When I visit classes in elementary schools, there is an inevitable session that falls just as snack time is ending or scheduled. The students’ desks are topped with an array of finger foods and crunchy treats, juice boxes, carrot sticks in zip lock bags, cookies. The teacher will often have big barrel-shaped plastic containers of … Read more
Over the years in which I have worked in schools, both daytime and afternoon programs, I have received many small gifts from students. Often these gifts are little drawings that children have made, perhaps even while listening to our lesson. Sometimes they are portraits of me, a lovely reflection of who I am to the … Read more
It has been a rough-n-tumble summer, given the huge impact of the current state of the nation and how it will affect everything, most certainly how it will hobble the world of education. I am piece-mealing my way through the summer months with some freelance work and a bit of teaching here and there. It … Read more
Our workshop met for the last time yesterday, a 6-week cycle of sessions that I hope directed the writers to new ways of thinking about their work and, for a few, created fuel for new poems and directions. They took the assignment seriously. Each brought a revision of my poem or a complete rewrite as … Read more
The workshop conversation regarding critique and how we may learn from each other, provide new lenses with which to observe our own work was such a prod to me that I chose to take a tact that I have done before: I distributed copies of one of my own poems that is particularly troubling me … Read more
This summer, as I focus on teaching adults rather than classrooms of school kids, a conversation surfaced in the poetry workshop regarding critique and suggestions from one writer to another. One of the workshop participants took issue with another participant for the habit of offering rewrite suggestions. He felt that it was against protocol to … Read more
This summer I am teaching another in a series of memoir workshops. My approach in this class is somewhat different from previous classes. Instead of offering a number of writing prompts and approaches for initiating the story lines, I asked the participants to determine a thread or theme for the entire 6 weeks, creating the … Read more
In the process of tweaking the blog site, I discovered this last post that I did not publish from the school year. I still want to share the sentiment, even though it is now summer and this moment is long gone. It is like my own blogosphere time machine. Please enjoy: This is the time … Read more
I woke to a gray, heavy July Sunday morning, thick as flour, damp to the nose, quiet. I am reading Patti Smith’s tender memoir, Just Kids, and I waited to make coffee for at least an hour. Then I infused the moist air with the incense of coffee perking, the syncopation. Next, I immersed in … Read more
My week started with the disappointing news that I, among many who applied, did not receive a NY Foundation for the Arts Independent Artist Fellowship once again. I was so disappointed for any number of reasons and frustrations, not the least of which, the leg up that $7,000 of unrestricted funds would have provided at … Read more