Lydia Esslinger says that she has been an English teacher and speech and debate coach at Syosset High School on Long Island “forever.” Eight years ago, she learned about Poetry Out Loud and brought the program to her school. One of her students, Iree Mann, is the 2017 New York State Poetry Out Loud Champion…
INTRO Wow, what a beautiful ride it’s been! For the past six months I’ve had the pleasure of working with 115 incredibly bright, creative, blossoming young humans who have truly blown my mind with their ideas and personality. Each and every one of them coming to the class and the page with their own unique…
It has been a real treat to work with the Louis Armstrong Middle School this year. During this five-week residency, I decided to focus on the basic goal of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative—exercising the imagination. Yes, we used time-tested effective poetic devices like simile, metaphor, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, and repetition. We re-visited the five…
In April 2017, Samara Huggins was named National Poetry Out Loud Champion at the national final in Washington, DC. Samara, from Marietta, Georgia, is now a first-year student at Pratt Institute in New York City. She sat down with poet, playwright, and long-time T&W teaching artist Dave Johnson to talk about her Poetry Out Loud…
By Erika Luckert What is a poem? When I teach poetry, I often begin by asking students what a poem is. Their answers are ones I’ve come to expect: a poem has line breaks. It shows your emotions. It rhymes, or it doesn’t. It has fancy language. It’s hard to understand. Last fall, I began…
By Jeffrey Pflaum Teachers & Writers Collaborative will turn 50 years old in fall 2017. To celebrate this milestone, we asked people who have been part of T&W’s work over the last five decades to tell their stories. Jeffrey Pflaum reflects on how T&W books and writers have inspired his own teaching and writing. …
T&W teaching artists Alba Delia Hernandez and Samantha LoCoco conducted a 20-session residency at PS 457, Young Leadership Academy, in the Bronx with second-grade gifted and talented students. The students learned about figurative language and poetic structure and examined a range of diverse authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Willie Perdomo, Pablo Neruda, Kwame Dawes, and…
by Rich Glowacki The poetry is here, she’d say bidding us drop to all fours in the dirt with her to see connotative subtleties in greens among caterpillar, mantis, and dragonfly wing; she would show how to deftly dissect subtexted hums known to sting and allusions in what June bugs sing, then tell us to take…
T&W teaching artist Amina Henry conducted a 20-session poetry residency at PS 188, the Kingsbury School, in Bayside, Queens with third- and fourth-grade gifted and talented classes. Kirsten Chen, who was a T&W editorial associate in 2016–2017, had an email conversation with one of Henry’s classroom teacher partners, Jessica Wingfield, about the program’s impact. Teachers…
I Eat The Wind by Jolany (2nd grade) 2017 My Favorite Word is Love Sheridan Academy of Young Leaders, PS 457X, Bronx, NY Alba Hernandez & Samantha LaCoco, writers‐in‐residence