Earlier this week I shared a summary and handout from my ACCS presentation on June 20 entitled, “Theological Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts.” On June 21, I also had the opportunity at the ACCS Repairing the Ruins conference to present on “Poetry as Pedagogy.”

My goal in that presentation was to convince attendees that poetry is not simply content to be taught, but in fact one of our most powerful pedagogical tools. Moreover, I intended to exemplify how to implement poetry as a pedagogy, both for teaching and assessment.

In an excellent essay by Mortimer Adler, “The Three Columns Revisited,” he highlights three things to be taught–facts, skills, and ideas–and the three best pedagogical means for teaching those–didactic, coaching, and Socratic seminar respectively. I proposed that poetry was a pedagogical tool to help students 1) learn, reinforce, and memorize facts; 2) develop particular learning skills (especially writing); and 3) explore and communicate ideas. Not only can we use poetry to teach these things, but I suggested that poetry is a tool we can employ for assessment. Many recognize that a student who can summarize a novel well understood it better than a student who cannot summarize the text well. Similarly, poetry puts constraints on the student that forces the students to communicate more directly and deeply what was learned.

Some of this sounds a bit abstract, so I gave numerous examples in my presentation, which you can find on the handout. In short, I want to see poetry utilized more in all classrooms, not simply literature classes where we study poetry as content. Poetry is a powerful pedagogical tool, and I want to unlock it more for myself, my school (Sager Classical Academy), and the broader classical Christian movement. I hope this is a helpful start.

Feature Image Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

*In addition to running and writing for The Classical Thistle, Kyle Rapinchuk is Head of School at Sager Classical Academy.