Volume 14, Number 7 · April 9, 1970
Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry
By Kenneth Koch
Last winter and the spring before that I taught poetry writing to children at P.S. 61, on East 12th Street between Avenue B and Avenue C in Manhattan.[1] I was sponsored first by the Academy of American Poets, then by the Teachers' and Writers' Collaborative. One specific purpose of the Collaborative is to encourage the teaching of writing in the schools by writers. I was a special teacher who, like an art teacher, took classes at certain times. I could vary these arrangements thanks to the sympathetic cooperation of Jacob Silverman, the principal, who helped me to see any classes I liked, even on short notice. Unlike other special teachers, I asked the regular teacher to stay in the room while I was there; I needed her help and I wanted to teach her as well as the children. I usually went to the school two or three afternoons a week and taught three forty-minute classes. Toward the end I taught more often, because I had become so interested and because I was going to write about it and wanted as much experience as possible. My interest in the whole subject originally was largely due to Emily Dennis and to her inspiring ways of teaching art to children at the Metropolitan Museum.
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