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The speaker discusses the challenges of teaching poetry and the lack of concrete requirements for including it in the curriculum. They express their own insecurities about teaching poetry and feeling pressured to prioritize non-fiction texts. They provide suggestions for finding and incorporating poetry into lessons, such as using websites like Poets.org and YouTube, following hashtags like #teachlivingpoets, and connecting poetry to other texts or themes. They also mention a strategy called Poetry March Madness, which involves using a bracket system to have students engage with and analyze different poems over a period of time. But this is something very near and dear to my heart is poetry and even like the research around instructing poetry was something that I carried with me into my master's degree. And so I've got a lot to share. And the first piece of very official research I'd like to begin with is I did a very unofficial survey on Instagram not too long ago, and I asked teachers, why do you struggle with teaching poetry? I want to be clear. I assume people are struggling, which is why I phrased it that way. And you guys will be surprised. I asked a lot about, I said, I kind of gave multiple choice answers and I said, was it time, resources, and then the option that actually won by a landslide was teaching poetry intimidates me and I'm super insecure about my ability to do it. Are you surprised? No, I'm not surprised because my answer was in between I lose time and the one you were just saying, the imposter syndrome one. Like, I feel like if I don't teach poetry to like do each poet and each poem justice that I'm somehow cheating my students and therefore I'm a fraud and I should not have my job anymore. I mean, it's a little extreme, but it's kind of like where I go. Slippery slope. It is. It's a rough one, man. Well, and that kind of lands us in the crisis we have right now, which is that a lot of teachers are just not doing it. We're just going to kind of like, no one's really requiring it. Common Core and even I know in Illinois, we have some state standards apparently, but I've looked through those. I've looked through Common Core. There is nothing concrete anywhere other than a little bit in NCTE that's really pushing English teachers to actually make sure that it's part of the curriculum. It's very much a suggestion at this point, and that's problematic for not only us but our students because poetry, guys, I want this episode to really be a how to build your poetry teacher confidence episode because it's not as scary as we might envision the experience. And I think we can maybe break that down for you guys and make it a little bit more accessible. No, absolutely. And I mean, selfishly, this is kind of like a one-on-one workshop for me that all of our listeners are going to tune into. I don't find myself like, I wouldn't say that I'm bad at teaching poetry, like I think because like Shakespeare is one of my real strong suits, so like I can teach poetry and the meaning behind words. I just don't think about, like I forget sometimes about poetry, which I mean, okay, you know, this might be where I stay. I'm like, I get it. But also, I feel so pressed to get to like non-fiction texts because it's something that at least because I'm in California, the UCs and the CSUs are like, teach non-fiction, teach non-fiction. You know, students need to be able to go to college and be able to read an article and get it. And I'm like, okay, cool, but then like I forget also to add poetry into my units and then it's an afterthought. I also don't have a very wide, not wide experience, but I don't have a very expansive poetry catalog in my brain. And most of my poems go back to poems that are overdone, that they've already learned in middle school and that are sonnets by William Shakespeare. So that's where this moment from somebody like you, Amanda, you've got such a passion for poetry and you've got such a relatable way to make it real and tangible, not just for students, but for teachers. Because I mean, we're the reason that like, I am the reason that my students have not been learning about poetry this year. Sorry, guys. I know you're all listening. All the teenagers in San Diego are listening. Sorry, I didn't teach you better poetry. I would say if you guys are using a novel unit of some sort and you're using an essential question, finding poems that are within the theme of that unit is really easy and tactile, easy for you to find. I love finding my poets. Poets.org has a really nicely organized search engine. You can search by genre, theme. You can search by poet, by year. So Poets.org is beautiful. You can search for poems on YouTube. Guys, there's so much on the YouTube. I do love the YouTube for a lot of reasons. There's so much poetry. There's so much brilliant spoken word out there. And there's a lot of newer voices reading older poetry there, too. And that's a really cool thing, because you can always pull up the same poem by two different videos and see how it's treated two different ways. I mean, YouTube's really an amazing source. I also love the hashtag on Twitter, even on Instagram, of teach living poets. There's a lot of really cool recommendations that come out of that hashtag, so keep your social media eyes alive to find great new poems that are going to be easy for you. I think another good place to look, and this is where the Internet is such a savior for people like me who are like, I don't have very much experience with poetry, and then I get all intimidated and I shy away from it, like I was saying before. But more and more hashtags like teach living poets, or even just finding those key teachers or artists or what have you that you want to follow on social media, they will show you what they're reading, and what they're reading is probably going to be something you're interested in. And if you do, within