I have been teaching for eight years, and nothing brings me greater joy than watching students grow into the readers, writers, and thinkers I know they can be. Most of that growth happens because I try to make the teaching environment a safe, comfortable, laughter-filled place where students can explore new ideas and express their thoughts and feelings. I find poetry particularly useful for that, and over and over again I have seen how students who resisted poetry when they walked into my classroom left at the end of the term with the sense that they would be reading poetry for the rest of their lives.