Samantha 0:00
Today we’re unpacking the world of poetry and its powerful potential to hook even the most reluctant reader. Joining me is an incredible educator, Lesa Smith. Lisa has been a high school teacher for over a decade, teaching a variety of subjects, but her true passion lies in English language arts. With a master’s degree in English and film studies, Lesa is a master at blending literature, poetry, pop culture, and creativity to make her lessons unforgettable. In this episode, Lesa shares her love for poetry and her favorite strategies to connect students with poems in meaningful, approachable ways. Whether it’s tapping into their emotions, using pop culture references, or finding those perfect aha moments, Lesa has a wealth of tips to help you transform poetry from intimidating to inspiring. Tune in and let these tips show you how poetry can help you create joyful readers.

Samantha 0:53
Welcome to Creating joyful readers, a podcast dedicated to empowering secondary educators with the tools, strategies, and inspiration to cultivate a lifelong love of reading in their students. I’m your host, Samantha. Tune in each week as we explore the transformative power of independent reading. Delve into the latest research on literacy, dissect projects that will help your students showcase what they’ve learned in a unique way, and share curated recommendations of young adult novels that will captivate and engage your learners. Join in as we embark on a journey to create joyful lifelong readers one book at a time.

Samantha 1:31
Hi Lesa, welcome to Creating joyful readers. Thanks for being here.

Lesa 1:35
Thank you for having me. I’m delighted.

Samantha 1:37
I am so excited to have you here because we are talking about something that I know nothing about, and you are the queen. And today we’re talking about poetry.

Lesa 1:47
And I am so excited because I do get to share something that I love so much that a lot of people have that reaction to, either I don’t know much about it, or it scares me, or I don’t know what to do with it. So I am happy to share whatever expertise I may have.

Samantha 2:02
Well, that is awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about how you became a reader?

Lesa 2:06
My mom jokes that I basically probably came out of the womb with a flashlight and a book, because that is what I asked for for Christmas every year, was books, and it’s the one thing, and this is something I’ve carried over with my own daughter. My mom may have said no to a lot of other purchases, like trendy clothes or specific treats at the grocery store, but she never said no to buying a book. And so I was like, Sweet Valley High, right? Francine Pascal had something out every week. We would go to the bookstore and I would get a new one and it’d be done. My mom would be like, you have to ration it out, because if you’re done in four hours, right? Like there isn’t another one until, right, like two weeks later when it’s released again, or whatever the case may be. So I read a lot as a child. I was the youngest of three. There was a significant gap. So my parents were older, had done a parenting thing, so it was how I spent sort of a version of being an only child. And so I escaped through books.

Samantha 3:08
You would be surprised how many times sweet valley high has come up on the show. I feel like at this point, it’s like every other episode. Something about sweet valley high has come up. So that’s really funny. And then, when did you know that you were specifically interested in poetry?

Lesa 3:21
So that one took a while. That was definitely not a a young thing. Like I wrote, like I think everybody did as a kid or a teenager.

Samantha 3:29
Yeah, mine was always song lyrics, though I was not afraid of song lyrics, but poetry, like, still to this day, kind of intimidates me a little bit.

Lesa 3:35
And yet, right?

Samantha 3:36
Like they’re the same, right?

Lesa 3:38
Yeah, yeah, you can use them like use both interchangeably certainly in your classroom, I became more of a fan of poetry because I hated teaching it so much as a high school English teacher that I knew there had to be another way. And it became okay, let’s find poems not just that I like, but things that weren’t necessarily just the classics and super traditional poetry like I had done through my undergrad, like I had done in graduate school, and that teachers before me, and probably a lot still now, teach right, like the really sort of canonical stuff. So what’s the other things that are out there that are more likely to grab, and how can I make myself feel more comfortable with it? So it really started with Langston Hughes. I was teaching A Raisin in the Sun, right? We did our dream deferred. And then I was like, Okay, I like this one. What else has he got? Was like, this is like the tip of the iceberg, this idea, does it shrivel? And I was like, no, he’s got, like, our library had, like a tome this big of his collection of work, and seeing his edits as he was going through his work and all the rest of it. And I was like, this, this, I love. And so that’s when I was like, Okay.

