poetry

When I was younger I seemed to be interested in poetry but as soon as I got to high school my feelings changed and I still feel the same way about it today and after the reading I realize why I feel this way about poetry.  I used to have fun with poetry in elementary school and middle school because my teachers would make if fun for all of the students.  Each time we would be able to come up a different type of poem then our teacher would have an activity planned around it.  In the reading I realized that the teachers attitude toward poetry effected the outlook that the students in turn had of poetry.  If the teacher doesn't push the kids to become involved and doesn't exposes the children enough to poetry at a young age then there is the chance that they won't appreciate it as much as they grow up.  In high school whenever we were about to start a poetry section everyone would always groan and moan because of all the analyzing that had to be done.  This is where my appreciation of poetry started to decline because I didn't see everything the same way the teacher did and I would be graded down for it.  Soon I began to lose interest in poetry and I'm sure other kids in the class felt the same way.  In the reading it stated that the opinion of the students towards poetry comes from the way in which it is taught and the environment surrounding it.  In high school it was generally a negative attitude and everyone wanted to get it over as quick as possible so this is where I see my outlook on poetry taking a turn.  I wouldn't mind reading poetry that isn't assigned to me and doing it on my own and see if that starts to change the way I feel about poetry.