Do I Have to Teach Poetry?

Show of hands, how many teachers out there have entered the classroom believing they were going to be Mr. Keating? You believed you would have a group of students who would scoff at the idea of poetry, but then you would introduce them to Whitman and Yeats and Herrick, and they would fall in love just like you did once upon a time in a college classroom when the words on the page finally clicked with something in your heart and also your head?

Yeah . . . didn't happen for me. Either case. I didn't connect with poetry in college, and my first group of students certainly didn't either. I didn't dislike poetry, but I would so much have rather gotten lost in some great novel.

During my first year teaching, I felt like by the end of my poetry unit I had created a group of kiddos who hated poetry even more than they did before I started the unit. But the real tragedy of the entire situation is that I too hated poetry after that. I dreaded the fact that I would have to teach it again, knowing what an epic fail it was the first time.

And students can feel that! The next year, when it came time for my poetry unit, I went into it with dread. I remember a student saying, "Why do we have to do this if YOU don't even like it?"

And at that moment with no filter, I answered that student honestly. I told him, "I actually LOVE this! It's students like you who make me hate it." And it was true. I discovered I did love poetry. I had worked on my analysis method, and I had discovered the value and the entertainment that was to be had in poetry. Now, I just didn't want to teach it to a group of individuals who were going to ruin that joy for me.

Should I have said it? Probably not. I was just imagining the email that would come from an angry momma. But alas, I never heard anything from his mom. In fact, I didn't hear a peep out of that entire class for the rest of the period we had together. They could feel my frustration with myself and with their attitudes.

So what did I do? I spent the final thirty minutes of that class talking about "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave" by Thomas Hardy. Was it in my lesson plans? Nope, we were actually studying Renaissance poets, so why that poem?

Because I love it. It was something that I could spend hours talking about. The nuances, the real life connection, the subtle humor, and the list goes on. And surprisingly students loved it too. They felt a connection to the poem in a way that no worksheet on figurative language could have connected them.

And I learned something very valuable from that one class in those brief thirty minutes. Teaching poetry isn't about worksheets that come with the text book or only focusing on the literary elements (don't get me wrong, they are important, and I love showing students how writers actually use them). Teaching poetry is about first getting students to see value in the poetry and a lot of that value comes solely from ones enjoyment and pleasure.

So do you HAVE to teach poetry? Probably not. But your students are already engrossed in it--think of the music they are listening to--so why not try to foster a love for the written word or even the spoken word?

ACTION STEP: Find a poem you are passionate about. Read it, and read it again. Print it on fancy paper, laminate it, and hang it in your classroom. Let students see you reading the poem. Let them become curious and want to read it too. Let them ask questions.

And let's continue this conversation next week. Because I've got a lot to say about poetry!