This book serves as a practical guide, for teachers of middle-school students as well as higher grade levels, that provides clear and fully-developed lesson plans and activities that use the teaching of poetry reading and writing as a vehicle for developing students' own creativity and appreciation for diversity. The combination of theory and practice sets this book apart from other books, in addition to an original four-step method of making sense of poems. The book is divided into two parts: the first focuses on the critical reading of poems; the second focuses on the writing of poems, using different forms. Both work towards "the bigger picture" of developing students' ability to engage in respectful discourse and to view multiple perspectives as enriching rather than competing.