Today’s post is by guest author Charles Ellenbogen, who is in his 27th year of teaching. He teaches high school in Cleveland, Ohio, and has recently published a teaching memoir, This Isn’t the Movies: 25 Years in the Classroom.

This lesson plan features one of Terrance Hayes’s American sonnets from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, as well as a poem by the Poet Laureate of Ohio, Dave Lucas. Students will compare and contrast the two poems, exploring the father-son relationship in each. This lesson is designed with distance teaching and online learning in mind, and can fit right into any thematic unit on family dynamics and complexities.  

You can find everything you need for this lesson by clicking on:

Hayes Hyperdoc

More lesson plans for teaching Terrance Hayes:

• Considering line breaks
• Read about my experience taking a workshop with Terrance Hayes 
• More on teaching sonnets today 

Thank you for reading! Do you have a story, lesson plan, activity, or something else to share with TeachLivingPoets.com? Be a guest author! Email me at msmith@lncharter.org. 

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