This study investigates the interpretive approaches of three English teachers working in different grade levels with the same poem, Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." The researcher sought to learn what the teachers identified as most valuable about studying poetry in school, what interpretive approaches they employed…

There is a transcendent force at work in the world, and its design for learning and life is far too complex to be executed through lesson plans and textbooks. In this article, the author describes a phone call from a student he taught in a high school English class 16 years earlier and has not seen since. After the student reveals how his life was…