Monthly Archives: May 2012

Eighteen students sit around a polished wooden table. I take in the varsity jackets hanging on the backs of chairs, the excellent orthodonture, and the cleverly modified uniforms (collars on the collared shirts so slim that they look like ribbons). Outside the window lies manicured shrubbery and well-tended stone walls. Beyond these, are the impressive estates with service entrances that I drove past on the way in.

I ask students to share from their image journals. Hands shoot up.

Prior to my arrival for my two-day writer’s residency at this tony Connecticut prep school, I had given the image journal assignment to the classroom teacher to share with the students.

My mandate is to help 8^th-graders deepen their short stories. I wanted to hit the ground running—with material from our lives that we could use to deepen our fiction. (more...)

In fall 2012, T&W will launch a searchable Digital Resource Center (DRC) on our website. Initially drawing on material from T&W's 45 years of print publications, the DRC will also include resources provided by other members of the WITS Alliance--a professional network of literary arts education programs and individuals who serve K-12 students and provide professional development for their teachers.

Help us shape this new resource by completing our short survey here. Thank you!

Voice Choice
by Caron Levis

Take 1: HOLLA TO MY PEEPS! O.M.G!!! I am, like, so totally PSYCHED to be posting MY FIRST BLOG EVER!
No, that’s not me.

Take 2: Greetings, readers, I am honored to have been invited to partake in this online adventure of Teachers & Writers Collaborative and am pleased to present to you my inaugural posting—
Oh, definitely not.

Take 3: Hello my dears, goodness, now isn’t this exciting? My very own, how do you call it? Oh yes, Blog Post. Blog. What an adorable word, what will they think of next? Oh, for goodness sakes, I hope I’m doing this right. I mean who would’ve thought? Me, blogging?
Yeah, I don’t think so.

Argh. So what, then, is my blog voice? What is Voice anyway?

I had to ask myself this question when I was hired to teach “voice” to seventh-graders. Somewhere I read that it is “the essence of the self.” What’s essence? What’s self? Wonderful questions, but I had forty minutes, and I wasn’t expected to philosophize, I was expected to get kids writing. People speak of the “elusive voice” as if it is some intangible, magical element of writing. Now, I enjoy intangibles and magic, but I needed something I could write on a chalkboard. I got out my dictionary, I Googled, I read works of authors with “strong voices,” found notes from grad school and acting class, searched my own experience, and in the end I had to teach voice the only way I knew how. I decided that for me, voice is HOW who tells what. (more...)