If you are like me and many other English teachers across the nation, then poetry isn’t your strongest subject. In high school, I just never got into poetry, mostly because I had a hard time understanding it, and in college, the trend continued. I never did well on papers that involved poetry, and because of this, I tried to steer clear of any class involving poetry. This has resulted in some problems now that I am a teacher. As an English teacher, I am be responsible for teaching poetry, but my phobia persists. This is why I explored the Poetry 180 web site.
This web site was started by the American Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. He designed a sight where any high school teacher in the U.S. can come and find poetry that has been specifically chosen with the high school student in mind. 180 poems to be exact. Along with the poems are pages that offer different ways of bringing poetry to the classroom. Collins’ ultimate goal is to have one of these poems read over the P.A. system every morning, in every high school across the U.S. He realizes that this is unlikely, so on the web site he offers many different ways to incorporate the poetry into the classroom.
The goal is to get students, and teachers in my case, comfortable with poetry. Poetry fluency if you will. The poems are written by contemporary poets, so the allusions and language are not too obtuse. He even suggests that you don’t discuss the meaning of the poems with your class, you just read them and leave the meaning to the individual.
The site offers much flexibility. There are so many poems; you can do so many things with them. Teachers no longer have to search for appropriate, grade level poetry; now they can simply go to Poetry 180 and pull off any of the 180 contemporary poems for discussion or whatever you deem necessary.
In my class, I believe that we will try closing each class with a poetry reading. At the beginning of the semester, I will hand out the poems and have each student take two or three. When their number comes up, they must read the poem to the class. This way students will gain fluency in reading and speaking poetry. Students will also have time to rehearse their poem before their time comes. This is one of the suggestions that Collins give on his web site. If you take some time to look it over, I’m sure you will find a strategy that works for you.
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