Founded in 1967 as one of the first writers-in-the-schools programs, Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) once required its teaching artists to submit diaries of their experiences in the classroom. T&W’s founders believed, as we still do, that the knowledge and expertise of teaching artists would be valuable to teachers of creative writing across the country. Sharing this knowledge through our publications was a tenet of our work then, and we continue to publish the work of teaching artists today.

T&W teaching artist Trace Howard DePass reflects on the legacy and early teaching diaries of T&W co-founder June Jordan (then June Meyer). Selections from these diaries are shared below. 

Dearest June, 

Your works are still living as many works inside us.

I sat with your teaching artist diary, your typewriter, your rigor, and ended up regarding each new day of my life with a fresher reverence for it—as much as love itself—under the influence of your care, attention, and intention. One of the best meditations a person in the 21st century can do is to listen to what you’ve left for us from the prior 20th century.

Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W), the organization you helped found, is turning 60 next year. In just the last decade, I’ve edited over a dozen anthologies with organizations that would not exist or have had space to grow had it not been for your efforts, among them T&W, Community Word Project, and Urban Word NYC.

I’ve met family members from my father’s generation at weddings who grew up with T&W in their schools. Friends of mine have developed their artistry in what I would love to name the “grand spaces” of your organizational influence, in other words, safe spaces or art/writing institutions you’ve mothered, grandmothered, housed, or inspired. It’s a blessing to be another archival custodial grandson to the good grandmother Teachers & Writers Collaborative has become and still stands to be in the midst of imperial defunding and destruction.

I think about how there is no bad kid, that every kid should be given language and hope and poems and love and patience and space to think, write, and change.

I can’t help but think of how much humanity you saw inside of a human and how all of us are still fighting battles for liberation and self-determination. I think about how there is no bad kid, that every kid should be given language and hope and poems and love and patience and space to think, write, and change.

I taught a very gifted middle school class with T&W from 2022–2023. One particular sixth grade class was so hype for poetry before their lunch, they’d often applaud at my return. We performed together the poems that we made, and some days would be dedicated to that, and other days were dedicated to form, and some days were dedicated to Henrietta Lacks, and some to Tulsa Oklahoma, and some to Nkosi’s square poem, and some days to the contrapuntal. But there was one day in particular I did not have to gamify much at all. I had read a poem that my great-grandfather wrote for his father dying of a heart attack in the subway, “Queens Plaza.” Immediately, some of the usual extroverted boys started questioning if they were going to be fine, and I said that unless they have a specific underlying heart condition that it’s not something they would need to worry about happening naturally any time soon. However, one of my shyer students who also wore glasses like me, a little Black girl with beads in her hair, rose her hand— 

“Mr. Trace?” 

I replied, “Yes,” and she, a sixth grader, informed me that she had an underlying heart condition and that she had a heart attack before. There are moments when all you can do is thank the child for sharing and for being here with us today.

I once facilitated at another middle school in the South Bronx with a small, sixth- and seventh-grade special education class. On February 17, 2022, two students of color, who the city’s department of education considered non-verbal, a boy and girl, were the only two students that showed up to class. J., the boy, didn’t speak often except for his single catchphrase “chicken.” K., the girl student, took the lead in writing the community poem. The tritina those sixth graders wrote has probably become one of my favorite poems of all time:

Swimming in the afternoon
I saw a crazy lady jump in the pool
To save a drowning baby

Now the lady is drowning with baby
The lifeguard doesn’t work this afternoon
So a security guard emptied the pool

1 person called the ambulance to the pool
I am the baby
I saw it happen in the afternoon

I see a different baby in the pool every afternoon.

It’s my favorite of all time because of the form and writing, because K. made sure each pronoun “they” became a precise character with a particular function, because J.’s first sentence he was able to contribute to a community poem was “I am the baby.” A few weeks later in spring, those students lost their math teacher, Mr. V., who drowned in Florida water currents saving his wife and nephew’s life. I don’t think I’ve ever helped make a poem with students that has captured life quite like that since.

