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In his "A Consolation for Our Grammar Schools" John Brinsley, preparing to teach colonists' sons in Virginia, writes out all his reasons for teaching students to read and write, and he includes the desire to teach students to parse, imitate, and "expresse" all Latin poets, especially "Ovid and Virgil" (Wright & Halloran, 2001, p.214).
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Though not exclusively a "high school" text, "The New England Primer" becomes so universal that anyone who has made it to a high school level of study has learned these little couplets as part of their poetic education (Smith, 1934/2002, p. 17).
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In 1760, "The New England Psalter" gains popularity as a book that not only gives students access to psalms and popular Bible stories, but also gives "instructions for reading verse" (Smith, 1934/2002, p. 17).
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In his "American Spelling Book" Noah Webster chooses to include "poems exalting desirable qualities of character" (Smith, 1934/2002, p.39). Other texts of the time follow suit.
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From 1823 to 1830 John Pierpont publishes a series of readers that include poetry and focus on American poets in particular as part of a push to develop American identity within students (Smith, 1934/2002, p.59).
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This anthology of poetry becomes the classroom standard for poetry choice for nearly 100 years. Selections concentrate heavily on white men from England or Scotland: Robert Burns, Thomas Gray, William Blake, and Alexander Pope are examples (Palgrave, 1861).
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In 1880, less than 5% of the American teenagers attend high school, which means that the students who are in high school tend to be wealthy, white, and privileged. The literature taught reflects this group (Kaestle, 1988, p.525).
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During this time period, Smith describe poetry (and literature instruction in general) as being "defining-dissecting" in high school. She admits that this is a teaching type that is not respected in her time, but that was progress from the previous emphasis on elocution only. She ends this period in 1927 (Smith, 1934/2002, p.121).
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In his 1895 "Science of Education and Aesthetic Revelation of the World" influential educational reformer Johann Hebart explains that great literature must be part of a great education, and he names the epic poem "The Odyssey" as the best example of this "great literature" (Smith, 1934/2002, p. 112).
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Charles A. McMurry's "Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics" advocates for the teaching of English poetry to American students (Smith, 1934/2002, p. 115-116).
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This popular series of readers stretched into upper grades and placed a heavy emphasis on poetry instruction (Smith, 1934/2002).
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This book was widely used in high school classrooms for nearly 50 years. The table of contents reflects the canon of the mid-20th Century. The following poets are listed: Robert Frost, James Oppenheim, Vachel Lindsey, Carl Sandburg, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Amy Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, Arturo Giovannitti, Ezra Pound, John Hall Wheelock, Charles Wood, Steven Vincent Binet, Witter Bynner, Sara Teasdale, and H.D. None are African-American, but three are women (Untermeyer, 1919).
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The number of teenagers attending high school begins to grow, meaning that the traditional canon of poetry is less reflective of the group of students (Kaestle, 1988, p.525).
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In these years, school districts begin to see literature, including poetry, as an important, separate course of study, and they publish teaching guides such as "Course of Study in Literature" (New York, 1927), "A Tentative Course in Literature and Spelling" (Port Arthur, Texas, 1928), and "Reading and Literature" (Trenton, New Jersey, 1930) to help teachers instruct in this area (Smith, 1934/2002, p.195).
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As the percentage of American teenagers attending high school grows, the traditional poetry canon becomes increasingly inappropriate (Kaestle, 1988, p.525).
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This column chooses a monthly lyric poem and annotates it with "close reading" instructions so that teachers will know the "right" answer to the poem (Dressman & Faust, 2014, p.45).
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According to Dressman and Faust's (2014) analysis of articles published in "English Journal," there is a strong shift away from formalist instruction and toward populist instruction beginning in 1967 (p. 49).
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This was the first article published in the "English Journal" to focus on working with poetry by African-American ("Negro") writers. Garrett's lesson plan includes recommendations for teaching poetry written by Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and LeRoi Jones (Garrett, 1970).
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This column chose a monthly lyric poem and annotated it with "close reading" instructions so that teachers would know the "right" answer to the poem (Dressman & Faust, 2014, p.45). By 1972, "English Journal" editors may have been uncomfortable with advancing the idea of a single "correct" reading to a poem.
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Rosenblatt's 1978 book "The Reader, The Text, The Poem" characterized the meaning made when reading a literary work as transactional and gained much attention from secondary English teachers. In this book, Rosenblatt characterized reading as either "efferent" (about gaining information) or "aesthetic" (about the experience of reading). She further talks about aesthetic reading as creating a "poem," or a unique reading specific to the interaction of the reader and the text (Rosenblatt).
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In 1996 the Academy of American Poets began to make online poetry instructional materials available to teachers with the goal of helping teachers to "bring poetry to the classroom." These resources were based around both traditional and new poetry, with a strong focus on American poets from traditionally marginalized groups (Poets.org: Materials for Teachers).
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As the 11th Poet Laureate, Collins worked to make a new poem available everyday for teachers to read to their high school English classes. These poems represented a diversity of poets, and did not require written response (Library of Congress: Poetry 180).
List of US Poet Laureates: https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/poetslaureate/ -
Sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, this national competition encourages high school classrooms to have students memorize and perform a poem out loud every year (Poetry). http://www.poetryoutloud.org/
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As 19th Poet Laureate and winner of the 2007 Pulitizer Prize for poetry, Natasha Trethewey talked about how she wanted to "bring poetry to a wider audience," and she began to hold office hours to meet with people interested in discussing poetry (Hesse, 2013). Her attitude reflects a clear shift toward the idea that poetry is for everyone.
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During his second term as 21st Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera worked with thirty high school teachers from Chicago Public Schools to develop innovative strategies for teaching poetry to high school freshmen (Holmes, 2017). List of US Poet Laureates: https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/poetslaureate/
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Tracy K. Smith, the current poet laureate, made clear through her description of her program goal that current thought values the idea that poetry is for everyone: "I wanted to go into the more rural communities that don’t have programming on a consistent basis, where people’s lives are equally affected by the kinds of questions and memories that poems can draw upon. If writers and scholars are only talking to each other, we’re missing out on a huge part of the story” (Armenti, 2018).
