Awakening the Heart, Second Edition

A best-selling and beloved teaching resource, Awakening the Heart inspired thousands of teachers to learn the power of infusing poetry into the everyday life of their classrooms rather than relegating it to one month out of the year.

In this fresh new edition, Georgia Heard offers updated strategies, lessons, mentor texts, and examples from both professional and student writers that resonate with today’s kids. An impactful complement to any SEL program, Awakening the Heart’s lessons and exercises empower students to connect with their emotions, identities, and the world around them.

Awakening the Heart, Second Edition provides practical strategies for:

• creating an inclusive and supportive poetry environment
• helping students read poetry to understand its meaning
• helping students get started writing poetry with accessible prompts
• teaching poetry, craft tools, and techniques.

An entire section of the book is dedicated to poetry prompts, lessons, and exercises you can incorporate into short writing sessions, even when poetry isn’t a main focus of your curriculum.

＂We need poetry now more than ever,＂ Georgia writes. ＂It is the doorway into literacy for so many children and a pathway to knowing how we feel, learning about who we are, and connecting with others and the larger world.＂

Georgia Heard has taught writing and poetry for over 25 years in urban, rural, and international classrooms. She was the 2023 recipient of NCTE’s prestigious Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. Her numerous other books for teachers include Heart Maps, The Revision Toolbox, and Finding the Heart of Nonfiction. The first edition of Awakening the Heart was heralded as one of ＂12 Books Every Teacher Should Read＂ by Instructor Magazine. Georgia Heard received her M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University and was a founding member of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.