Poetry Archives

As a Palestinian, I Often Feel Alone

Through poetry and narrative, a Palestinian high school student in Portland, Oregon, shares her experiences in the aftermath of Oct. 7.

Sin Fronteras

Alexander and their middle school students use the powerful poem “To live in the borderlands means you,” by Gloria Anzaldúa, to explore the borderlands of their own lives.

The Power of Teaching Poetry

Christensen and Watson discuss powerful strategies for teaching writing — and deeply grounding curriculum in students’ lives through poetry.

Poetry: Reinventing the Past, Rehearsing the Future

Before I started writing this article, I asked students in my Contemporary Literature and Society class why teachers should teach poetry. The quotes used throughout the article are a result […]

Christensen argues that the tight reliance on the format of the literary analysis hinders students’ imaginations, and that they should instead write “unbound” essays of risk-taking and experimentation.

Lessons in 2020

2020 did not make me,But neither did you break me,Separating families like cheap blinds,With the vinyl bubbling up in the middle,I still found a way to see,Determining how much light […]

Say Their Names

“I can’t breathe . . . please . . . Mama!”The knee choking the neck to deathPolice hands in pockets andIndifferent expressionsAnother day on the J-O-BAnd moreMore details I can […]

Forced Survival Stitch

I remember my grandmother teaching meHow to sew. It never made sense. I never had the hands. But I always had the handsFor teaching. I was taught how To thread the perfect lessonTogether. Crafting […]

Wash Your Hands

I hadn’t ever planned to teach online, but the Saturday before our college campus closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, I decided to cancel our face-to-face class because one of the […]

Talking Back to the World

Student poetry about what raised me is woven into graphic art.

Keepers of the Second Throat

When Chicago stole my mother’s tongue, it also stole all her yesterdays. A poet’s lyric plea for teachers to nurture their students voices and stories.

Five Years After the Levees Broke – Bearing Witness Through Poetry

A poet in the schools leads students to compare three natural disasters-Hurricane Katrina, the San Diego wildfires, and the recent earthquake in Haiti-and turn their grief and anger into poetry.

Move Over, Sisyphus

Get students passionate about writing and the grammar will follow

Reading and Writing the World

Poetry is a political action undertaken for the sake of information, the faith, the exorcism, and the lyrical invention, that telling the truth makes possible. Poetry means taking control of […]

“Because Our Islands Are Our Life”

A high school ethnic studies teacher describes how students in the Pacific Island Club used poetry to refocus the narrative surrounding climate justice onto frontline communities.

Honor Their Names

Students’ names are the first thing teachers know about the young people who enter our classrooms; they can signal country of origin, gender, language. Students’ names provide the first moment when a teacher can demonstrate their warmth and humanity, their commitment to seeing and welcoming students’ languages and cultures into the classroom.

Teaching Them into Existence

A high school English teacher (also the QSA staff advisor) wrestles with the suicide of a transgender student and calls on heterosexual and cisgender teachers to integrate LGBTQ authors, themes, and history into their classrooms.

The Women of Juárez

at the West tip of Texas
a line divides us from them
and on the other side
they all look like me
yet on my side we sit passively nearby
while the other side allows a slow genocide

“Young Women Like Me”

Since 1993, the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez has been shaken by disappearances of teenage girls and young women. Officials say they have few leads. The murders in Juárez have received some international attention, primarily due to government inaction. Yet little has been done by the government to prevent violence against women and girls, as officials neglect to bring their perpetrators to justice.

Residents do not let these deaths go unnoticed as hundreds of pink crosses — a symbol of these missing women — dot the border. An increase in these deaths coincided with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). A treaty between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, NAFTA sought to increase investment opportunities by eliminating tariffs and, like many other economic agreements, benefited the economic elites of the three countries while resulting in widespread unemployment, increased class stratification, and mass emigration. Most of the “disappeared” women work in assembly plants or maquiladoras, owned by the United States and transnational corporations that dashed to northern Mexico post-NAFTA to reap the benefits of lower wages and lax environmental regulation.