasons. This is the poem I think of every April. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t opened my Chaucer texts in years. These are…
Daily Poetry Musing
If you’re a teacher, you probably know that April is National Poetry Month. It’s that month when we pretend that we haven’t been reading poetry all year long and for some reason we need to champion rhythm and rhyme. Charles…
When Students Power Down
Last week, Education Week published a story that revealed that students are typically asked to "power down" at school, leaving their 21st century literacy skills behind. It’s an ironic reality for the state of out-of-school literacies—learned "out of school" and condemed…