More About Teachers & Writers Collaborative
About Teachers & Writers
MISSION Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) seeks to educate the imagination by offering innovative creative writing programs for students and…
Workshops & Professional Development
Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) provides school-based and after-school writing programs led by professional writers for K-12 students, professional development…
Resources
Books T&W has published resources about the teaching of creative writing for more nearly 50 years. With more…
NY Poetry Out Loud
What is Poetry Out Loud? Poetry Out Loud (POL), an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts and the…
When a Poem is a Poem First: Celebrating Affect in Writing Education
by Brittany R. Collins Midway down a nursing home corridor, past the cafeteria and behind a cloth room divider, lay Alexander Vanderburgh Jr., aged eighty-six and counting. Alex was a residential dementia patient and the father of my friend, Ann. He liked math, mountains, and chocolate chip ice cream, the latter of which I carried…
Knowledge Isn’t Neutral: On Radical Librarianship
by Jehan Roberson That titular truism is one that led many of us to teach, to write, and to examine critically the power held by stewards of “things worth knowing.” At every turn we must question not only the why’s, but the how’s and the who’s. How was this information acquired, and by whom? How…
Poems
by Joseph Anthony Joseph Anthony was a participant in T&W’s visual arts workshop at the SAGE-GRIOT Innovative Senior Center in Brooklyn. In addition to creating and artist book during the workshop, Joey is a poet. Teachers & Writers Magazine is pleased to share some of his poems with our readers. A Rose Roses are the…
Better Advocacy for Undocumented Students
Bridging Borders with Words: Writing with Immigrant and Refugee Students In this sixth piece in our series on working with immigrant and refugee writers, Jan-Henry Gray draws on his own experience as an undocumented student to offer advice to educators. Related content includes One Day You Will Be One of the Happier: The Voices and…
Hitting Home: Art Imitating Life in a Sixth-Grade Classroom
by Amy C. Evans Move during HarveyHad to drive out of HoustonLeave home to get safe—Haiku by Jy’lon, 6th grade Since the 2016 presidential election, Houston, Texas, has been in an almost fugue state of resistance and recovery. Nowhere is this more evident than in our classrooms. As a circuit teacher of sorts, with multiple…
The One-Sentence Poem: Capturing the Motion of the Mind
by Jason Koo The following is an excerpt from Spellbound: The Art of Teaching Poetry, a new book from Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Edited by Matthew Burgess, Spellbound offers a range of exciting ideas to inspire students of all ages to explore their potential as writers and creators. I got the idea for this assignment from Ed Hirsch, the…
Literary Crossword, May Edition
Click here to print crossword Across1 Vital quality in a novelist9 First name of a Russian literary giant10 Marvel comic character who assumes the mantle of the White Tiger, Ayala11 She had “the face that launched a thousand ships”12 Graham Green’s “The of the Matter”13 “In the beginning”…book14 Picture16 Deep-six17 Facial cover…
Creating a Map of the World: Working With Somali Immigrants In the Writing Classroom
Bridging Borders with Words: Writing with Immigrant and Refugee Students This article is part of a series in Teachers & Writers Magazine on working with immigrant and refugee writers. Related content includes One Day You Will Be One of the Happier: The Voices and Poetry of Teen Immigrants, Two Poetry Prompts to Inspire Immigrant…
Learning to Love Writing on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
by Lex Talamo I moved to South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 2009 as a naïve 22-year-old teacher, with high hopes and big plans to instill my love of writing in my 80 incoming middle school students. My principal informed me there was no formal writing curriculum—I would have to create one from scratch….
Learning to Love the Language
by Rhoda Samkoff At the beginning of my teaching career one of my fifth-graders complained, “I have ideas, but I can’t make them come out my pencil!” While my definition of successful creative writing is “the manipulation of words that results in a unique product of self-expression,” the student’s statement is a reminder that producing…