Today’s post is brought to you by guest author Melissa Tucker, Rock Hill, South Carolina’s 2018 District Teacher of the Year. Melissa is an AP Lit, AP Lang, and World Lit teacher at Rock Hill High School. Grateful and tired mom of two handsome sons, her extended Bearcat family is always invited to her classroom. She continually seeks opportunities to…
My students are reading Safia Elhillo’s poetry collection The January Children. We’ve had insightful class discussions, students are reading and annotating five poems every night, and today I wanted to do something more hands-on in small groups. Before we started reading the poems, we read Kwame Dawes’s foreword–a must-read, if you ask me. It prefaces her work with information about…
Today’s post is brought to you by guest author Tia Miller. Tia teaches AP Literature, AP Language, AP Seminar, and Dual Credit English at Chapmanville Regional High School in southern West Virginia. She is currently working on her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Marshall University. This past semester, inspired by Melissa Smith and other awesome teachers in my PLN…
#THEBOOKCHAT #TeachLivingPoets #aplitchat UNITE! Last week, several Twitter chat groups united to discuss José Olivarez’s new book Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Press, 2018). The chat was moderated by Adrian Nester, Scott Bayer, Joel Garza, and me, and educators and poetry readers from all over the country participated. This post will attempt to curate our chat and share some of the highlights…
Want to #TeachLivingPoets but feel like you don’t know where to start? Or where to find good poems? Then this post is for you. Here, you will find all kinds of resources to help you feel more knowledgeable and comfortable with teaching contemporary poetry in your classroom. How to find poets For a list of poets to follow, click here….
Today’s #TeachLivingPoets post comes from Adrian Nester, educator extraordinaire with 17 years’ experience in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. She is passionate about equity in rural education and the power of Twitter. She currently teaches AP Literature, English 11, and Journalism. She is also a T-ball coach, Interact sponsor, and Sunday school teacher in her spare time. She enjoys traveling, spending time with her…
Last year, my students read RA Villanueva’s Reliquaria (University of Nebraska Press) and Kaveh Akbar’s chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry Press) (which I am changing to his full collection for this year, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Alice James Books). New this year in AP Literature will be Safia Elhillo’s The January Children (University of Nebraska Press); and in…