Ekphrastic poetry comes from the Greek word for art.

It is inspired by showing students art, then having them write about it in a poem.

Curious, Hawthorne Cedar Knolls Federation of Teachers member Felice Hochberg wanted to know how to teach this method to students, who often say, "I don't know what to write about."

Once a month during the school year, Hochberg joined a dozen other Westchester County teaching colleagues for sessions with visual teaching artists-in-residence Brenda Connor-Bey and Karen Greenbaum. Each four-hour class combined guided imagery, reading and painting.

The teachers would paint something they heard in the reading, then write about what they drew or what they thought about while drawing.

"It changed the way I think, work and teach my students," said Hochberg, who confessed to being initially intimidated by the process.

She uses the methods to coax creativity from her students at Hawthorne Cedar Knolls, one of 13 Special Act schools around the state that houses and educates students with severe emotional disabilities.

Her students can study a photograph, put themselves in the picture and write about what they smell or touch, what might happen next or what could be happening just outside the photograph.

"It allows everyone to express themselves without feeling they're going to fail," Hochberg said. "With writing they think there's right and wrong. This showed them a different way," she said.

Students at Special Act schools may be victims of abuse or neglect who are placed by the courts, Social Services or commitees on special education.

"Our students need this," Hochberg said. "They're fragile and afraid to try." 

Teachers can be the same way. In the workshops, Connor-Bey - the poet laureate for the town of Greenburgh - had the teachers work on some form of poetry, like haiku, repetition poem or pantoom, a poem consisting of a sequence of repeating lines.

"The challenge in our workshops is the teachers are nervous about writing. Everything is about the (standardized) tests. They don't have a chance to express themselves creatively," said Greenbaum.

Hochberg brought her new confidence right into the classroom with her. Now, she said, students are more proud than fearful about showing their work.

NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi, who taught elementary school in Central Islip for 34 years, saw the same pride in his students.

He used a lot of poetry in his English classes. He also started a poetry club, and students published their own poems twice a year in a journal.

Iannuzzi particularly loves Robert Frost.

"A lot of his lines resonate with me because they're about collaboration and building consensus, and that's what a union leader does," Iannuzzi said.

Valerie Auguste-Partin, a member of the United Federation of Teachers who teaches at PS 83 in the Bronx, said many of her seventh- and eighth-grade students are resistant to reading and creating original poetry.

She wrote a poem as a motivational activity, and had students recite it by rapping it to instrumental hip hop music.

"It works wonders. Believe me!" she said.

After students recite it, they are divided into cooperative learning groups. Their mission: Revise the poem, name it, and then create their own one-stanza poem. A spokesperson then shares the poem with the rest of the class.

Lisa Bhyeny, a UFT member who teaches at Robert F. Kennedy Community High School in Queens, used lessons from Kennedy himself to compel students to write poems.

With social justice issues as a platform, some students wrote poems about him, and about the struggles they see around them.