Mark McGinnis
Students and teachers everywhere, from grade school to college, are dreading the first day of school. Need a pick-me-up poem for those first-day butterflies? Worried about the not getting picked for intramurals? Got a secret crush and need to slip him or her a sure fire note? Need a novel way to interest beach-burned brains of middle-school students in science? You’ll find solace, comfort, answers, and poems to woo anybody in these back-to-school lists of poems.
Ten Poems to Read When You Get Stuffed in Your Locker by Caitlin Kimball
1. “I Am!” by John Clare
John Clare was a malnourished, dirt-poor alcoholic, confined for decades to an insane asylum when they were still called insane asylums. . . .
Ten Poems to Get You Through Science Class This Year by Karen Glenn
1. “Winter Trees” by William Carlos Williams
Deciduous trees, “attiring” and “disattiring,” are the main characters in this short poem. Just why do these “wise trees” shed their leaves in the autumn? . . .
Ten Poems to Send the Person You're Crushing On by Becca Klaver
1. “Sonnets from the Portuguese 7: The Face” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If Barrett Browning sounds as though she’s claiming in this poem that love saved her life, it’s because it did. . . .
Ten Poems Students Love to Read Out Loud by Eileen Murphy
1. “They Flee from Me” by Sir Thomas Wyatt
What can attitude tell us? To help students find out, begin by asking who owns the action of each stanza in this poem. This will help a performer trace the speaker’s transformation from line to line and stanza to stanza. . . .
Originally Published: August 31, 2006
Back to School Poems