I’ve had some students that wouldn’t do work unless I battle rapped them and some students that didn’t feel like doing poetry all the time but would help me write on the board because we all agreed their handwriting looked better than mine and some students that have told me I should be a professor or teacher in “good” schools or neighborhoods and some children innocently letting me know that my hat, pants, and glasses make me look like I’m wearing a disguise.

I think I cherish it all a bit closer to my chest with you, June, as I’m just another one of many students of yours trying to keep up. 

In your teaching artist diaries, you speak of your student Linda Curry as your students’ ringleader. You speak directly to the leaders of the poetry gang and tread mindfully, if not lightly. You call the attitude out and mourn the day and rigorously document when the attention or interests waned. I’m not very tall either, but I think about how I still have male privilege, and I think about the additional emotional labor you were doing to keep peace, to grieve, and to get these poems done on a typewriter and into an anthology and copied at the mimeograph for your students.

I’ve brought your day, in these diaries, via Camscanner and Xerox, to Brooklyn Academy of Music for Hanif, and Lincoln Center for Dr. Mo Browne, and now back to your magazine and your people at Teachers & Writers. The people laugh with you when they hear you talk about your day, but they quietly revere any recitation of your poems, which fascinates me. Your words are still teaching children empathy, men how to love, the young Black writer that they can put any part of their experience on the page, and so many Black queer people (especially poets) a sense of self-determining agency over their own lives.

Reflecting on how the church has been a safe space for Black folks, poetry, and theater, I’ve selected a few days of your diary, mostly from your work with Church of the Open Door. Alongside are poems from your time with your students in 1968. 

I would like to do more with other poets who would be willing to sit with your day, if God and your love wills it to be so.

Trace Howard DePass
T&W Teaching Artist
March 2026

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The Early Teaching Diaries of June Jordan

T&W’s archive has over 200 pages of teaching diaries, correspondence, and student poems from June Jordan’s time with T&W. Below we share excerpts from Jordan’s teaching diaries selected by Trace DePass. We have chosen to mirror their typewritten state as closely as possible, choosing archival accuracy over house style or technical correctness. Some entries have omissions indicated with bracketed ellipses [ . . . ]. You can read PDFs of DePass’s selections in their full, typewritten state here.

REPORT: Class at The Community Resource Center
October 21, 1967
From: June Meyer

I arrived late. Everyone from the first class, except 24 year old Gena Reisner, was waiting for me, upstairs. It was arranged that, since Victor’s class had not shown, except for eleven year old David Baughn, Victor would be with us. Also David. Also a woman named Marion Bahensky who, I am sorry to report, clearly said aloud, at one point: “If you don’t mind, I think I would rather not come to your classes as a student—I would just like to sit and observe—see how you handle them.” (My underlining.) In fact, I think it’s okay for her, or for anybody else to “observe” providing remarks of that kind do not occur. At the least, that kind of remark makes difficult our workshop effort. 

This day’s workshop continued for a bit more than an hour and a half, and it would have easily continued longer except that I had obligations elsewhere, as well. During the time we were together many things happened, indeed, so many moving things happened that I wished, that I wish I could simply talk it into a tape rather than scrunch the experience onto paper. 

First, I would like to say I do not know what I can offer the kids who come on Saturday. Except for two of them, (sisters) the others come with a shocking history of no education in language. That they ought to shame all the so-called teachers who have perpetuated this history of no education. But shame will not help these young people. And my question is, what will be helpful? 

I had to control my sense of desperation: I wanted to say, wait a minute. Let’s stop right here: This is A Sentence. This is Not a Sentence. Him is spelled with an m, not with an n. Words that sound alike, or a little like each other are Not spelled the same way. For instance, along is not the spelling for alone, and dried is not the spelling for died.  

Then I thought, if this total lack of preparation characterizes the English “education” of these kids, then editors, and personnel managers are just going to have to take the consequences. And/or portable tape recorders will have to replace the ballpoint pen. But, horribly, this is absurd. The kids are going to take the consequences of all the shit treatment and despisal-pedagogy imposed on them. So, I repeat, what should I try and do? How should any of us try to alter the probable consequences—on Saturdays, yet?