the umbrella of a bigger idea, it's so much more interesting to teach that way, too. I think. I think it's more engaging for me, because if I'm not engaged as the teacher, yeah, the kids aren't going to be either. Well, no, and I know you love to do a lot of paired novels, it's like the same exact concept. When we pair things together and we ask kids to connect the dots, that's a whole other critical thinking step that we definitely need to make sure that we're doing as English teachers, as teachers, period, is creating moments for critical thinking that the kids weren't expecting. Absolutely. That's so huge. On those moments of like connection that are a little bit more convoluted, or even just like easy connections for them to make, that then our students feel like they've made a win, like, oh, wow, something as hard and intimidating as poetry, and I've connected it to my novel, or I've connected it to like another text or life, I'm winning this English game. Yeah. So here's a really quick example. So I kind of made a list here of ways that you can embed it. So you don't have to read it, analyze it, discuss it, right? You can have a poem, and I've done a lesson before where I have just started the class by reading it, right? No pretense, no nothing, and I've said, which character wrote this poem? Oh, that's so cool, right? So you can use it as this like creative tool, and then all of a sudden, the lesson's actually an argument lesson, and the kids have to write an argument defending which character's voice this sounds more like and why. And I've had to employ all of these skills that they didn't even, you're so sneaky, all these skills that you didn't even know they were employing, such as they have to understand the words and the message and the voice within the poem, and then connect it, and then use their own understanding and textual evidence to back it up, oh my gosh. Yeah, well, then it's not this dreaded, oh, poetry, blah, you know? I've definitely been there for the blah moments, and surprising them with poetry is easier to do than with an entire novel because poetry is manageable. It's class period size, and that's what I love about it, and I teach it, so on the writing side for argument, I've also had kids in my AP language class, which poetry's not really part of that curriculum either, but I would argue that most poems make an argument. They're telling you how the world is according to that speaker, and you can make claims and agree, disagree with a lot of the things that the poem is saying, and I think that that's a really powerful way to approach a quick lesson is, hey, this poet chose to use analogy and rhetorical questions to make this argument about blah, blah, blah. How did that work? How do you like it? Do you agree? I don't feel like, again, that you have to reserve all this time to do a poetry unit, and then, I mean, you can, and that's awesome. I love doing poetry units, but having kids read, analyze, write, imitate, just go collect language, I mean, that's all part of the blending of the unit that's really fun and not overwhelming. Yeah, and it just keeps you on your toes, too. You get to just, like, do different stuff. Yeah, Amanda, what on earth is Poetry March Madness? Well, Poetry March Madness is a fun, seasonal kind of game to play in your classroom. What's important is that you listen to the principles, the idea, and make it work where and when and however you want. So, the idea behind Poetry March Madness is really the bracket system to it. So, think through where and how you want students interacting with poems. The most common I've seen, and the most common that I've used, has been as bellwork. So, if we're going to do bellwork, I want you to picture a bracket in your mind, or you can go to BrainyTeaching.com and look at the bracket that I have, and this is how we're going to map out how many days of bellwork we're going to get for the number of poems that we have. So, each day, we have two poems competing. And so, day one might be poem A versus B. Then day two will be C versus D. Then E versus F. G versus H. Okay, then we've kind of gone down a series, that's eight poems. Then we'll go through, on the other side of the bracket, another set of pairings. Four more days, or four more pairings. So, for me, round one could take a week, right? So, pair one, pair two, pair three, pair four. And on my other side is pair one, pair two, pair three, pair four. So, we've got two weeks, essentially, like a Monday through Thursday, full of bellwork, the first two weeks. The next round is the reduction, right? So, the losers are out, the winners have moved on. Round two, then, is two more sets of poems. So, that is one other week. So, I guess there's four more pairs for round two. And then the last week would be the finals. So, in a Sweet 16 setup, again, this is going to make a lot more sense if you're looking on the bracket, a Sweet 16 setup, for me, would be approximately one month's worth of bellwork. Four weeks' worth of bellwork, if you see your students every day in a 50-minute class period setup. If you want to do a different version, there's another way to do this. You could also choose all your poems ahead of time, assign them to your students, maybe put them all in Google Classroom, and say, okay, this week, I want you to read and listen to poems one through eight. Then, on Friday, maybe your class comes together, and after everyone's read and listened to and experienced the poems, we do all of our voting on one day. That's also possible. And then students have kind of had a little bit of time to sit with the pieces, and some of the poems, if they're watching them on YouTube, they've had time to maybe watch a couple of times, and that's a really fun way to do this as well. All that is to say is figure out how many days you need so that you know how many poems you need in order to do that. That will be really powerful for you moving forward.