It's always too early to quit.
To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.
Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.
The most effective way to do it, is to do it.
Always desire to learn something useful.
Who seeks shall find.
Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
If you think you can do it, you can.
To be a good loser is to learn how to win.
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.