[. . .]

Shame will not help these young people. And my question is, what will be helpful?

— June Jordan

REPORT: Visit to
Grade 6
Public School 45
Bushwick Avenue and Schaeffer St. 
Brooklyn, New York 

Teacher: Miss Linda Margolin
Date: December 19, 1967
From: June Meyer
Students: 23, mostly black with perhaps two Puerto Rican. 
Miss Margolin: Young and white. 
The Principal and the Ass’t Principal: Older and white. 
Surrounding neighborhood: Swiftly switching from well-kept two and three storey frame homes, to masonry cold-water tenement flats. 
Streets: Untouched by the city’s sanitation department. 

P.S. 45 is two years old. Mr. Zuckerman, my suspicious host, told me that the school opened on “the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination.” He didn’t seem to think there was anything odd in what he’d said, so I made no comment nor inquiry. 

I was guided about the new plant by Mr. Zuckerman: He would say, “Now you’re going to see what’s different about our school.” Then he would show me some rather pedestrian architectural peculiarity/convenience, such as partitioned, sliding walls, etc. 

As we strode by the classrooms, I was busy remembering what had occurred upon my entry to the building. Four girls rushed me with the question, “Are you the poetry lady?” I said yes, wondering how they’d identified me. They wanted to take me to their classroom, but I had to sign here and there and there again, finally ending in the principal’s office where neither of two top executives believed I belonged there. There was the ritual of trading credentials which I went through with increasing annoyance and therefore increasing hauteur. Mr. Zuckerman thought it was “fascinating” that I teach Freshman English at City College and I retorted that I thought it was “fascinating” too. Etc. 

In one class, very little children were already bending to papers on their desks. One boy, named Christopher, raced into the hallway and hugged Mr. Zuckerman. The boy’s radiance of being so struck me that I interpreted the information that Chirstopher had “special placement” as meaning that he was verified as bright. On the contrary, Mr. Zuckerman corrected me. That glowing little person was “probably retarted.” 

[. . .]

Miss Margolin’s classroom is a sunny place where paper Christmas trees fell on the windowsill. Chairs and tables have been set about in an informal way that is quite pleasant to see. She introduced me. I handed out, beginning them at opposite sides of the room, Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer’s A Pictorial History of The Negro in America, Langston Hughes volume of poetry, The Panther and The Lash, and to Miss Magolin I handed something called “In Their Own Words: The History of The American Negro”—used in many schools, now. She’d never seen it. I asked the kids had they heard of Hughes. Seven or eight of them said yes. So I recalled the copy just long enough to read three poems to them—which they seemed to enjoy. Those children looking at the Pictorial History appeared quite happy. 

Then I read them Longfellow’s The Revenge of Rain in The Face, and they seemed to like it. Another teacher, male, Mr. Sadowsky, entered about this time, to observe, I suppose. Then I read them my poem, Uncle Bull Boy, which made them laugh and happy, it seemed. I read them two more, and then I wrote my poem about Martin Luther King, on the board. Asked them what does it mean? Nobody knew. So I suggested they copy it down if they thought they’d have a car-ride over the holidays; they should ask somebody who drives what he thinks it means. They copied it down. While this was happening, some of the kids ventured to identify parts of the poem as coming from Gasoline Station signs. Then I read them The President Speaks, and some of them laughed at one point, and others of them turned their seats to see how Miss Margolin and Mr. Sadowsky were taking it. I noticed Mr. Sadowsky also copying the King poem, so I mentioned I had written it, and said it was copyrighted. 

