File 023416
Poetry in America for Teachers II: Harvard Educational Initiative on Poetry, Science and Environment (File 023416)
Educational documentary series initiative combining poetry study with science and environment, featuring interviews with prominent academics and public figures including Al Gore, Larry Summers, and Michael Pollan discussing American poets and their cultural significance.
Summary
This document describes 'Poetry in America for Teachers II,' a Harvard Graduate School of Education and HarvardX initiative developed in partnership with WGBH. The project combines poetic study with science and environmental education through filmed conversations between notable scholars, writers, and public figures discussing canonical American poets including Emerson, Dickinson, Whitman, Frost, and Moore. Featured participants include Vice President Al Gore discussing Ralph Waldo Emerson, economist Lawrence Summers on Oliver Wendell Holmes, author Michael Pollan on Joel Barlow, and author Walter Isaacson on Einstein and modernism. The initiative includes archival imagery, live footage from various New England locations, and materials designed for middle and high school classroom use, with planned expansion to include conversations with figures such as Richard Dawkins and Poet Laureate Robert Hass.
Poetry in America for Teachers II : The Poetry of Earth, Sea, and Sky(an initiative of Harvard Graduate School of Education, HarvardX and WGBH)
Combining study of poetry with study of science, environment and the visual arts . Materials include hundreds archival images and live footage including
footage of the Mayflower landing taped on Cape Cod—Corn Hill, Pamet Harbor, Snow’s Pond, Duck Creek; and, in Nantucket’s Whaling Museum
with author Michael Pollan on Joel Barlow (and colonial agriculture)
with economist Lawrence Summers on Oliver Wendell Holmes, (and technology and “one hoss shay” depreciation)
with Vice President Al Gore on Ralph Waldo Emerson ,and, with eco-critic Lawrence Buell (with footage taped on the Concord River as well as in Harvard’s Houghton Rare Book Library )
with a dozen Harvard students and Boston area school teachers on Emily Dickinson’s “skies” (shot at Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst Massachusetts) and with ED’s original mss. at Harvard University
with Martin Espada and other New Yorkers (footage shot on the East River) on Walt Whitman and urban greenspace
with Director of the College Board (and writer of the Common Core Standards) , David Coleman on Robert Frost’s “Birches” and with Frost biographer, Jay Parini at Robert Frost’s Vermont home in the Green Mountains
with Peter Galison on Einstein and Modernism (taped in the Harvard Scientific Instruments collection in the Harvard Science Center) and with author Walter Isaacson on Einstein and Modernism (Fogg Museum)
with Ray Dalio on Marianne Moore( in Rajah Ampat with Conservation International); and with Jane Pickering, Head of the Harvard Natural History Museum, ( filmed in the Harvard Museum of Natural History)
Future planned conversations include: Conversation with Walt Mossberg and David Malan on computer “language” and poetry ; Conversation with Richard Dawkins on evolution and probability; Conversation with actor Harrison Ford on “The Fish”; Conversation with Poet Laureate Robert Hass on Ansel Adams photography ; Conversation with Henry Louis Gates on African-American dialect poetry and the postbellum rural South.
1,000,000 for two television episodes (classroom ready) plus a full credit bearing course Middle and High School Teachers, materials to be tested in New York and Houston Schools by EdLabs