Born and raised in Santa Ana, California, Aracelis Girmay earned a BA at Connecticut College and an MFA from New York University. Her poetry collections include Teeth (2007), Kingdom Animalia (2011), and the black maria (2016), as well as collage-based picture book changing, changing (2005). Aracelis is the editor of How to Carry Water: Selected…
Everybody thinks teachers want all their students to get As. And, of course, we are happy when they do. But as a human being who is also a teacher, you can’t help but hope for more for your students.
By Judith Chriqui Benchimol ACT I When my sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Fine assigned an essay on Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Necklace,” I panicked. I didn’t understand the essay prompt or know how to structure my response to her questions. I couldn’t think the way Mrs. Fine wanted me to think. I wrote in…
In this special feature T&W is pleased to recognize the important work of those involved with the PEN program, whose belief in the power and purpose of writing mirrors our own, and to introduce the winners of PEN America’s newly established L’Engle Rahman Award for Mentorship.
From the beginning of the PEN America Prison Writing Mentorship Program, it has been clear that the most effective relationships between mentors and incarcerated writers are marked by growth and development on both sides. The best mentors, it seems, often get just as much as they give, if not more, from those they mentor. The exchanges between mentors and mentees are marked by a sense of openness, curiosity, and, most importantly, respect.
I started this “poetry-mural” initiative back in the spring of 2017 while working as a writer-in-residence at PS 51 in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan. The school building was already brimming with color and creativity, thanks in large part to the collaborative spirit of the art teacher, Shani Perez, and the principal, Nancy Sing-Bock.
The following list includes Lesson plans and resources, Interviews, and essays written by and/ or about Latinx/ Latin- American/ Hispanic writers
Jayne Cortez’s poem “These New York City Pigeons” inspires student poems in this lesson plan from Joanna Fuhrman.
“For teachers as much as for students, writing gives us all an invitation to lift ourselves above our seemingly ordinary desk jobs, classrooms, bedroom windows, or small towns. It grants us permission.”
In this lesson plan, photographs are used to explore point of view in fiction writing.