Practical, creative activities designed to make poetry both accessible and enjoyable for your students.
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Core Values of #TeachLivingPoets
- We seek to complicate the canon, to open the door wider of which poems are taught in the classroom.
- We seek to provide students with poetry that reflects their identities, backgrounds, and present circumstances.
- We seek to facilitate students’ discovery of new ideas and people who are different than them.
- We seek to celebrate the arts in schools, especially poetry.
- We seek to empower students’ voices through reading and writing poetry.
Meet Melissa
Melissa Alter Smith is the creator of the #TeachLivingPoets hashtag and teachlivingpoets.com. She is a National Board Certified high school English teacher in Charlotte, NC. Melissa is co-author of Teach Living Poets (NCTE, 2021) and the Norton Guide to AP Literature: Writing & Skills (W.W. Norton, 2022). She is 2026 National English Honor Society John L. Manear Oustanding Advisor, 2017 District Teacher of the Year, an AP Reader, and a College Board AP Consultant. Melissa was a member of an advisory board to the Library of Congress’ Poet Laureate Project educational toolkit, and the conversation host for W.W. Norton’s Poets on Poetry series. She is featured on LitHub.com, in The New York Times, MindShift KQED, and more. Her work is focused on complicating the canon, supporting teachers, and empowering students through poetry.
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