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…
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…
Using Poetry to Reach Across Disciplines
by Jason DeHart While I would occasionally meet students in my middle school classroom who loved poetry, by and large my students were reluctant to embrace the genre. I dealt with this resistance in a variety of ways, including reaching into other disciplines to bring in vocabulary words for review and practice in poetic form….
Poems without Borders: Writing To Bear Witness
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. Other pieces includeSusan Karwoska’s interviews with and poems written by high school students recently arrived in the US, Sarah Dohrmann’s poetry lesson plans for engaging immigrant…
A Home at the Nuyorican: A Continued Conversation with Lois Griffith
by Jehan Roberson In part two of her conversation with Jehan Roberson, Nuyorican Poets Café founding poet Lois Elaine Griffith talks about her work as an educator, the Nuyorican as a home for the LGBTQ community, and issues of “ownership” in the arts. You can read the first part of this interview here. Jehan…
Search Results as Lyrical Launchpads
by Cal LaFountain Grades: High school and college Learning Goals In this lesson, students will use Internet search results to generate random language for the basis of a poem, story, or essay. Students may use search engines on their devices, a classroom computer, or, if a more analog strategy is desired, any nearby books that…
Ode to This Body Singing: Teaching Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Anodyne”
by Aracelis Girmay 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. Yusef Komunyakaa was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, in 1947,…
Two Poetry Prompts to Inspire Immigrant Teens
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, Poems Without Borders: Writing to Bear Witness,…
Found Poetry & Accessibility
by Donnie Welch I love using found poetry in my workshops! If you’re unfamiliar with the form, here’s a definition from the Academy of American Poets: “Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles,…