![]() ![]() Part of what accounts for the popularity of “The Road Not Taken” is that Frost, until the latter half of the twentieth century, was viewed as a nature poet, in the purest New England sense. ![]() While Pinsky’s poll demonstrates the poem’s broad appeal, that appeal is at least partly due to its being most often read by people who do not read it closely enough to discover its complexities or who quickly dismiss those complexities in favor of the trite paraphrases that come to mind when people are asked what the poem might be “about.” Many attempt answers such as “taking a different road from that of the masses” or “being an individual” or “finding one’s own road in life.” And while none of these answers would be altogether incorrect, they all reduce the subtle complexities of the poem to platitudes. One of Frost’s best-known poems, opening his third book, Mountain Interval, “The Road Not Taken” was first published in the August 1915 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. When participants were asked which poems they most liked to read, they most often cited “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” With more than 18,000 votes cast, from participants aged five to 97, Frost came out on top. Thanks for finding me here and staying true to your wonderful thought-provoking comments.After being named poet laureate in 1997, Robert Pinsky took a year-long poll to determine who was America’s favorite poet. …and aren’t poems meant to be taken as far as you can? (so no, not too far at all). As mentioned, I now prefer Inquiry but maintain an open mind that there is always the other road.Īnd so perhaps the above also answers your second question on the lines of the poem. when direct instruction “failed” in teaching Ratios, I switched to modelling and had more success then. As teachers, we make a choice each time and it’s rare we get to have 2 different approaches for the same unit for the same class – unless, the first approach fails….which happened to me in Maths (fancy that) – e.g. There are a multitude of ways anything can be taught and learned…and one’s not necessarily better than the other. The other road is any other pedagogy – be it direct instruction, games-based learning, challenge-based learning, modelling, flipped classroom, etc etc etc. What a great idea to get your students to draw! and good questions! I sure hope, like most teachers do regardless of how we teach, that it makes a difference to people other than me, i.e. I choose this path knowing there are other ways and that yes, I could get lost….and do. ![]() I think that inquiry learning is the road less travelled by, mainly because there are so many unknowns (variables) and these are welcomed (crazy, really, eh?). There are so many variables in the classroom and directly influencing it that what works one year may not work the next, and who would want to cover the same content with the same students but using a different pedagogical approach? Even if we wanted to, there’s not much time really, is there? So choose we must. For the most part, these choices are equally appealing and deciding on one (as decide we must) is tricky. (But by all means, please feel free to read them – even better if you comment and extend the conversation).Īs teachers, we always have a choice on how we go about devising learning experiences for our students. Even if you don’t read the original posts, you could get a sense of my teaching and learning journey in the last month. And just a few days ago, I posted Making Progress. A couple of weeks later, I wrote about what I was doing in my classes – characterised by inquiry learning – and called the post Lost Already. Rather, I want to use it as a metaphor for my recent teaching experiences.Ī mere 4 weeks ago, I wrote excitedly about starting the new school year in a post I called No Entry. Perhaps it is this learning by mistake that has made the poem memorable but that’s not really the point of this post. I can still remember the English lesson where I made the mistake – yes, mistake – of interpreting the road less travelled by as being less appealing. ![]() Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” stands to be one of my favourite poems. ![]()
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