After a long, cold, and snowy winter, we are delighted to be sending the Spring issue of Teachers & Writers Magazine—the second in our new online format. We are gratified by the overwhelmingly positive response to the Winter issue, and to our weekly postings to the magazine website. To be sure you receive notifications of…
EXPLODED LESSON PLAN How do we teach students of poetry to avoid cliché, to use language that allows us (and them) to see things anew? In these four lessons, the poet Michelle Chan Brown offers an array of strategies for using surprise to subvert expectations and create a sense of wonder. Using the work…
EDUCATING THE IMAGINATION Bushra Rehman The Lark Essays: An Introduction On November 13, 2014, “Two Truths and a Lie,” a writing workshop I teach in NYC, was held up at gunpoint. After the robbery, the class became the invisible center in a maelstrom of tensions around the New York Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk policy,…
EDUCATING THE IMAGINATION The Lark Essays: An Introduction On November 13, 2014, “Two Truths and a Lie,” a writing workshop I teach in NYC, was held up at gunpoint. After the robbery, the class became the invisible center in a maelstrom of tensions around the New York Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk policy, gentrification, and the role of…
EDUCATING THE IMAGINATION The Lark Essays: An Introduction On November 13, 2014, “Two Truths and a Lie,” a writing workshop I teach in NYC, was held up at gunpoint. After the robbery, the class became the invisible center in a maelstrom of tensions around the New York Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk policy, gentrification, and the role of…
TEACHING ARTIST VOICE Michael Gervais If you see me rolling down a steep hill right after a rainfall or kneeling down while crying in my mother’s backyard or creeping up to the blooming blackberry bush in early April, I’ll tell you why. I’m writing a story. A story about an adorable red fox…
INTERVIEW An Interview with Maira Kalman by Susan Karwoska Maira Kalman is an author and illustrator of numerous books for adults and children including What Pete Ate, Looking at Lincoln, The Principles of Uncertainty, and The Pursuit of Happiness. She has illustrated Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style and Michael Pollan’s Food…
INTERVIEW by Matthew Burgess Dorothea Lasky is the author of four books of poetry, most recently ROME (W.W. Norton/Liveright, 2014), as well as Thunderbird, BlackLife, and AWE (Wave Books). She is the co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney’s, 2013) and several chapbooks, including Poetry is Not…
EDUCATING THE IMAGINATION Adam Fitzgerald Photo (above) courtesy of Karen Keats In high school, too many students learn to hate poetry at the very time they most want to express themselves and experiment with language. What a shame. I don’t want to blame teachers, and I have less desire to blame whatever chestnuts are…