Samantha 4:56
Did you find that when that sort of opened up for you and you shared it with students did you find that that was a powerful tool for engaging them? Were they also into the Langston Hughes as much as you were?

Lesa 5:08
Maybe not as much as I was, because I had already read A Raisin in the Sun, so I didn’t have to do like a dual reading aspect. But to be fair, right, think about it when you share about your favorite book in class, even if it’s something that’s on the curriculum, when you’re more psyched up, your students are, right? When you approach something with joy and with enthusiasm, rather than, hey, we’re going to do poetry, even just phrasing it that way, you’ve set the tone. As opposed to, okay, I’ve got this poem, and you’re not going to believe what he was writing in 1920 whatever, right? And how this fits with, right? Like, I know you guys like Kendrick Lamar or Drake.

Samantha 5:49
Yeah, that’s a great hook, right?

Lesa 5:51
Like, let’s look at him doing this of his time, right? And sometimes it’s a bit of an eye roll of, sure, miss. And then kids in the class so we’re like, oh, yeah, this is good.

Samantha 6:04
And it really does help to engage kids who might be disconnected from traditional text. Have you found that?

Lesa 6:12
Absolutely and the thing is, is right, we’ve still done our Emily Dickinson, our Robert Brown and all the rest of it, and have done much more contemporary but that bridge the gap. The thing is, is if you can find poems that sort of relate to say your students lives, either as the poet or the content or the language that becomes the gateway, right? Those same students, we then went on to do Shakespeare sonnets, and we did pop sonnets and that sort of thing, right to sort of play with all of that language, and it really, I don’t know, I think the enthusiasm you bring to it certainly sets the tone. And then it’s content like, what are you picking? If you are just doing the same, tried and true poetry that can be really inaccessible, that can be hard to understand, or that students think there is a right answer, then that becomes tough, regardless of the poetry or the poems you pick. So it’s attitude as well as the content, I think that have to go together.

Samantha 7:17
I love the idea that you would pair a classic poet with somebody more contemporary. I think that is ingenious. What are some creative ways to incorporate poetry into your everyday classroom instruction? Like what, what might you do with some with something like that?

Lesa 7:35
Well, here’s where I know we talked about rambling. Here’s where I could ramble, because there are so many ways to bring poetry in and to do it I like to start with low pressure exposure therapy, right? So to add some poems to your attendance slides. Maybe it’s four lines from a poem that is about being cold. Maybe it’s write a particular rhyme scheme from this maybe, right? Black History Month is coming. So was Valentine’s Day. Maybe it’s the idea, how do I fit with that theme? And just throw up part of a poem and ask the students thumbs up or thumbs down on this poem, or right? They’re going to read the poem because they’re waiting for their name to be heard, right? They don’t have to do anything with it. You don’t have to jump right into analysis. It can be okay, let’s write a couple of lines of poetry. You’ve seen this poem, you’ve just read it. Let’s do, hey, two lines that we would add in, right in the middle or right at the end, right, and share them as like a Friday afternoon, sort of free write option or creative writing option. Then poetry doesn’t become here is the poem, what does it mean? What is the rhyme scheme? What is the imagery? Right? We can get to that. But if that’s the only thing you’re doing with poetry, then that’s not joyful, right? That is not going to hook students in any way. The same thing as it would be with a novel or with non fiction, right? You’re choosing text as much as you can that are going to get your students buy in. But there’s a reason we often start with short stories before we jump into a novel.

Samantha 9:17
Yeah,

Lesa 9:17
Same thing. So short stories are the exposure to a novel. Poetry is the exposure to more poetry.

Samantha 9:24
I love the idea to start with those small bites, because it would really help kids see that you you know, when you start small and build it just builds their confidence along the way. So that’s a great tip. I love, also what you said about, you know, feeling pressured to find the right answer. Because I know that a lot of teachers, myself especially when I was in the classroom, struggle to feel confident analyzing poems without feeling pressured to sort of find the right answer. Do you have any tips for maybe getting past that?

