The Teaching of Poetry: Some Thoughts

One of the areas that can stymie many ELA and English teachers is the teaching of poetry.  Personally, I believe that is because, over the decades, we have de-emphasized the teaching of poetry.  At the turn of the 20th century, poetry was a full half of the curriculum.  Now, it's a tiny fraction, maintained almost entirely alone during April's Poetry Month in large part due to the AP Literature and Composition's hold on the overall English curriculum in so many schools.  Many English majors take few classes dedicated to the sole study of poetry, and many survey classes eschew all but the most important pieces.

This means that the current crop of ELA teachers have little experience with poetry compared to prose except, perhaps, on a personal level in their own writing.  In many conference sessions and conversations, I heard teacher after teacher confess that they feel uncomfortable in teaching poetry and consider it a weak area.  This shows in some of the lesson plans and curriculum ideas available on TeachersPayTeachers.com as well as in many teaching texts.  Formulaic plans with emphases on easy-to-grade areas like rhyme scheme and figurative language (one of the few areas of poetry in the Common Core) abound, and they are wrong.

I am a huge believer in and proponent of Baron Wormer's and David Capella's Poetry Centered Classroom Method.  I personally used that method with various age levels and English classes with great success.  First of all, every time I used it, test scores went up.  Secondly, students of different ages and ability levels all agreed that it taught them how to read closely and think critically.  If you can get a copy of Teaching the Art of Poetry, I cannot recommend it highly enough.  Their follow-up text, A Surge of Language, is also very helpful in seeing how to implement the method in an actual classroom.

There are great methods and ideas in those books, but I would add a few here for when you incorporate poetry as your curriculum currently dictates.

1. Have students write poetry more than just during April.
    One of my favorite tricks was to pull out acrostic poems when we were all getting quite tired of the usual vocabulary quizzes.  Instead of having to write sentences on all ten words, I had students write three acrostic poems (their choice of which vocabulary words to write about); the word got spelled down the side of the poem, and the definition of the word had to be in one of the lines.  The rest of the poem was up to each student.  The first time I would use it with each class, it would take a bit of explaining what an acrostic poem even was, as many had never been exposed to that poetic form at all.  Once they got it, creativity would flow, and amazing poetry was written as a result.
    For differentiated instruction, put the writing of poetry on menu choice boards or include it as an option for reactions to novels or explaining important concepts.  While the CCSS and the AP curricula emphasize essay writing above all others, students whose minds are more poetic struggle with writing essays and should be allowed to shine from time to time.
    Pick a poetic form to go with each unit.  Use that form to help students better see how figurative language is really used.  When I taught a class of 8th graders The Outsiders, we watched many slam poetry performances, and the students had to write and perform their own, one of the more powerful experiences in my career.  Students wrote of their struggles, successes, pain, and love in powerful, phenomenal ways, ways they could not have if we had done yet another essay.  Think outside the box, pantoums for Brave New World, sonnets for Jane Austen, fitting the form to the themes or topics.

2. Encourage students to use the writing process on their poems just as they do on other writings.
    It is not usual to hear of teachers having students write shape poems for Valentine's Day or poems for special occasions, but it is less usual to hear of those assignments following the writing process.  Students write one draft, and it is expected to meet the standards, and then they move on to the next assignment, never to revisit that poem again.  We might do that with short essay answers or even other short prose writings, but we rarely do that with essays.  To show that all writing follows the writing process, please plan enough time for rough drafts and peer editing, just like you would for any other important writing assignment.  Show students rough drafts of famous poems so they can see how it can look.

3. If you have students read their poems to the class, treat that as a sacred moment.
    Requiring students to read their work out loud to their classmates is in the CCSS, sure, but it is also a difficult thing for most students.  It's scary.  Don't bully them or guilt them into it.  Instead, set down strict rules for those listening, that any mocking or mean comment results in being sent from the room or something as severe depending on your school's policies.  Make it clear that all students will be safe in reading their poems aloud.  For those who still don't feel safe to read aloud, offer other options, like recording themselves for just you or for the class to read or reading their poems just to you in the hallway.  Respect their fears.
    One thing that seems to help students in reading their works aloud is practice.  If you can find time for them to practice reading their pieces to others, it is very helpful.  Starting them on reading to just a partner, then groups helps prepare them for the whole class.

4. Sneak poetry into your curriculum whenever you can.
    Don't just use it for teaching metaphor and simile or during your Shakespeare unit.  Use poetry for teaching all the things!  If you find the right poem, you have a great, short mentor text that is easier for students to grasp than a huge novel or pages long article.  That short text is less intimidating for students to practice close reading on, learn how to cite quotes properly, and even use for learning new vocabulary.  For those thinking that poetry is less accessible, try it first with popular song lyrics the students volunteer.  Those are poetry, as are the popular slam poetry performances on YouTube (a great way to cover the CCSS critical analysis of video texts!).  Any time you're working on a new concept, introduce it with a poem, and see how much easier that works for so many students.

Poetry is the oldest form of human creative writing, older than writing itself.  There is no reason to cut it from the curriculum, other than it's difficult to write test questions for and isn't as easily monetized as fiction.

I'll leave you with a story:
    Years ago, I was asked to do a guest teaching spot in a 6th grade classroom.  I was a new stay-at-home mom and desperately missed teaching, so I jumped at the chance.  It was in a private evangelical Christian K-12 school, and in talking with the teacher, it became clear that she had not covered any of the metaphorical language standards or covered poetry at all, so I devised a fairly simple, safe lesson on metaphor and simile. 
    I will never forget that day: bright faces, interested and engaged learners, and sighs.  Oh, the sighs.  In the two sections, each time I finished reading the poem out loud that was on the overhead, there was a huge collective sigh like they were finally breathing oxygen for the first time.  They gasped as we went through the poem again, splitting apart the metaphors, finding each one together, and some even cried.  It wasn't even a great poem.  I remember one little boy raising his hand afterward, asking, "What is that?  It isn't like anything I have ever read before."  So many agreed with him, and I had to back up and explain what poetry even was.
    When it came time for them to try writing their own, each section was crammed with students who thought they knew all the rules for writing.  I was asked how many sentences their poems had to be, how many paragraphs, and more questions focused on the editing side.  You should have heard their gasps when I explained that poetry does not have to follow any of those rules, that they did not even have to capitalize if they did not want to or even use a single period.  They turned in some pretty rough free verse that day, but they smiled, breathed easier, and left class chattering about their poems, sharing them with each other, and saying they wanted to write more.
    Poetry is part of what makes us human.  Don't deny your students that experience.  Let them gasp and breathe it in.