A high school spoken-word club changed students' lives. Now, you can read their poems

When Peter Kahn became an English teacher at the Chicago-area Oak Park and River Forest High School, he was terrified of teaching poetry.

"Poetry was my least favorite subject as a student, and my least favorite subject to teach as a teacher," he says. "I was terrible at it."

So he asked a former student of his for help, who suggested the idea of a poetry slam — a competition in which