Lesa 9:55
So this is something that comes, I think, with a little bit more confidence and may depend on for your listeners, who they are as a teacher. I sometimes go into a poem, and I’m really clear with my students. I’m not sure what this is about, right? Here is how I relate to it. Here’s where my experience comes in. And maybe that’s right, if you’re doing have to do traditional poetry start with one that is like, hope is the Thing With Feathers. What in the world is that? Right? Okay, well, here’s how I can relate to it, right? Here’s what I think about feathers. Here’s what I know about birds. And try and tap in, get them to tap just into their background knowledge. But then you start to figure out, because you’re now in right, Emily’s world of what her poetry is. Let’s do another one of her poems. Okay, what similarities do we now notice between these? Okay? Now let’s get into a third and her poetry is short enough that you can do a few and now go, okay. Am I noticing any patterns now across the three in structure, in imagery, in the rhythm of lines? And then now I’m more familiar with the thing that usually scares me. Okay, let’s think about what do I think this is about? Do these two poems go together and this one seems odd? If so, why?

Samantha 11:16
Yeah,

Lesa 11:17
You’re doing analysis without specifically saying, What does line one mean? What does line two mean? What is hope, right? What is that thing with feathers and sort of try to draw parallels, and it doesn’t have to be long. Like you might spend two days on a Dickinson poem, just doing analysis and going through and doing a TP cast. Why not spend those same two days going through three poems and doing it in a bit of a different way? And then in the end, students can still produce maybe they write a paragraph comparing. Maybe they just do some comparative work that has a Venn diagram, and you’re prepping them for a comparative essay. Maybe then you go into analysis, and they can pick one of the three Dickinson poems that they feel comfortable with. You’ve still alotted the same amount of time, but you’ve done things that are a little bit more accessible without them really knowing that they’re jumping into analysis.

Samantha 12:17
I love this idea as well, because it makes it less pressure on the teacher to always have to come up with some kind of answers, and we obviously don’t always know them, because we’re human beings, right? So it really does kind of emphasize that guide on the side role, rather than the sage on the stage thing. And I think that students really relate to that. You know, it brings a really human element to poetry, like, I’m learning alongside of you. We’re doing this together. I’ll show you how somebody with my background would analyze something like this, and you’re doing it alongside me. So that can be a really powerful practice for teachers who you know maybe don’t feel confident. I know I was always okay saying to students we’re learning together right now, like, I don’t know, and they’d be like, All right,

Lesa 13:02
Yeah, that’s the thing that can be hard, right? I think of new teachers who don’t want to say the wrong thing, because they don’t want to sort of lose their power. And yeah, and I think I’m still in the classroom, but you and I taught for a long time, and you start to realize there are other ways in which I am the teacher in the room, and it’s not just the power dynamic. But aside from that, early on in my career, I probably would have said, listen, there are absolutely wrong interpretations of things, but you can still be in the baseball field. You just happen to be in left field. You can’t be in the stands or waiting outside with your ticket when you’re analyzing this aspect of things.

Samantha 13:44
That’s a great metaphor.

Lesa 13:46
Like, if I do hope is the Thing With Feathers, I’m not suddenly going to be like, Oh, I think it’s about a pterodactyl, right? Who probably was a feathered dinosaur.

Samantha 13:56
Well, they think that dinosaurs have feathers, right? That’s like a thing,

Lesa 13:59
It’s true. But listen, I don’t think a dinosaur had much hope.

Samantha 14:04
Yeah, they certainly didn’t. They certainly didn’t.

Lesa 14:07
But that’s the sort of thing, right? Like, it’s okay to make a mistake, and that’s really what poetry kind of pushes you to do, is to be like, here’s what I’m going to try and then be like, Oh, maybe not.

