Farquhar, Karin2010-07-062010-07-0620102010-07-06http://hdl.handle.net/1828/2890Students with learning disabilities are vulnerable to dropping out of school. While the reasons students leave are complex, research has identified factors that are within the teacher’s purview. This project is informed by research suggesting that classroom experiences should engage and empower students. Learning is meaningful when students are actively engaged and valuable when it enables the learners. Students, when they leave school, should then see themselves as able to determine their own destinies, responsible for their own actions, and capable of creating meaningful futures of their own. This project combined Barone’s (1993) metaphor of strong poets with an aesthetic assignment. The assignment endeavoured to help students gain new insights into how they viewed themselves and their futures. Results suggest that the use of an ideal image, like strong poets, combined with an aesthetic project has promise as an instructional approach that likely engages students and helps them to portray themselves as empowered.enAvailable to the World Wide WebLearning Disabiltityempowermentengagementstrong poetproject