TEACHING CREATIVE WRITING By Kevin Baxter Third-grade teacher Kevin Baxter’s students turned their stories into books and their collective work into a classroom quilt. Words are like harpoons. Once they go in they are very hard to pull out. —Fred Hoyle Asheville, North Carolina As Hannah sits with her legs folded beneath her, she hunches…
STUDENT WRITING In the summer of 2015 Tim Fielder joined Aspen Words to teach a week-long Graphic Novel workshop to high school students from the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado. The workshop explored fundamental concepts such as storyboarding, a study of “camera” angles, evaluation of dramatic structure, and an analysis of model graphic texts. Here…
TEACHING ARTIST VOICE This essay about race and books for children and teens was first published on the Reading While White blog By Ibi Zoboi “I don’t like to read” is a something I hear very often in New York City public schools, which I’ve learned to translate as “I don’t like to…
FROM THE ARCHIVE Harry Greenberg From: Teachers & Writers Magazine (1983, Vol. 14, No. 5) I’m always in the “crow’s nest,” alert for ways to add more appeal to my poetry lessons. I believe strongly in packaging. Perhaps a year at NYU majoring in advertising has something to do with it. I strive to make my…
TEACHING ARTIST VOICE A version of this piece, written in response to the video of a Spring Valley High School student’s violent arrest by Deputy Ben Fields, appeared on the author’s Facebook page. Editors By Dominique Morisseau My first year out of college, I was the full-time drama teacher at Henry Ford Academy in Highland Park, Michigan. Highland…