Connect your students with other classes nationwide to learn together and discuss a poem by former US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. Here’s what you need to know to make it happen:
When: Tuesday, Feb. 25
Start time: 8am EST / 7am CST
Moderator: @MelAlterSmith
This will be a slow chat. We will have students active at different times of the day. For the last slow chat my class participated in, I had them join in the chat at the current question, then go back and answer the previous questions. They were also required to schedule tweets using Tweetdeck to answer the rest of the questions posted after class-time. Don’t forget to include the #TeachLivingPoets hashtag so we can all see each others’ tweets!
The poem for the chat is Juan Felipe Herrera’s “Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings” (link)
| TIME (EST) | QUESTION |
| 8:00 am | Q1: In your opinion, what can a poem bring? What does poetry offer that makes it different from other genres of writing? #TeachLivingPoets |
| 9:00 | Q2: What image stood out to you the most and why? #TeachLivingPoets |
| 10:00 | Q3: The speaker uses “you” to address an implied audience. Who might that be, and how does it affect the tone of the poem? #TeachLivingPoets |
| 11:00 | Q4: What interesting juxtaposition do you notice? What effect does the comparison have? #TeachLivingPoets |
| 12:00 pm | Q5: Which metaphor gave you a new idea about poetry and experiencing poetry? How is the metaphor unexpected? #TeachLivingPoets |
| 1:00 | Q6: Where do you notice a shift? Explain. #TeachLivingPoets |
| 2:00 | Q7: How does the form (either as a whole poem or a specific facet of its structure) affect the meaning? #TeachLivingPoets |
| 3:00 | Q8: What do you think “a life without boundaries” means to the speaker? What does it mean to YOU? How does poetry help us achieve this? #TeachLivingPoets |
| 4:00 | Q9: What is a central message of the poem? #TeachLivingPoets |
| 5:00 | Q10: In your opinion, does this poem “bring” what the speaker claims? Why or why not? #TeachLivingPoets |
Note: Please do not have your students answer questions ahead of time before they are asked by the moderator. They can type out their tweets ahead of time and save them as a draft, or (even better) have them schedule them using Tweetdeck. (For more info on scheduling tweets, go here.)
Once in a while, I will have a student who does not want to or is not allowed to create a Twitter account. No problem! They can still do the assignment. Just print out or send them this link to the questions and have them respond on paper.
I will most likely use my whole 50-minute class period on 2/25 for the chat. Students will respond to questions already asked and schedule their future responses while they are in my class. I’m not a big fan of piling on homework, and the benefits of participating in the chat are worth it to me.
To start class, I do a quick run-through of appropriate online etiquette. Then we’ll listen to Herrera read the poem a couple times, and get right to the questions. I plan on allowing collaboration and discussion in small groups to craft their responses.
See you in the chat!
#TeachLivingPoets 
I am excited for this! How does this work exactly? I am not a Twitter aficionado so I want to make sure i am giving good directions to my students.
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Hi – I think I will try this tomorrow with my AP Lit class. I’m very new to Twitter – do they need to be part of a particular chat or do they just use the hashtag #teachlivingpoets to be part of this?
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Hi- I’m new to Twitter, but I’m going to try this in my AP Lit class tomorrow. Do my students need to be part of a particular chat in order to do this? Or, do they simply use the hashtag “#teachlivingpoets” to be part of the discussion? Just a little confused!
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