Samantha 14:21
I love that version. I love that image of poetry. Because for me, it was definitely I remember having, you know, English teachers in high school who were like, you know, this definitely means something. There’s definitely symbolism here. There’s definitely this here. And I just, you know, I struggled. I didn’t always know what I was looking for.

Lesa 14:40
Listen, I was guilty of it. Yeah, and there, for some of them, there is a right answer. But is that what we’re really wanting to do with poetry is just say this means this? Or is there something else we can do with poetry?

Samantha 14:57
I love also that you know when you’re talking about finding other ways, like other types of poetry and other you know, like such as spoken word or performance poetry, and how this can really help make poetry such a joyful experience. So can you give some examples of maybe how different types of poetry could make poetry a joyful experience for our kids?

Lesa 15:21
Listen. Give me Rudy Francisco any day of the week.

Samantha 15:25
I’ve only heard one of his poems, but it was phenomenal. The one I heard was phenomenal.

Lesa 15:29
So he’s got one. I use it. I can’t remember her name, like Georgia Ella Parker or something, who did the where I’m from poem. So I’ve updated that in my classroom to use Rudy Francisco’s my honest poem, which is humorous and takes into account pop culture and can be performed or simply written. But I also use spoken word poem or poetry and performance as part of my lesson planning for students giving presentations. So we’ll critique delivery of a spoken word poem, and not even look at the content of the poem. So that, to me, is another way, like, what is their cadence, what is their tone? How are they standing? How do they use body language to make more meaning from what they’re saying? Right? All of those things can tie into it, aside from it being a lesson on poetry. Button poetry, so B, U, T, T, O, N, online has a great collection of spoken word performances that are some middle school, mostly high school performances that are great. Rudy Francisco features prominently. Sarah Kay is another one that people might know. The Steinman knots is the other thing, I think, of which is poetry like a bomb, or poetry is a bomb like B, O, M, B, it was a early 2000s documentary about a Poetry Jam for schools in, I want to say, Chicago, and it follows the students as they’re writing their poems and performing their poems, and then they do their performances at the end. And there’s excerpts from, I think it might be love like a bomb excerpts on YouTube, and one of the groups is called the Stein Manot and counting Graves is a poem. It is about teenagers or gang violence, but is so well delivered and is so emotional, both for them on stage, the audience and the viewer outside of that, it is worth checking out.

Samantha 17:35
And for those of you at home who may be driving in your car or folding your laundry or whatever it is you may be doing, you can definitely go to the show notes, and I will make sure that the links she’s talking about, the website she’s talking about will be included there. So don’t worry about running to write anything down. You can just go to Samantha In Secondary Dot Com slash podcast to find the show notes. Okay, so we talk a lot about independent reading and book clubs on creating joyful readers, because I feel strongly that choice reading is a powerful tool. How can teachers include poetry activities in something like that?

Lesa 18:08
Make it choice poetry as well? One of the things that I have found so useful is, if you go to poets.org so it’s the Academy of American poets, they’ve got a search function, and you can go in and find by theme, by poet, you can find by poetry type. So I often go in, here’s the novel studies we’re doing. And in grade nine, they do a coming of age novel study. Students have five different books. They’re in different book clubs, but the general lessons are the same because thematically, the books all tie together. So I go in and I find coming of age poems, print out a whole bunch of them and drop off a packet of, say, four or five poems to a group of four or five students. Read through these, see which one you think ties in to where your character is now, what line from the poem resonates with so and so who is the lead character? Right? Swap them around. You’re just reading, making connections, and then other aspects can be before they even start the novels. Right? If you want to teach something like coming of age. You want to do background knowledge about the space race, or background knowledge for teaching Shakespeare. Maybe they’re doing different plays in different groups, or everyone’s doing the same play, but they’re in different groups. Go in and see background knowledge of the time period, poems from the Elizabethan era, poems about love or tragedy. If you extend it to more thematic things, you can incorporate more diverse poets, so you’re not just doing the classics. You can bring in a Nikita Gill, a worsen Shire, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, in order to sort of bring that in. And then activities themselves, I like to try and make connections between novel and poetry. And some of that could be, hey, here are these five poems. Cut them up and turn them into a poem that you think your protagonist would have written. Why do you think your protagonist would have written this? Right? So it becomes what is the rationale for choosing these lines? Gives them a deeper dive on character. Maybe it’s okay put together a compilation of poems that you think fits the theme of what your novel is, and they can go in and use that same search function, right? It’s available to anyone who goes to poets.org right? There’s lots of ways to do it. And then they can also analyze a poem, or make it a step further and go. How would your character analyze this poem? What would they see? Which takes it away from the student having to say, I think this is about this. You’ve put a, not a barrier, but a –

