HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023435

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PROPOSAL: Poetry in America for Middle and High School Teachers
A. NATURE OF THE REQUEST
Poetry in America, a collaboration between Elisa New and Programs in Professional
Education (PPE) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), will produce courses
for national and international distribution to K­12 teachers. Drawing on Elisa New’s extensive
archive of raw instructional video, HGSE has the goal of providing online graduate­level
professional development courses for teachers who have never before had the opportunity to
advance their careers online. Teachers will be able to use to this course to strengthen their
classroom practice while accumulating credits toward advanced degrees in education.
Though American teachers are required to take professional development courses, very few
of these courses offer teachers content support. This initiative will provide such support at a
high level, offering Harvard credits and career advancement to participating teachers.
Additionally, this initiative will produce classroom­ready video content designed to engage and
educate middle and high school students, thus enabling teachers to bring the content of their
professional development directly into the classroom. It will give teachers the confidence and
tools to discuss poetry while also meeting English Language Arts standards and providing
teachers with professional development opportunities. The first such course, Poetry of the
City, is already in active development, with its first one­credit module, on the poetry of Walt
Whitman, currently entering the post­production stage. The second proposed course (either
“The Poetry of Character Development and the Feelings” ­­concerned with building literacy
skills and character awareness­­ or “The Poetry of Earth, Sea, and Sky” ­­concerned with
making connections between science and poetry) will enter post­production as soon as funds
become available.
In addition to the production team (including an executive director, video 

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