Teaching Poetry in the Classroom:

A Conversation with Joanne Veal Gabbin

NCTE and the NCTE Secondary Section welcome members to join us for a 2024 Poetry Month event focusing on how to engage students in poetry through reading and writing. Attendees will hear from Joanne Veal Gabbin on teaching poetry in ways that go beyond formal analysis and move towards incorporating poetry authentically into instruction.

April 2, 5:00 P.M. ET

Registration is open to NCTE members.

Not a member? Join today and don’t miss out on enriching NCTE events like this one.  

FEATURED GUESTS

Joanne Veal Gabbin is Professor Emerita of English at James Madison University and founder of the Furious Flower Poetry Center, the first academic center devoted to Black poetry. She is the author of Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition, editor of Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present and The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry, and executive producer of the Furious Flower video and DVD series. She also co-edited Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry with Lauren K. Alleyne. She is the founder and organizer of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective and author of the children’s book, I Bet She Called Me Sugar Plum. A dedicated teacher and scholar, Dr. Gabbin has received numerous awards for excellence in teaching and scholarship. Among them are the College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award for her book Sterling A. Brown (1986) and the Outstanding Faculty Award, Virginia State Council of Higher Education. Dr. Gabbin was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. In 2021 James Madison University honored her and her husband with the naming of a campus building, the Joanne V. and Alexander Gabbin Hall. 

Rex Ovalle works as an English teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High School. Additionally, he is currently a doctoral candidate in the English department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He focuses on issues of ethnic studies and teacher labor. He also serves as a member of the Secondary Section Steering Committee for NCTE.