Samantha 19:02
like an access

Lesa 20:16
Yeah, and a different access point that takes the pressure off of them, in a way. This is what Johnny thinks from this book, not me. So they might take more of a leap in order to analyze.

Samantha 21:19
Yeah, you can definitely take more risks when you’re you know, behind Oh, this is their thoughts, not mine. So this is what they would think. I love that idea. That’s that’s a great way to get, especially students who might be a little disconnected or afraid of poetry, to jump in there. And I love that you just talked about diversity and inclusion in some of your poetry. So wanted to ask what some of your favorite poems, or poets that resonate with students from different backgrounds might be?

Lesa 21:43
This is one of the questions you let me know in advance, and I thank you for that, because it made me go, okay, because I could name poets off the top of my head, but it really sent me into reflection of who, and it also made me go, Oh my gosh. The bad part is, is the list is too long now.

Samantha 22:03
You’ve gathered so many.

Lesa 22:04
Yeah like, I’ve got – I’ve got 15 off the top of my head that I really like that I think both contemporary and a more classic can work. Listen, I’ve talked about Langston Hughes. Move beyond his Harlem poems and look at some of his other stuff, even beyond what is it? Lesson in English, be more things like that. Hughes is prolific, and I think we rely on those sort of typical ones, whereas there’s more that I think we could include. And students love him, because he does get political in a way, or pushes back and is like, listen, like, Why do you think that is right? Or more of a Gwendolyn Brooks, right? Like, We Real Cool. She’s also got a bunch of other poems, right about sort of teenage life or young adult life that she explores. Others that I like, I love a Mary Oliver. Give me wild geese any day of the week.

Samantha 23:09
I love her.

Lesa 23:10
And I think students like the idea that she’s a little bit wacky in terms of what she’s presenting, right? Like it’s not a straightforward poem, like a wild geese is not actually about geese, right? Ada Limon, who is the current poet laureate, the US. Joy Harjo, who’s a past one. Elizabeth Acevedo, who you might know from novels in verse, she’s actually just edited the latest Poetry Magazine collection to be geared towards teenagers and young adult readers, and you can access it online.

Samantha 23:51
Oh that’s a great tip. We’ll have to put that in the show notes, because I’m sure that’s fantastic.

Lesa 23:55
It is. I’ve been I’ve been going slow through it, because I know I can devour it quickly and not just sit with it. And that’s the other thing about poetry, right? You do want to give it a little space to breathe. But who else? EE Cummings? My students love him because he breaks things apart in weird ways, like he loves a random line break. He shies away from any use of capital letters, which sometimes gives some of my students fuel for fire. Well, if he could do it, and I was like, Yeah, but he knew when he was supposed to and not supposed to, and then makes a choice.

Samantha 24:31
Right, right. You got to know the rules to break them.

Lesa 24:33
Yeah, right. Like Margaret Atwood has some great poems.

Samantha 24:37
Oh, I didn’t even know she wrote poetry.

Lesa 24:39
Oh, yeah, this is a photograph of me is fantastic. She’s got another one, is it? I think it’s about a spider or a fly baby, and it’s maybe four lines. And it is just like students are like – in terms of the reaction to it, yeah, yeah. So lots.

Samantha 25:02
Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s a great list.

Lesa 25:04
Different people of color, different sexualities, right? Dennis Smith, dinosaurs in the hood, lots of like contemporary film references in it. They they are fantastic.

