Today’s blog post comes from Carrie Mattern, a high school ELA teacher in Flint, MI who has taught in Flint for the last eleven years and in Brown City, MI for her first four years of teaching. At Flint Carman-Ainsworth, Carrie greets students as freshmen in English 9 and sends them out into the real world after completing English 12. She loves to read, write, and do what most teachers do on their snow days—watch cooking shows in sweats while dreaming of becoming a travel writer.

After finding Clint Smith’s work last year on Twitter, and finally becoming a member of #TeachLivingPoets last spring, I decided that this year my weekly writing (more on that another day) would be based on all living poets with my English 12 seniors. Last year I dabbled with mostly living poets, but this year I wanted to disrupt the canon and allow students more depth with their connections and more relevance to their world. So with that stated, #TeachLivingPoets is a part of my daily classroom lessons and I have never, ever had someone is class yell, “Yay! FInally!” when I announced this philosophy to the class this fall. Continue reading →

Teachers from all over the country gathered together virtually to discuss Fatimah Asghar’s poem “If They Should Come For Us” from her collection If They Come For Us (Penguin Random House, 2018). I taught this poem to my on-level American Lit juniors and AP Literature seniors the week prior to the chat, and found it to be an extremely successful poem with my students, offering them opportunities for rich conversation and deep analysis. This post will provide you with an archive of the chat, and an explanation of how I went about teaching the poem in my classes. Continue reading →

Today’s #TeachLivingPoets post is brought to you by guest writers, Kristin Dreyer and Nikki Lehman, co-teachers at Chantilly High School in Chantilly, Virginia. They have been teaching at Chantilly for the past 18 years and have co-taught together three years throughout the course of their careers; this year they are embarking on an English 10 journey for the first time. They enjoy collaborating and taking risks in their teaching— challenging each other to move beyond their comfort zones! You can follow them on Twitter @CHS_writer and @kdreyer12.

When our 10^th graders walked into class last week, they were confused—and intrigued— by the tablecloths, electric candlelight and mints at their tables.

“Are we having a fancy dinner?” one of them asked.

“Sort of.” We smiled knowing we had piqued their interest before we had even begun to read a line together. Continue reading →

#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 that are useful if you are considering teaching Citizen Illegal in your class.  Continue reading →

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

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This lesson of mine was originally posted on Wakelet, curated by Kristin Runyon for National Poetry Month in April 2017. Click here for more poem pairings by other teachers across the country.

This is my favorite poem pairing of all time for several reasons. First, I LOVE both of these poets’ work. Second, Hayes INVENTED a new form of poetry and how many people can say they did that?!? Third, I love seeing my students’ reactions when they realize… well, you’ll see. 

I pass out a handout with Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool” written in paragraph form without the line breaks–just a continuous line across the page, punctuation included. With a partner, students rewrite it as a poem and how they think Brooks wrote it. They discuss where she would break lines; most go for after the periods.  Continue reading →

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 family, reading, and playing sports. Read more about Adrian’s journey on her blog The Learning Curve.

After studying Clint Smith’s Counting Descent with #thebookchat, I knew that I had found the first poetry collection that I was going to teach. Teaching an entire collection of poetry was something that I had considered, but did not see the full benefits from until reading and working through Smith’s Counting Descent from start to finish.

How to get started Continue reading →

Today’s post will provide a lesson, inspired by the body, that has students free-writing, reading several mentor text poems, viewing a video performance of a mentor text poem, and finally writing a poem. My students had fun with this lesson, and produced impressive work! In all, it took us about three 50-minute class periods to get through. Another couple of days could be added on if you decided to workshop their poems in class.  Continue reading →

Today’s #TeachLivingPoets post is brought to you by guest writer, Matt Brisbin. Mr. Brisbin teaches English at McMinnville High School in McMinnville, Oregon, and has been a high school English instructor for 12 years. Aside from reading and writing, his passions in life include spending time with his family and cheering on various sports teams at the high school, college, and professional levels. You can follow him on Twitter @Mbrisbin11.

Last week, a comment by one of my students, spoken with a smile on the way out the door, really made me think about the way my students tend to read poetry.

“You know something, Mr. Brisbin, I’ve never really liked poetry, but I’ve really enjoyed the spoken word poems you’ve shared with us this year.” Continue reading →

Students may feel confused or lost when identifying a speaker’s attitude toward in a poem. I offer this post as a means to help teach students how to grapple with tone, starting with a poem that has a clear — no — more like, in-your-face tone, followed by a poem with a tone that’s a little more subtle and complex.
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