How to Teach a Poem (and Learn from One, Too)

FAIN: EZ-50204-07

DePaul University (Chicago, IL 60604-2201)
Eric Selinger (Project Director: September 2006 to May 2009)

An eleven-month Faculty Humanities Workshop aimed at providing twenty Chicago-area middle school teachers with the knowledge and expertise to teach poetry more effectively in their classrooms.

"How to Teach a Poem (and Learn from One, Too)" is an eleven-month Faculty Humanities Workshop for Chicago middle school teachers hosted by DePaul University and the Poetry Foundation. Working with English professors, master teachers, and poets, teachers will deepen and broaden their knowledge of poetry, learn current best practices in poetry instruction, and become more confident, well-informed readers in their own right, able to make good use of poetry across their existing curricula. ?How to Teach a Poem? builds upon the success of "Poetry Out Loud," the National Recitation Contest for high school students, sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, and "Say Something Wonderful: Teaching the Pleasures of Poetry," an NEH summer seminar for schoolteachers at DePaul (2003, 2005, 2007). It brings the resources and innovations of these programs to a new audience of students and teachers in grade 6-8, and builds a much-needed, on-going community of instruction and support.