Samantha 25:19
That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing.

Lesa 25:21
Listen, I could make this whole podcast being like, Okay, and here’s another poem, and here’s another poet.

Samantha 25:27
Well, it’s just so funny that, you know, we as teachers and students, you know, we hear poetry, we kind of go – right. But as you just said with the EE Cummings, you can take risks with poetry. Poetry takes risks. And we are, you know, we’re we tiptoe around it, but meanwhile, they are just exploring and sort of being creative, and, you know, doing all these things that we should be doing when we look at poetry. But maybe we need reminders that it’s okay to take risks and it’s okay to not know the answers, and those are kind of allowances that we don’t give ourselves as the teacher, because we think we need to know everything right? So I just love all of these ideas. And you know, new poems, new poets to look up. That’s awesome. To piggyback off of the poetry list you just created, do you have any specific anthologies that you would recommend to teachers who might want to include poetry in their lessons. Or do you use kind of a like piecemeal approach?

Lesa 26:26
So I do both. I have a classroom library, like many teachers, and I’ve made a concerted effort since I’ve been back in the classroom post pandemic to make sure that I have poetry included there. So compilations and collections, so something like so my students who love Beyonce really appreciate Warson Shire, and she’s got a great collection called bless the daughter, raised by a voice in her head, which is fantastic. Walter Dean Myers put together a collection called here in Harlem, which is right, Walter Dean Myers itself known for being right more middle grade poem. And not all of the poems included in there are for that audience, but really works. Amanda Gorman’s call us what we carry. Another collection of shorter poems is called, say her name by Zetta Elliot. The one that I can’t keep on the shelf in my classroom, or the ones are any by Rupee Car, so home body or milk and honey. My students love those. And again, short and then the other one that I love is called beast girl and other origin myths by Elizabeth Acevedo, and it’s sort of little retellings of related to, like different fairy tales and different myths and things like that.

Samantha 27:55
I’ve never heard of that, and I follow her closely. I adore her. She’s one of my favorites. You probably know that. So I actually talk about her in another episode, pretty profusely throughout the episode. So at the end of it, I was like, Oh, I think I need to cut some of these. I think I just named her. way too much

Lesa 28:11
no, no,

Samantha 28:13
She deserved it. She’s fantastic. But I’ve never heard of that, so I need to get my hands on those.

Lesa 28:18
Yeah. So beast girl and other origin myths.

Samantha 28:21
Great, awesome. And again, these will be in the show notes. I will list them out for you. So as we kind of like wrap up this conversation, what advice would you give to educators to address the misconception that poetry is outdated or boring or too difficult?

Lesa 28:39
Well, I would say, try right? Try to incorporate poetry, and you will quickly and easily see that it is not outdated. I think there was an article a couple of years ago in the New York Times saying poetry is dead, and then they went on and named all of these contemporary poets who were selling millions of or getting millions of views online. And I was like, How can poetry be dead if there’s that much of an audience still?

Samantha 29:04
Well, in different formats too, because you see them on social media putting their and I love those. I love when they there’s one that’s called an account that’s and I’m sure you know of it, but it’s called, poetry is not a luxury. I love that account. And as somebody who doesn’t really immerse themselves in a lot of poetry kind of knows that I should, because it would kind of help broaden my, you know, my reading a little bit. But every time something pops up from that, I know it’s going to be something interesting and something, you know, really cool. And I also love when you have artists who are doing not just like the What is her name, it’s Morgan, something?

Lesa 29:40
Yeah, per nickels or something, I think?

Samantha 29:43
okay, yeah, she does, like, really cool art with the pieces. And I feel like that could be a great lesson for students to be able to create some of that art and piece some of those words together. And it could be such a cool and powerful lesson to show that, you know, poetry is here. We’re still using it. We’re still seeing it?

Lesa 30:00
Yeah and there’s lots of Instagram poets, some better than others.

Samantha 30:06
I haven’t seen any that aren’t very good, so I haven’t been on that side of Instagram yet.

