“Perhaps These Are Not Poetic Times at All”: Using Poetry to Cope with and Critique a High-Stakes Teacher Performance Assessment

This study takes a fine-grained look at the inaugural implementation of a high-stakes teacher performance assessment (the edTPA) from multiple perspectives and chronicles how participants used the reading, writing, and discussion of poetry to cope with and sometimes critique the edTPA. Teacher researchers sought to understand multiple perspectives of stakeholders associated with the English education program in which each played a role. Other participants included seven English education teacher candidates and five mentor teachers from candidates’ student teaching placements. Data included lesson plans, instructional materials, and student work from the seminar candidates took during student teaching, email messages among stakeholders, official edTPA communications, field notes, and stakeholder interviews. Findings are organized around the functions of poetry for managing the edTPA revealed by the analysis. The study suggests that reading, writing, and discussing poetry can assist candidates and teacher educators in navigating a high-stakes assessment through reflective practice.