Conquering the Blank Page: Poetry as a Teaching Tool

Drawing on Poets House’s 50,000-volume poetry library, this 5-day intensive course will lead middle- and high school teachers through a variety of hands-on exercises meant to inspire the teaching, writing, and reading of poetry. Collaboratively, we’ll approach poetry as a teaching tool capable of inspiring diverse student populations to create and interpret complex texts. Topics covered include poetry as a gateway to major humanities content areas such the American Renaissance, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Beat movement; approaches to teaching Dickinson and Whitman; rhythm, rhyme, and the Shakespearean sonnet; haiku and other Japanese forms; strategies for incorporating the living poetic resources of New York into the classroom teaching of poetry; and poetry-oriented assignments ranging from visual reflections to prose writing about poetry.

Throughout the week, participants will write their own original poems, engaging as both teachers and students with all phases of the writing process, from freewriting to workshop to revision to evaluation of student work, closing with a reading of the participants’ work. We’ll have multiple opportunities to exchange best practices for the teaching of poetry, discuss potential adaptations for our own specific student populations, develop strategies for differentiating instruction, and focus on the teaching of poetry as it supports the Common Core Reading and Writing Standards. Visits from guest poets Kimiko Hahn and Jason Koo will complement our ongoing exploration of poetic and classroom practices.

Instructor Emily Moore teaches English at Stuyvesant High School, where she has taught the Poetry Workshop course for the past 11 years. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Kenyon Review Online Newsweek, and the sixth edition of Poetry: A Pocket Anthology. She has her PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. When she is not teaching or writing, she is one third of the all-girl, country camp trio Ménage à Twang.

Fee: $375
For Department of Education (DOE) teachers seeking p-credit: Please pay $125 to After School Professional Development Program (ASPDP; Course # P27-201SS13) on their website here and $250 to Poets House

For non-DOE teachers or those not seeking p-credit: $375 paid to Poets House

To register, please contact christina@poetshouse.org or 212-431-7920, ext. (1) 2835