Lesa 30:11
So here’s the thing, some people might roll their eyes this poetry, to me is like astrology, right? Like you can read your horoscope and find a way that that horoscope fits with your day or what you want to have happen. Poetry is the same.

Samantha 30:26
Yeah, you take what you want from it

Lesa 30:28
exactly

Samantha 30:29
or what you need from it, right?

Lesa 30:30
And social media poets, or Insta poets, as they call themselves, incorporate those little drawings and incorporate right, usually using a typewriter text, right? Like you can recognize the tropes of it, but speak to sort of everyday experience that I think is another gateway for students, and that it doesn’t have to be 40 lines to make something a poem. And so to me looking at there’s another Smith, I think her name is Melissa Smith, who does teach living poets. We’re not related sisters through poetry, maybe, but not actually related

Samantha 31:10
poetry sisters.

Lesa 31:12
And so a list all of these living poets links to their work includes like activities you can do in classroom with them, but the fact that you are looking at a poet who is still alive and working right is creating their art in the moment. And I think Amanda Gorman has done a really great job with being out there with her work right, having performed the inauguration four years ago, and also having released a new poem this past weekend in light of the inauguration for this year.

Samantha 31:44
Oh, I didn’t see that. I’ll have to go look that up.

Lesa 31:46
Yeah, right. She’s on Instagram, so if you search her and go from there, but all of that sort of thing, right? That it is still happening now, and speaking to the experience in the moment. That’s what I would say. If somebody thinks that poetry is out of date, it’s probably because they’re thinking, Okay, I have to read a Robert Browning poem or a Rudyard Kipling, right? And think that that is poetry that is not for now, and it it might not be right, or it might be a great comparison point. So poetry doesn’t have to be old dead poets. Choosing poets who are still alive, breathing, and writing their work is the one way to make sure that it is not outdated in your classroom. And you can do all the same activities with a poem written in 2022 as you can with a poem written in 1845. And a student will probably get more out of the one from 2022 because they can relate to it than they can for 1845 and it is probably written just as well. And in 2122 people will be like, Oh, they don’t write them like they used to in 2022

Samantha 32:59
Well, of course, they don’t. We don’t speak like we used to, right?

Lesa 33:01
Yeah, right. It’s just time makes it, and poetry is the way that you can be tapped into the cultural zeitgeist. And shout out to Beyonce because someone like Warson Shire was not on a lot of people’s radars until Beyonce released lemonade and included, like most of the videos, have a Warson Shire poem that leads in and out of the work.

Samantha 33:27
I didn’t know that. That’s really interesting.

Lesa 33:29
Right, so it’s there, and artists that we know respect and who are doing great things in their art are sharing others work, not out of date by any means.

Samantha 33:42
On that note, that was a fabulous answer and a fabulous conversation. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise with us. Can you tell our listeners where they can find you?

Lesa 33:51
You can find me hiding out in my house because it is too cold to go outside.

Samantha 33:55
Same

Lesa 33:57
So I’m teaching part time this year, so I’m every other day in the classroom. So today I had to drop my daughter off to school, and then I’m hiding out inside, but generally I am on social media. You can find me as Smith teaches 9 to 12. So the numbers 9 to 12, which is a play both on that I teach mostly high school, but also the school I teach at, our academic classes run from 9am to 12pm

Samantha 34:24
Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that about you. I also have to add, we have a lead magnet for them, right?

Lesa 34:30
Yes. So it’s a poetry ebook, five poems for every month of the year. It includes eight activities that are adaptable to any of those poems. Includes classic and contemporary spoken word as well for every month. And then once they receive that book, if they stay on my email list, I send them out a free lesson plan at the start of every month, using one of those poems, everything you need to make it happen.

Samantha 34:55
I will definitely drop that link in the show notes as well, and she’s not going to say that. But I’m going to say this, Lesa and I have worked together for years and years, and we are colleagues across the teacher author space, and we collaborate quite often, so I’ve seen your work very often. And there aren’t many of us who do poetry lessons, because they’re really difficult to do, but you do them so well. So if you’re out there and you’re looking for poetry lessons, Lesa does have a teachers pay teacher shop as well. That is fabulous, and you can find some wonderful poetry lessons there, in addition to the freebie that I will drop in, the show notes.

