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…
In a Flash: Keeping Students Focused and Writing with Flash Fiction
By J.D. Mader For six years, I was lucky enough to teach writing to at-risk, low-income youth in San Francisco. I worked at two Catholic schools, but for a non-profit named ACHIEVE. I was a shadow. I designed my own curriculum. I was able to work with students in small groups, not a typical classroom….
A Home at the Nuyorican: An Interview with Lois Elaine Griffith
by Jehan Roberson Lois Elaine Griffith is here to tell you a story. An educator, poet, performer, and visual artist, Lois merged her multi-genre gift for storytelling into a career as a founding poet of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe who has advanced the Nuyorican’s message for more than 35 years. Now spearheading the Nuyorican Poets…
Connecting Social Media Savvy Teens to a Thousand-Year-Old Poetic Form
by David Andrew Stoler At night, when nobody else was awake, the two teenagers would send secret messages to each other: short bursts of text that they would wrap like little gifts in layer after layer of meaning. Gossip, intrigue, flirtation, the blossoming of young love…if their parents found out what was really going on—if…
Rewriting Memoir
by Alice Pencavel Lesson Objectives: To examine all the choices put in to a single sentence. To activate thoughtful patience and apply it to the process of writing. To allow time to write. To practice discipline and focus. To find new ways to actively incorporate personal reflections into our work. Guiding Questions: Why did Maya…
Recognizing Art as a Bridge to Academic Success
by Beverly Pell Early in my career I caught a glimpse of how exploration of art and creativity can powerfully influence written language. I was a rookie English teacher in a large urban school district with a high Hispanic population in southern California. While the focus of learning in my English class was speaking, listening,…
Literary Crossword, January Edition
Click here to print crossword and clues 1 Technique that makes a reader turn the page 5 Jane Austen protagonist 8 Three-way 9 Humorous verse form 10 First name of the author of “Black Beauty” 11 First name of the famous writer who penned “The Kingdom of God is Within…
INTERNATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL AND TEACHERS & WRITERS COLLABORATIVE
The student poets at International High School at Union Square are from all over the world: Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, China, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Italy, Senegal, Togo, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Yemen—to name just a few.
The Feminist in Me
by Tuhfa Begum This essay appears in Girls Write Now: Two Decades of True Stories from Young Female Voices, published by Tin House Books in October 2018. It started with an insult, when we collided at the front door of school at eight o’clock on a Monday morning and I dropped an armful of feminist…
Ode to Winter
The Snow, a blues poem by Otto O. (6th grade) Oh, the snow, the snow, the snow. The white, the warmth, the snow. I feel so good. I think you know. But then comes the rain! Oh no, not the rain! It wipes all the good snow away. And I’m upset, thanks a lot rain!…
Through the Eye of a Feather: Helping Students Slow Down, Pay Attention, and See Anew
by Peter Markus When I teach young people to write poetry, I begin by telling them stories. Not stories about writing poetry—what’s the story there, right?—but stories about twelve-legged purple octopi who like to ride unicycles and birds who have one wing but still are able to fly and the time when I was a…