Today’s post is by guest author Charles Ellenbogen, who is in his 27th year of teaching. He teaches Language & Literature at Campus International High School in Cleveland, Ohio, and has recently published a teaching memoir, This Isn’t the Movies: 25 Years in the Classroom. As of this writing, he is safe at home with Kirsten, his wife, Zoe and Ezra, his children, and Lincoln and Chocolate Scales, their pets.
Students start with “Marginalia with Uprooted Olives” by Philip Metres from Shrapnel Maps (April 2020, Copper Canyon Press) Continue reading
This month’s featured poet is Natasha Trethewey, who served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2012-2014. Her honors include a Pulitzer Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and inductions into the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
To celebrate Black History Month, I start class off everyday with a poem by a Black poet. Here’s my Playlist if you want to use it in your classroom. Sometimes we talk about the poem afterwards, sometimes we free-write or journal, sometimes we just let the poem be. It depends on the poem and our agenda for the day. This list is nowhere near complete, and I encourage you to discover and share more Black artists who will resonate with your students. If you aren’t doing anything yet to honor Black History Month in your class, you should be, and it’s not too late to start.
America. Ann Cox has over 20 years of experience teaching high school English, including AP Lit, Creative Writing, and Speech. She also spent several years as a teacher consultant for the Illinois State Writing Project.