In connection with the President Speaks’ poem, the kids wanted to know what is Black Power. So I returned the question—without success. Then I wrote it on the board. I explained it is a phrase, and not a complete idea—a sentence. I asked them do they know the word slogan? Yes. Goal? Yes. So, I said, Black Power is a phrase, a slogan, and a goal. I wrote this on the blackboard. They looked a little blank. One girl, Beverly, the one who had insisted on carrying my stuff for me, asked is it Black Power when some boys take and wreck a car battery? I said the meaning depended on what color you are, how old you are, what your experience has been and what you think you have and what you think you want. They looked interested. So I then delivered a brief speech that Black Power came into existence during the voter registration march, etc., etc. Do we have peace? I asked. No!, they shouted back. Is the world torn by wars?, I asked. “Yes” they answered. (Mr. Sadowsky was taking notes, and one boy was ignoring all of this with his head hidden by The Pictorial History.)

And yet, I continued, do people go around shouting PEACE! PEACE!! Yes! They answered, they were beginning to understand. Some of us want peace, so we say peace. Those of us who are black have no power and we need it—to be happy—and so we say, Black Power. The kids looked pleased. And I was too. Then I read them one more of my poems. I handed out Kozol’s story, apologized for the size of the print, and recommended it for pleasure over the holidays. Then I gave each kid a choice between the drawing of the Indian and the Negro youth’s head and the photograph of the white boys posing for a camera. I told them they should write about it—a story, a song, a poem, a caption. Whatever they wanted. They seemed to like the photographs. And they seemed to like being able to keep them. So they wrote and I gave the spelling of different words, as requested, and so forth. Finally, they stood, one by one, and with evident enjoyment, read what they had written. The spelling was atrocious, the syntax strictly idiomatic, but two of the compositions were imaginative. Everybody had been real in his or her response. That was obvious. 

Before leaving, I suggested that when they come to the end of the Kozol story they consider if the boy was right to try and take revenge on his parents, or not, and that they try to imagine—in words—what happened to that boy when his parents came home. I thanked them for their attention. And wished them Merry Christmas. As I stepped from the room, I heard Miss Margolin say the following: 

“All right! Put your things inside your Creative Writing Folders, immediately.” 

January 20, 1968
REPORT: Saturday Workshop
From: June Meyer

We had a great session today at The Church of The Open Door, in Brooklyn. Fifteen kids showed up and wrote happily and well. Terri’s arranging to have their things typed and copied during the week. I will submit same when I get same. As said, repeatedly, it is extremely important that the kids receive something in return for their efforts. 

Today I brought rather more books than usual. The new one, African Myths and Tales, interested enough kids to prompt me to buy several copies on Monday so I can give them out, next week. I also intend to get some Haiku poetry, if I can find a really good selection, and anything else. 

They really enjoy making a kind of a home out of our getting together—writing, talking, laughing, listening to records, hot chocolate and cookies. In fact, one boy, Michael Goode, wrote that Saturdays with the group are when he lives. 

At their leisure, and as they feel intermittently inclined, the kids wander to the phonograph and also over to the books and look through them. At least half of the kids spend a noticeable amount of time reading from the books I brought. There is a hungriness that is very clear. 

I had the kids write under the title: “I AM”—it could be about themselves, or someone they know, or an invented personality. Anyhow, a story on one side of the paper. And a poem or a song on the other. That was the assignment. We got back about an 85% return on the request, which was exhilarating, to say the least. 

The kids are now writing confidently, and eagerly and with a lot of style. Those who gave me straitjacketed stuff, first time around, I then asked to write about I WILL NEVER BE. That change of angle worked. 

We’ll go on with the latter, next Saturday. 

Altogether, our group remained in extremely high spirits today. The kids were obviously proud of their accomplishments. And a kind of coherency has begun to emerge. Terri attended to the chocolate and cookies. Nobody wanted to leave. “Is that all we going to write today?” An hour and a half on the weekends begins to make a difference. And the obligations, on our side, increase. 

During the week, more and more kids write on their own—poetry and stories and dreams—and bring them. I’ll show you what I mean when I get the typed versions from T.B. who ought to be interviewed about the kind of teaching she does and the kind of administrative jungle she has to shred, Monday through Friday. 

Featured photo: June Jordan, Brooklyn Daily Eagle photographs, Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.