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