By Gabriel Brownstein Editors note: This article was originally published in Teachers & Writers Magazine 2007. When asked if he would contribute a piece to the magazine for T&W’s 40th anniversary year, novelist and short story writer Gabriel Brownstein responded with immediate enthusiasm: “Teachers & Writers was a huge part of my life as a…
By Peter Markus So I’m talking all the time about the power of words, about how words matter, about how a poem can help us make sense of the world around us, etc., etc., when out of the blue wide-eyed Aniya, a third-grader here in Detroit, raises her hand and asks me a question I…
From the introduction to The Thirst of Life, anthology for the writing residency at 122Q. This school year, 2016-2017, has been my 16th season of teaching creative writing at PS 122Q, the Mamie Fay School, in Astoria, Queens, New York. It has, once again, been my distinct privilege and pleasure to teach the wonderful 6th-graders…
By Caron Levis The classroom phone rang as Mrs. Pearson’s first-graders tumbled in, pulling off coats and scarves, shoving backpacks into the overstuffed closet along the wall. As Mrs. Pearson excused herself to answer the call, a small girl swimming in a large, red sweatshirt offered me a plastic flower that she’d made, “because you’re…
By Susan Straub T&W was a nourishing parent for my neophyte and developing Read To Me Program. Through T&W’s generous welcome, I got immediate street cred and access to the NYC Board of Ed’s teen parent program, LYFE. Additionally, I was able to apply for grants available to nonprofit organizations to develop and expand….
By Rachel DeWoskin My eleven-year-old student Siran turned to me recently during a conversation about Shel Silverstein’s poetry and said, in her native Chinese, “English is so wasteful!” I had just been thinking the opposite, that rhyme is a lovely expression of compression and economy. “Why?” I asked. She pointed to a “k” at the…
My Favorite Word is Love is an anthology of poetry by the second-grade students of Sheridan Academy of Young Leaders 457X. The title comes from a poem by Gregory Rodriguez where he envisioned spring having a favorite word—love. For twenty days, students learned about hyperboles, personification, metaphors, alliteration, similes, line breaks, syllables, and haikus. The…
By Kelly Quayle Richie is five foot nothing and not even a hundred pounds, just months out of elementary school. He wears a SpongeBob backpack high on his shoulders and Gap Kids khakis picked out by his mother. He’s never seen an R-rated movie, never been reprimanded in school, and rarely comes to class without…
This residency was made possible by the New York City College Access for All Middle School Initiative. Artist Letter to Students, Passion is something that we all must hold onto. Some of us know exactly what we want to do from when we are young and for others, it takes time. However, the best part…
By Ben Berman How does a writing teacher return to the “beginner’s mind” of students, and how does doing so influence his teaching practice? Ben Berman shares how the frustrations he experienced and the lessons he learned when he tried to write a screenplay changed the way he approaches teaching writing to his high school…