A Poem a Day: Student Teachers and Poetry

Kelly, Alison, Collins, Fiona, NATE Classroom

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

'I can't wait to get into the classroom and capture that energy.' These are the words of a student teacher, at the end of her PGCE course, whilst reflecting on the impact of a pilot project entitled 'A Poem a Day' carried out by the English Education team at Roehampton University.

Inspired by the findings of the exciting project 'Teachers as Readers: building communities of readers' (by T. Cremin, F. Mottram, S. Collins, K. Powell and K. Safford--see Literacy, 43, 2009), which has highlighted the significance of teachers' own knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, children's literature, we wanted to raise the profile of poetry with our students. Work on children's literature has always been a rich seam running through our courses but, somehow, poetry has always lagged behind as the poor relation; this probably …

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Publication information: Article title: A Poem a Day: Student Teachers and Poetry. Contributors: Kelly, Alison - Author, Collins, Fiona - Author. Magazine title: NATE Classroom. Issue: 9 Publication date: Autumn 2009. Page number: 28+. © 2008 National Association for the Teaching of English. COPYRIGHT 2009 Gale Group.

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