Poem recommendation - To a daughter leaving home

 

 To teach how to read poems to high school students, selecting appropriate poem is the first important step. There could be some criterion in choosing good poem but I would like to suggest two of standards. First one is the message implied in the poem. The message should contain educational meaning. Second one is the level of the language such as vocabulary and the structure of the poem. Considering two of standards, I think To a daughter leaving home  will be a good poem for high school students.

 The poem has educational message letting the students remind value of their parents and gain insight into what the meaning of independence from them is. The main story of the poem is raising a daughter into a beautiful young woman and not wanting to let her go. When she was young, she lived in the safe zone of her parents but as she gets old she become independent. Finally she is now capable of going out into the real world and is no longer constantly depending on her parents. I think high school students can feel empathy with this poem because they are also about to leave their parents. It's not far from their age. When they read the poem, they can understand how their parents will feel about saying goodbye and they could prepare the future with more serious attitude.

 This poem should be good to teach about poetic language to students. The level of vocabulary is not that difficult and there are many literary devices students have to learn such as symbolism and metaphor. The main idea in this poem is riding a bike as a metaphor to life. Parents teach their children numerous things and are overjoyed by their children's accomplishments but it is always hard to let them venture out into the real world alone, without mom and dad. Students can learn naturally what the symbolism and metaphor are by reading this poem and can get a feel for them.

 In short, through this poem students can get a valuable message for their life and they are able to train their eye to read literary text and learn new words in the poem. For these reasons, I recommend the poem To a daughter leaving home to the students.