Welcome.VerseLove is Ethical ELA’s celebration of National Poetry Month each April—an invitation to write, read, and reflect together. New to VerseLove? Learn more: https://www.ethicalela.com/verselove Our Host: Leilya Pitre Leilya lives in Ponchatoula, LA, a small town celebrated for its strawberries and kind, generous people. She …
Landscapes of Our Lives Every April, VerseLove becomes a landscape—thirty days of poems written across classrooms, kitchen tables, notebooks, and glowing screens around the world. I am Sarah Donovan, founding collaborator of Ethical ELA and Verselove, and we’ve been writing poetry every April since 2017. …
As we prepare to step into the 30-day journey of VerseLove 2026, it feels important to pause here, before the first prompt is posted, before the first lines are written, and consider the people who are holding this space. Because VerseLove does not simply happen. …
Writing as Ethical Witness During Genocide Remembrance Month Each April, Genocide Remembrance Month invites us to pause and remember histories of violence that too often fade into abstraction or silence. Several major genocides have key anniversaries in April—the Armenian Genocide beginning April 24, 1915, the …
Dear Ethical ELA community, April is just around the corner, which means it’s time to begin preparing for one of our favorite traditions: #VerseLove, our month-long celebration of poetry and community writing. Each April, we gather as writers, readers, and witnesses to poems. Some of …
A Humanizing Approach Using Living, Open-Access Poems Each March, many classrooms fill with brackets. Inspired by the energy of the basketball tournament, teachers invite students to read poems head-to-head and vote for their favorites. The structure is familiar and playful. It gives shape to the …
This is a longer piece (about an 8-minute read). I offer it slowly, and in the spirit of ethical literacy. It is meant for teachers who are holding the weight of a charged media moment and wondering how to make space for students to study …
We often tell students that poetry can change the way we see the world. I’m not sure a poem saves the world. But I do believe the person who reads a poem might be changed. And I believe that change depends, in large part, on …
A new year invites us to look forward—but here, it also asks us to notice what has endured. Ethical ELA enters this year shaped by teachers and teacher educators who continue to show up, quietly and faithfully, to read, write, and respond. Over time, participation …
by Sarah M. Fleming In 2021, when I first wrote a post for this blog, I was reflecting upon the experience of teaching in the English Language Arts classroom one day after the January 6th Insurrection. I imagine you can clearly remember what school was …