Lesa 35:32
And things that aren’t just for the most experienced teacher or the beginner teacher, right? Like if you’re comfortable with poetry, there’s things within a lesson that you can dive in and do more with. If you’re just starting out, here’s the ease. Here are all the teacher notes that I can offer you to help you feel confident as you go into things.

Samantha 35:50
I love that. That’s awesome. Alright, we have a lightning round. Here we go. Okay, so number one, what is the book that made you a joyful reader?

Lesa 35:57
That made me a joyful reader? I’m gonna go nerdy and go Virginia Wolfe’s to the lighthouse, slash Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Samantha 36:07
Oh, that’s a good one,

Lesa 36:08
But I went to French school, so it was Shale Ella Chocolate.

Samantha 36:12
Oh,

Lesa 36:13
my elementary school librarian had to tell me to stop checking it out so that other people.

Samantha 36:19
That’s so cute. I love that

Lesa 36:21
Virginia Woolf to the lighthouse is one that made me realize that you could really do more with literature than tell a straightforward story, which really made me go, oh, okay,

Samantha 36:32
Oh, that’s amazing. What is the last five star book you’ve read?

Lesa 36:36
I just read one. I’m on a non fiction kick. Last year, I was sort of taking turns back and forth, and a non fiction book that I read at the start of this year is called the forgers by Ben McIntyre, and it’s a little known aspect of history from second world war about how 1000s of Jews were saved because of forged passports and whatever else. And the the Polish resistance government, who sort of made that happen. Fascinating and like little vignettes of people.

Samantha 37:10
That sounds so interesting, I’m definitely going to look that up. And our last one is, are you a physical book, e reader or audio book listener?

Lesa 37:18
Audiobook.

Samantha 37:19
I love it

Lesa 37:20
like 9.9 out of 10 times audiobook.

Samantha 37:24
We don’t get many who say audiobook. It’s usually, I will say most of the time that I’ve had guests on its physical book. So I love a an audio book.

Lesa 37:33
I find that I can’t so since pandemic, I cannot sit with a book,

Samantha 37:39
Huh.

Lesa 37:40
Like I have an audio book and I might be doing something else with my hands. I’m doing I’m the solo parent of a nearly eight year old, so gotta make the most of time. And so it might be that I’m doing dishes or just need a quiet moment, and so I can put in an audio book for a chapter or two is amazing.

Samantha 37:57
Yes, I love when people tell me they don’t have to Oh, I don’t have time to read. How do you have so much time to read? I’m like, Are you kidding me? I have an ear earbud in my ear most of the time I’m doing dishes like you have time to do dishes, right? You have time to read.

Lesa 38:09
But we much view reading as like a sit and do and so I I’m not there. I used to be, and I hope to get back.

Samantha 38:17
Well and it doesn’t have to be if this is the, you know, the phase of your life that you are into the audiobooks, I think that’s fantastic that we have options. There are options, you know?

Lesa 38:26
Exactly.

Samantha 38:27
Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Lesa 38:30
Thank you,

Samantha 38:30
And I will definitely make sure all those things get in the show notes.

Lesa 38:34
Lovely. Thank you all. Take care.

Samantha 38:36
Thank you so much to Lisa for sharing her incredible expertise in this episode. I hope her insights and strategies have sparked some inspiration for bringing poetry to life in your classroom and helping your joyful readers discover the magic of words. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes filled with practical tips and ideas. Until next time, happy reading.

Samantha 38:59
Thanks for tuning in to creating joyful readers. I hope you found inspiration and practical strategies to ignite a passion for reading in your students. Remember every book we introduce and every reading experience we foster can transform lives and help students become lifelong readers. Follow me on social media at Samantha in secondary for more tips book recommendations and to connect with a community of educators dedicated to making reading a joyful journey. Until next time, happy reading.