{"id":4135,"date":"2017-10-23T13:21:15","date_gmt":"2017-10-23T17:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/?p=4135"},"modified":"2023-02-22T15:50:47","modified_gmt":"2023-02-22T19:50:47","slug":"50th-stories-kids-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/50th-stories-kids-war\/","title":{"rendered":"50th Stories: Kids &#038; War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-tertiary-background-color has-background\"><em>Teachers &amp; Writers Collaborative is turning 50 years old this fall. To celebrate this milestone, we asked people who have been part of T&amp;W\u2019s work over the last five decades to tell their stories. Nancy Larson Shapiro, long-time T&amp;W staff director and now chair of the T&amp;W Board of Directors, reflects on the impact of war on the young people in T&amp;W programs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When T&amp;W was founded in 1967, the Vietnam War was heating up. In addition to their concerns about students\u2019 writing, many of the organization\u2019s founders were active war protesters. I am thinking, particularly, of Grace Paley and Muriel Rukeyser. Sadly, the presence of war has haunted, and continues to stalk, generations of children. For example, in a 1991 <em>Overview<\/em> of T&amp;W\u2019s work, two T&amp;W writers noted the impact of the Gulf War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Children-and-War-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Children-and-War-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4137\" width=\"349\" height=\"260\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Poet Carol Conroy wrote: \u201cOne little girl whispered to me that she just couldn\u2019t handle writing about war, couldn\u2019t use words yet. She told me her brother had died in the war. For the rest of my life when I hear about our \u2018light casualties,\u2019 I\u2019ll see her face, her stony grief throwing a devastated child into a wordless sea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And writer\/poet Christian McEwen noted: \u201cThe kids knew a lot of words and phrases: Iraq, Kuwait, the United Nations. What they didn\u2019t understand was how it all fit together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Dennis Polanco, a student from PS 30 in Manhattan, gave us this poem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><strong>War<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>War is a black dog fighting<br>a man for food and<br>they\u2019re both angry, hungry<br>and smart<br>They are fighting<br>The man is all covered with blood<br>The man\u2019s arm cut, the blood<br>is dripping, the dog<br>is still not dead<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Celebrating 50 Years of Teachers &#038; Writers Collaborative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":4136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","featured_image_focal_point":[],"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"3615,1669,1745,2807,3183,3214","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[92,607],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4135"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12302,"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135\/revisions\/12302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachersandwritersmagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}