Even as a kid I was never the generator of humor but I always knew who was funny who to hang out with.
All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take by the year 2000 all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors.
Besides the actual reading in class of many poems I would suggest you do two things: first while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.